Chapter One #2
My stomach drops, my skin turning cold despite the balmy morning.
The Bakers always booked the whole week of the Fourth.
Even with the loyalty discount I gave them, that was nearly two thousand dollars that I’d been counting on this summer.
Two thousand dollars I’ve already spent, if I’m being honest.
“Fuck,” I mutter, and Edie leans over, clinking her mug against mine.
“Before you get too down about that, another email came in last night, too. Check it out.”
She reaches for the iPad that’s sitting in a nearby rocking chair, its cheap plastic case cracking, the PROPERTY OF THE ROSALIE INN label peeling off the back.
I open the email app, my eyes briefly snagging on the Bakers’ reply—Hi, Geneva! So sorry not to have replied earlier—before seeing another message with the subject Long-term stay, July–?
I scan the email quickly, almost afraid to hope.
August Fletcher, a writer from California; interested in an open-ended stay starting the first of July; not sure how long, definitely a month, but possibly until September.
September.
Even with a long-term stay discount—my dad had been big on discounts, I’m sadly learning—that would be a significant bit of money. Enough to pay down at least one of the credit cards, secure a couple more months for Mom at Hope House, get a little breathing room.
My mind is still running numbers as I half read the rest of the message.
This guy, August, is working on a book; would love to learn more about local history while here; wants to talk about the inn, and the hurricanes—specifically, Hurricane Marie in 1984.
That part pulls me out of my “once again having a credit score over 500” fantasies.
Lots of hurricanes have hit St. Medard’s Bay over the years.
It’s practically what we’re famous for, and the Rosalie Inn is a big part of that: the only beachfront building to survive the wind and waves for decades, the freak structure that’s somehow always standing when the water recedes.
Maybe it’s missing a chunk of roof or a bunch of windows, but it’s whole and upright when other, seemingly sturdier buildings are piles of flattened lumber.
We even have pictures in the lobby, framed shots of the hotel in the aftermath of the storms, little placards on the bottom reading Hurricane Delphine—1965, Hurricane Audrey—1977, that kind of thing.
Hurricane Marie, though …
That’s the one that nearly got us. I don’t remember it, of course—I was born in March of ’85, months after it hit—but Dad talked about it a lot.
How a small sailboat ended up in the courtyard, its mast jutting through an upstairs window.
How the whole front porch was ripped cleanly off, like some giant fish had swallowed it and taken it back out to sea.
How they’d been struggling to put the inn and their lives back together while reporters invaded the town because one of the victims was a politician’s son, and it turned out he’d been in St. Medard’s Bay visiting his teenage mistress, a local girl.
They’d been without power for nearly a month, Mom had said, no running water for nearly as long, but all anyone had been able to talk about was Mrs. Bailey’s gorgeous daughter, Gloria, and the governor’s son—and how that governor was saying he wasn’t so sure his son had actually died in the hurricane at all.
I didn’t know any of that until I was thirteen.
There hadn’t been another big storm to hit St. Medard’s Bay since Marie, so I’d never had any real reason to think about the various hurricanes that had roared in before.
Hell, I’d walked past the squat stone monument in the middle of the grassy square we call a “park” downtown thousands of times and had no idea it was a memorial for all the people we’d lost to rising waters and falling houses over the years.
But for whatever reason, one April day in 1998, as I cut through the park on my way to the used bookstore, I stopped at the monument to tie my shoe, and the words in tarnished bronze caught my eye.
“Thou dost rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, thou stillest them.”—Psalm 89:9.
Under that, there were years at first—1927, 1934, 1946—and lists of the deceased, and then, in 1965, the first named hurricane, Hurricane Delphine.
Later, I learned that’s because they didn’t start giving hurricanes names until the ’50s, but at the time, I was mostly fascinated by how every storm listed was a woman’s name.
Delphine.
Audrey.
Velma.
Marie.
I was a dramatic kid, the first in my class to discover Ann Rule paperbacks and Dean Koontz hardcovers, and there had been something eerie about those storms, those long lists of names under each one.
I’d gone home from the bookstore still thinking about it, walking along the beach and looking out at the ocean, so glassy and calm you’d never believe it could “rage” like that Bible verse had said.
But rage it had—and rage it did again just a few months later in September of 1998.
Hurricane Peggy didn’t kill anyone in St. Medard’s Bay, but it did destroy that used bookstore I loved so much and blew out the front windows at the Rosalie, soaking all the lobby furniture in a noxious mix of salt water and God knows what else.
