Chapter Ten
I get maybe two hours of sleep before my alarm goes off, and it’s awful, those few seconds of consciousness when my brain tells me, Edie’s got it, you can sleep a little longer.
And then I remember that Edie is currently lying in a hospital bed ten miles up the road and once again, it’s just me. Alone.
But when I manage to drag myself through the back door of the inn just after six, it turns out I’m not alone.
Lo is sitting on the couch in the lobby, and for the first time since she’s shown up in St. Medard’s, she looks, if not her age, at least close to it. The early morning sunlight highlights the creases by her eyes, the deeper grooves framing her mouth.
She’s wearing a baby-blue satin robe over a white cotton nightgown, and when she sees me, she leaps up. “Oh my God, honey, how are you?” she asks, rushing over to me.
I let her fold me into a hug, but only for a second, hoping she doesn’t notice the way I tense up when her arms go around me.
It’s easier in the bright light of day to believe that she couldn’t have had anything to do with Edie’s fall.
That it was exactly what it looked like, a simple slip that turned into something more serious.
But I can’t forget how she’d glared at Edie yesterday, how hard her eyes had been, even as her pink lips stayed curved in a smile.
“I’m fine,” I lie, going over to the front desk and wiggling the mouse to wake up the computer monitor. “I mean, I’m tired and I’m worried about Edie, but physically, I’m okay.”
“How is she?” Lo asks, her voice smooth like syrup. I look up, searching her face for some clue, for anything that might tell me if she’s being sincere right now.
But I don’t know her well enough for that, and even if I did, something tells me that Lo got very good at hiding what she might be feeling a long time ago.
I repeat what the doctor told me last night, adding that when I called the hospital earlier this morning, they said there hadn’t been any change, good or bad.
“As long as she’s not getting worse, that’s the main thing,” Lo says decisively, then glances out toward the porch, pulling her robe tighter around her. “I can’t imagine what she was doing out there. Especially in that weather.”
“Neither can I,” I reply, but the words come out too flat, too blunt.
Lo’s head swivels back to me, and I feel her eyes move over my face as I look back down at the computer. Then she says, “Did you talk to August when you got back?”
I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, and yet weirdly, that’s the oily emotion that unfurls in my belly at her question. The memory of his mouth on mine is suddenly so vivid that I feel like I’m probably projecting it directly into her brain.
“It’s just that I heard him leave his room sometime around two, and he didn’t come back until nearly four. I wondered if he’d decided to wait up for you.”
“He did, yeah,” I say, letting my gaze flick back down to the computer like it’s no big deal, like I’m only half paying attention. “He was worried about Edie.”
“And you, I’m sure.”
My eyes shoot back up. Lo is still watching me with that faintly appraising gleam, and I can’t keep the irritation out of my voice when I say, “He was, yeah. He’s a good guy. We’ve become friends. Or at least friendly.”
“Is that all you are?”
There’s a sharpness in her tone that I haven’t heard directed at me before, and it makes me straighten up to my full height, my arms folded over my chest. The lack of sleep and the worry have left me jagged, an open wound.
“Lo, if there’s something you want to say about me and August, please just get to it. I have a lot to do this morning.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea, is all,” she says, almost breezy as she shrugs and fiddles with the belt of her robe. “You and him.”
I almost laugh out loud at her frankness. “Wow. Okay. Any particular reason why?”
“For one, I know his type,” she says. “He’s charming and sweet, and smarter than any man that pretty should be, but at the end of the day, the only person he’s ever really gonna love is himself.”
“Are you describing August or Landon?” I ask, and she jerks her head back, blinking.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Lo caught off guard, but it doesn’t last long. “Ooh, Ellen Chambers’s Little Girl has some bite to her. Good for you, baby!”
“I’m just saying, I’m not sure you know August as well as you think you do,” I say. “You just met him, what? A few months ago? And only because you wanted someone to write your book. It’s not like you’ve been best friends or … or lovers, or whatever.”
Lo’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “I didn’t want him to write my book. He wanted to write my story.”
A lie, I know. August told me himself that she was the one to reach out, and why would he make something like that up?
But Lo is already waving it away. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, I’m telling you, you don’t want anything to do with that boy. I’m just giving you the same advice your mama would—”
“Don’t,” I say, and my voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
Lo blinks again, then steps closer to me, her brow puckering. “Have I done something?” she asks, and it’s right there on the tip of my tongue.
Well, Lo, that’s what I’m starting to wonder.
Instead, I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m just really on edge about Edie, I’m running on a couple hours of sleep, and you just surprised me with this August stuff.”
I don’t know if she fully accepts that explanation. There’s something about the way she’s watching me, about how she’s fiddling with the silver ring on her middle finger. Lo is too self-possessed to fidget, too confident in her own skin, certain that she belongs in any room she walks into.
Finally, she gives me a tight smile, her hands falling to her side. “You must be exhausted, honey. I get it. I need a full eight hours and three cups of coffee, or someone’s head is getting bitten clean off!”
She laughs and pats my shoulder, but the only head I’m thinking of is Edie’s, covered in blood—and Landon Fitzroy’s, under that same porch, his own skull cratered.
I gesture toward the office. “I … need to…”
“Go on, go on,” she says with a wave, and if it weren’t for the way her hand goes back to that ring, twisting and twisting it, I’d think she was every bit as fine as she’s trying so hard to appear.
