Chapter Five
One of the hardest parts about owning a hotel is how fucking nice you have to be all of the time.
I never realized how much shit my parents must’ve swallowed over the years, how many tight smiles they’d kept locked on their faces as some sunburned dude on his fifth Coors Light yelled about a room that was too warm, or sheets that were too rough, or—and this one has actually happened to me—that the ocean “didn’t have enough waves. ”
“It was too sandy to ride them, and it was too hot to push them,” the woman—I think her name is Michelle—tells me, her perfectly plucked brows puckered like this is somehow my fault.
I smile back, hoping it doesn’t look like a grimace. “Yeah, that’s why we advise guests to stick to the roads or, if you’re in the nature preserve, the boardwalk.”
“Wish we’d known that!” the man replies cheerfully as though I myself had not told them exactly that when they checked the bikes out this morning. Edie had been there, too, and had added to be sure to return the bikes to the porch because the forecast was predicting rain this evening.
I glance toward the front windows now, and while the rain hasn’t started falling, the clouds outside are heavy and dark, almost swollen against the few rays of the setting sun.
It’ll be dark by the time I get the bikes back to the inn, and probably pouring if the rising wind and thick smell of ozone are anything to go by.
I’m tempted to just leave them there, let them rust, let them get stolen, who gives a fuck?
These people, Todd and Michelle, are the first to even want to use the bikes in months, and while they hadn’t been expensive, every time I saw them sitting on the porch with their cute baskets and jaunty little bells on the handlebars, I thought of me and Chris picking them out at the Walmart over in Gulf Shores, me giggling as I’d attempted to test the bike out in the deserted aisle.
Guests are going to love it, Chris had said. They can ride into town to grab dinner, ride down the beach where the sand is packed firm enough. It’ll be one of those little touches, you know?
You’re really getting into this innkeeper life, I remember saying, and then he’d grabbed the handlebars and kissed me, his lips curving into a smile against mine.
I’m really getting into this innkeeper, he’d replied, and I’d groaned at how cheesy it was, but we’d laughed and bought the bikes and I’d even put stupid little ribbons in the same shade of pink as the Rosalie Inn on the backs of the seats, and then less than a year later, Chris was gone—no longer into innkeeper life or this innkeeper—and all I had was a business drowning in debt, a mom who needed expensive care, and these two fucking bikes.
Well, I guess I’d had them up until Todd and Michelle dumped them in the swampy nightmare that is the nature preserve.
So now I smile at the two of them, even giving a stupid little salute that immediately makes me want to kill myself.
“No worries!” I tell them brightly. “I’ll send someone to go grab them.”
The someone is going to be me, but let them think I’m above that kind of thing as innkeeper, let them think my “staff” is more than me, Edie, a couple locals who clean the rooms, and Louisa the night shift girl, plus our one maintenance guy, Ray, a man I’ve seen sober exactly twice in the three years I’ve been running the inn.
Thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance, and I bite back a sigh as Todd and Michelle blithely turn away, heading back to their room, where they’ll probably watch the storm roll in and shiver with delight at being inside to watch it rather than out in it, pushing two fucking bikes over sand for a quarter of a mile.
Edie meets me by the front door as I’m grabbing a Rosalie Inn–branded poncho from the rack, her pierced brow lifting as she nods in Todd and Michelle’s direction.
“They didn’t bring back the bikes,” she says in a low voice, and I give her a tight smile.
“They didn’t.”
“Gen, leave them.”
“Can’t” is all I say in reply, which makes Edie frown at me, her hands coming to rest heavily on my shoulders.
“You can, you just won’t because you’re the most stubborn person on God’s green earth.”
“Guilty,” I say, slipping the poncho over my head, and Edie’s eyes dart from me to the door, then over to the coatrack where the other ponchos are hanging.
“I’ll come with you,” she says, already reaching, but I stop her with a hand on her arm.
“Edie. The bottom is going to fall out any minute. Weather like this always makes you nervous, and you hate driving in the rain, so go ahead and get yourself home before it starts. No sense in both of us being wet and miserable.”
I don’t add that she’s already on overtime, and while she’d never, ever insist I pay her that, I’d never, ever not do it, so I try not to keep her past her regular hours if I can help it.
“I’m not going to let you drag two bikes up the beach just because I don’t like bad weather, Geneva,” she says, but another crack of thunder has her flinching, and I pat her shoulder, moving past her.