Suddenly, those pictures on the lobby wall that I’d walked past every day of my life had new meaning for me, and I studied them intently, matching them up with the names of the storms from the monument.
They’d all been there.
My grandparents holding massive garbage bags but still smiling for the camera once Delphine was done in 1965.
My mom, a gangly tween shading her eyes from the sun on the front porch, the Rosalie basically pristine except for a few missing shingles, courtesy of Audrey in 1977.
Every window broken out in the wake of Velma.
And then nothing. No more pictures.
That’s when I’d asked Dad about Hurricane Marie and gotten the story of the sailboat and the porch, of Gloria Bailey and the governor’s son.
“We were living in a disaster movie, but everyone acted like we were in an episode of Dynasty,” Dad had joked at dinner that night, but Mom had only shaken her head, her lips pressed tightly together before she said, “I still have nightmares about that storm. I didn’t need any reminders on the wall. ”
I’d assumed Hurricane Marie had been so rough on Mom because she’d been pregnant with me, and that had to have been fucking terrifying.
She and Dad were barely more than teenagers, newly engaged, learning to take over the business from her family because her parents planned to retire to Vermont—some kind of reverse snowbird situation—and then the whole place nearly came down around their ears.
I didn’t blame her for not wanting to be confronted daily with memories of it.
Which was why the cache of newspapers and magazines I found in the back of her closet when we moved her to Hope House had been such a surprise.
Articles from the Press-Register and USA Today, spreads from People and the National Enquirer.
All ostensibly about the destruction Marie had wrought, but most were much more intent on Landon Fitzroy’s death—and on the local girl whom Landon’s father was blaming for it.
Her photo was always featured alongside those articles: Gloria “Lo” Bailey, glossy and beautiful in the way women were in the ’80s, almost painfully blond.
The captions always made a point of highlighting her age, too—just nineteen years old—her big, innocent smile giving no hint that she was in the center of a different kind of storm, but one that was no less deadly.
Mom’s collection filled up a whole box, and I would have given anything to ask why she’d kept such a detailed account of an event that she never spoke about.
But of course, by then, there was no asking Mom anything at all.
So it had gone up in the attic with all the other things that had made up Mom’s life, things that had belonged to Ellen Chambers Corliss, a person who might still be here in body but is no longer here in mind or spirit.
I’d filed the contents of that box away as just one more item on the list of things I didn’t understand about my mother.
That list is long.
I’m about to hit reply, not even bothering to finish the rest of the email because this August Fletcher could say he was coming to St. Medard’s Bay to write a book on how best to sacrifice virgins under the blood moon and I would’ve happily taken his money, but then I see a couple of lines near the bottom.
Due to the short notice, I’m willing to pay twice your regular rates, which, if I’m honest, seem too low for such a gorgeous place in such a picturesque location!
Our rates are low, much lower than what other places nearby charge—lower than what we charged even a few years ago—but it was the only thing I could think of to keep the inn at least half full during the summer.
We’re at $200 a night when other places start around $500 during the high season.
Four hundred a night for an open-ended stay?
My heart starts beating a little faster as I take in the final line of the email.
Full disclosure: I’m also willing to pay a little more because there’s a chance my presence there might spook the locals; I’ll be looking into the death of Landon Fitzroy, so there’s a true crime element to this book (in case you find such things distasteful!).
I almost laugh. My phone is currently loaded up with podcasts with titles like And Then They Were Gone or Two Girls, One Murder.
Dateline is in heavy rotation on the tiny TV in my Airstream.
Immediately, I can see that the death of this Landon Fitzroy would make for a good story.
The storm, the mystery surrounding his injuries, the scandal with the teenage mistress …
Hell, that might be more than a book. That might be a Netflix series that launches a thousand Reddit theories. And where there are true crime nerds, there might just be money.
So no, I don’t find true crime distasteful, but I do wonder: Do I want my family business to become famous for its connection to a notorious death?
I nearly snort at myself. Worrying about the morality of the whole thing is for people who don’t have three maxed-out credit cards and a repayment plan with the IRS.
And even if the book comes to fuck all, the money he’s offering for his stay might just help keep us afloat through the offseason.
So yeah. After months—years, really—of bad news, even this little glimmer is shiny enough for me, and as I reply to August Fletcher’s email, I realize I’m smiling.