It’s weird, flipping on the light in the office, seeing the desk empty.
Edie is always here before me; this is her “command center,” as she likes to call it.
Her Star Trek mug still holds cold coffee from yesterday, and my throat goes tight again as I gently push the mug aside and sit down at the desk, robotically running through the usual checklist. Emails first—a couple asking if we do weddings, someone looking to book over Christmas, and then, right in a row, three cancellations, all for next week.
My eyes skate over them, my stomach knotting.
Looking at the weather …
With the potential for a bad storm …
Probably an overreaction, but better safe than sorry!
I’ve been so consumed with Lo and my mom, Edie and August, that I haven’t paid that much attention to the forecast in the last twenty-four hours. Or rather, I’ve always left that to Edie since it’s her particular obsession, trusting her to tell me when something is—literally—on the horizon.
Sure enough, when I pull up the NOAA website, there it is.
It’s far out still, somewhere over Central America, but it’s big. Bands spiral out from the eye like tentacles.
I know it’s the fear and exhaustion taking its toll, but looking at it—at her, Tropical Storm Lizzie—I can’t help thinking that she’s already reaching out for us, trying to pull herself across land and sea to demand her traditional sacrifice from St. Medard’s Bay.
I’m so absorbed that I don’t hear August come in, don’t even notice him until he’s right at the edge of the desk.
“Bad weather headed this way?” he asks, and I startle slightly, glancing up at him.
I’d avoided mirrors this morning, but if I look as bad as August does, it’s going to take more than an extra cup of coffee to get me passing for human.
His skin has a faint grayish pallor, stubble thick on his jaw, and his eyes are bloodshot.
His hair is rumpled, a little greasy, and I realize he’s still in the same clothes he was wearing last night.
“Yeah,” I tell him, turning back to the computer and tapping the screen. “This bitch Lizzie is getting hotter and stronger, and it looks like she might head this way. Hopefully she fizzles out somewhere around Mexico, but if not…”
If not, we could just get a lot of rain.
If not, she could swing west and become Mississippi’s problem.
Or, if not, we find out whether the Rosalie has some luck left in her yet.
I turn off the monitor, those whirls and swirls already making me vaguely motion sick, and rest my elbows on the desk, pinching the bridge of my nose as I take a deep breath.
“Anyway. That’s my morning so far. Yours?”
August stands there, one hand flexing at his side, and I can tell he’s trying to figure out how to say something. Had he run into Lo on his way here?
“If it’s about last night—” I start, but he shakes his head, cutting me off.
“No. Well, yes, but not … it’s not about…” He trails off, looks away. It’s like he doesn’t want to meet my eyes right now, and that’s almost more alarming than those weather maps.
“August, what’s going on?”
He does glance over at me now, clearly still weighing something in his mind, and then he steps forward, his shoulders tense.
“I was up all night looking through your mom’s …
collection, clippings, whatever you want to call it.
And you were right. There wasn’t much in there that I didn’t already know, or that wasn’t just your usual tabloid crap.
But that wasn’t why I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking, ‘Why?,’ you know?
‘Why did your mom keep all of this?’ You said it yourself, she never really talked about any of this to you when you were growing up. ”
“She didn’t talk about it at all,” I correct. “I didn’t even realize that she and Lo were close.”
“Right. And then I thought, ‘Maybe she was just into true crime, or maybe she thought it would be interesting for the hotel and its history one day, if she kept a record.’ And that made sense to me for a while.”
I consider that theory, nodding. “That could make sense to me, too. Though, I know she wasn’t into true crime—like, not even Dateline or 20/20, things like that.
I’ve always loved those shows, and she used to tease me about watching them.
But she definitely saw herself as … the keeper of the flame, I guess. The Rosalie Historian.”
August nods, a lank of hair falling over his brow before he impatiently pushes it back.
“Exactly. Solid theory, nothing weird about it, just a record of an extraordinary thing that happened in her town, involving one of her best friends. Especially if it’s true that Landon’s body was found here.
But it still bothered me for some reason, and I kept feeling like I was missing something.
So I got out all my research on the case, on Lo, on Landon.
And when I didn’t find anything there, I went online and I searched for… ”
He stops himself, reaching into the pocket of his shorts to pull out his cell phone. His fingers move across the screen, and when he sets the phone on the edge of the desk, I see his hand is shaking.
A young woman smiles back at me, her dark hair shiny over her bare shoulders, her skin pale against the black velvet drape. It’s a senior portrait, probably from the ’70s, if her hair and makeup are anything to go by, but what I’m most struck by is just how much this woman looks like … me.
Her eyes are dark, not hazel, and her chin is just a little bit weaker, but for the first time in my life, I look into another face and recognize my thin nose, my upside-down mouth, upper lip fuller than the bottom, my strong brows, the one dimple in my left cheek.
I raise my eyes to August, my mouth dry, my pulse thudding heavily in my chest, my throat, my ears.
“Who is this?”
“Camile Fitzroy,” he says, and I know the next words he’ll say before they’re even out of his mouth.
“Landon Fitzroy’s sister.”
“Landon,” I hear myself nearly whisper, and August nods, his mouth now set in a hard line.
“Geneva, did you really not know Landon Fitzroy was your father?”