“Look, if it ends up being too much, I’ll abandon them on the beach for some kids to find, okay? More trouble than they’re worth anyhow.”
Edie doesn’t look convinced, but she’s going to let me have my way—she always does.
“Ooh, where are we going?”
Both of us turn to see Lo floating into the room, her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head.
No sundress tonight. Instead, she’s wearing a pair of navy capri pants and a striped top, slip-on sneakers squeaking on the hardwood, and without waiting for me to answer, she crosses the lobby to stand with me and Edie.
Edie steps back a few paces, like Lo is suddenly crowding her in, and her voice is gruff when she replies, “Geneva’s dealing with some inn maintenance stuff, not going out for an evening stroll.”
I cut my eyes at Edie, silently trying to convey, Maybe don’t snap at a guest?
But Lo doesn’t seem offended. She just nods and reaches past me to grab a poncho for herself. “Well, Auggie is plugged in to his headphones and his laptop working on the book, and I’m bored, so consider me a temporary Rosalie Inn employee.”
“Oh, you really don’t have to—” I start, but Lo just holds her arms out to her sides, looking down at her now pink vinyl–clad body.
“Too late, already in the poncho,” she says, and I can’t help but laugh.
“No arguing with that,” I say, smiling at her.
I glance over at Edie, expecting her to be smiling as well, but instead, she’s still watching Lo, her brows tight together, her lips rolled inward.
This is the second time Edie has been cold to Lo, and while Edie has always had an edge to her, she’s never been cold.
I make a mental note to talk to her about it later. Maybe Lo was rude to her or something, hard as that is to imagine.
“We’ve got this,” I say to Edie now. “Go on and get home before the rain starts.”
Her eyes shift back to me, and I can tell she wants to argue some more, but finally, she just gives a curt nod and says, “Text me once you’re back safe.”
“Will do,” I assure her.
Lo moves past me, opening the door to the porch, and a gust of wind yanks it out of her hand, sending it crashing back against the wall with a thump that rattles the pictures on the wall.
“Ooh!” She laughs, faux stumbling back like the wind has pushed her, too. Then she lifts her chin, taking a deep breath through her nose as she closes her eyes. “Oh, that smells like home.”
It smells like salt water and mud and pine and metal, and underlying all of it is the distant stench of rotting fish, but I know what she means.
Storms around here always seem to concentrate the various smells of St. Medard’s Bay, and I think I’d done the same thing when Chris and I first came back here—stuck my head out the window of our car, breathed deep, and felt the past settle into my bones.
Lo smiles as she looks over at me, and I realize I’m smiling back. “People ask why I came back,” I say. “But I sometimes wonder how I ever left.”
Something in Lo’s face dims just a little bit, her smile drooping before it’s replaced with another, even brighter grin. “Well, I don’t have to wonder that,” she says with a shrug. “I left because everyone thought I was a murderous whore.”
And with that, she steps out onto the porch and into the rising storm.
FOR THE FIRST few minutes of our walk down the beach, we’re both quiet, lost in our own thoughts.
The rain hasn’t started, but the sky is getting darker, the air heavier, and the wind blowing off the water is surprisingly cool in the hot July evening.
Our pink ponchos flap in the wind, the sound unnaturally loud, and finally, Lo just yanks hers off, balling it up in one hand and throwing over her shoulder, “I’ll put it back on if the rain actually starts. ”
We pass my trailer, but I don’t bother mentioning it. To our left, the surf pounds, and ahead of us on the right, the trees grow thicker, signaling the beginning of the preserve. We’re about halfway to it when Lo stops, turning to face the ocean.
“It’s just out there, you know,” she says, pointing. “The Rosalie.”
Mom and Dad loved telling the story to guests, how some bootlegger had been running liquor in the ’20s and got caught in a storm.
How his boat—the Rosalie, named after his daughter—sank right out from underneath him.
Mom’s grandfather had apparently gone out into the raging waters himself trying to save the guy, but it was already too late.
Never once did they mention that “some bootlegger” was actually a Fitzroy ancestor—the same Fitzroy who had presided over our statehouse, whose photograph hung on the wall in my kindergarten classroom, next to President George H. W. Bush.
Before I can tell Lo any of that, she adds, “Landon took me out to the wreck once. He wanted us to snorkel around it. It’s not down all that deep, you know.”
“It is now,” I reply, and she turns to me, her eyes widening in surprise.
“What do you mean?”