Chapter 24 Amelia
Amelia
People swirl around me in the kitchen, yelling, wet, crazed, in shock.
It’s a relief to be back inside the house, but I’m still disoriented from being out in the storm.
The air is dirt, and the floor beneath my feet feels like it’s swaying slightly, back and forth.
It’s pandemonium, and yet, I feel calm. It’s strange.
I pinch my own arm. Pat my cheek and eye socket where the pickleball hit me.
I don’t feel anything. Not pain, not sorrow or grief.
Once I got over the shock of seeing Brett in the pool, face down, and then waterlogged and lifeless on the deck, the only emotion I’ve managed to feel is indifference.
It’s not like I’d known Brett all that well, to be fair.
We’d hooked up a few times, sure, and the sex was great, but I certainly hadn’t been in love with him.
That much is clear. He was annoying and became even more so each minute of this weekend.
Why did he turn out to be such a flirt, such an ass, and such a bad sport?
Who knows. And now, everyone is focusing on his death, trying to figure out what to do, and that means I must postpone the critical conversation I was planning to have with Roxy this afternoon.
We have business to discuss, and now she, like everyone else, is completely distracted.
Despite the fact he’s now dead, I’m angry at him still.
This is all Brett’s fault. In a short amount of time this weekend, he morphed from being a fun date into a show-off flirt.
He couldn’t focus on me, the most gorgeous single woman in the house.
No, that wasn’t enough for him. He decided it would be much more fun if he paid attention to Beth and Jamie, who has a husband who is always around her.
I mean, like why flirt with Jamie? It was so strange.
And then that whole pickleball situation.
Part of me wonders if he hit me in the face on purpose, hoping to knock me out or get me out of the way.
I guess I’ll never really know what he was up to this weekend.
But one thing is for certain—whatever he was up to, he won’t be up to it anymore.
I watch with mild interest as Ryan, Greer, and Zach carefully carry Brett’s body past me, heading to the far reaches of the house, no doubt.
Outside, the haboob, as we have learned the dust storm is called, is still a menace, turning daytime into night.
Hopefully, the storm will pass soon, because the emergency operator indicated they would not send a squad to collect an already dead person in this sort of weather.
Brett, and the rest of us, must wait for better skies.
I wonder if he will begin to smell as he decomposes. A chill runs down my spine at that, and I’m glad at least I feel something. Disgusted.
I peek down the hallway and see that the men have placed Brett’s body on top of the piano in the living room, visible from all of the first-floor entertainment areas of the house.
They walk toward me in a solemn clump, leaving Brett on the baby grand, like he’s awkwardly fallen asleep there.
But he hasn’t. He’s dead. I wonder if he has a family, parents or siblings or anybody.
Someone will need to break the bad news to them.
I remember that awful day when Sunny’s body was discovered.
Beth had to call Sunny’s mom from the lobby of the hotel while we all stood by her for moral support.
It was heartbreaking, the kind of call no one ever wants to make, or receive, for that matter.
It’s a terrible coincidence that both Sunny and Brett died in a pool in Palm Springs.
Maybe this whole town is cursed, or maybe it’s us.
I stare down the hallway at Brett’s body.
I wonder if he’s ruining the shiny finish with the pool water and whatever is leaking out of him.
Disgusting. Then again, even if by some miracle the baby grand remains pristine, Roxy will probably replace it the first chance she gets.
There’s no way she’d be willing to have someone play a piano a dead man once rested on.
I hurry away from the view down the hallway and wonder if I can make it to the pool house to change, or if the storm is still furious, a relentless swirling of dust particles.
It is unsettling outside, the force of nature so powerful, so surprising.
But I’m unsettled inside, too, knowing Brett is at the end of the hall, dead. I mean, what are the chances?
So much for Roxy’s big plans to create happy memories here to replace the sad ones.