She nodded thoughtfully and said, “I’ll join you if you’d like the company? Give you some pointers.” She smiled before adding, “No extra charge.”
“I’d like that, as long as I’m not keeping you from anything.” She smiled again warmly. Lenny and Dee looked on slightly astounded, as though they couldn’t quite work out how the new guest had so easily developed an unspoken rapport with their host, something they’d probably been working at assiduously for the full week of their stay, trying to belong.
There was a rapport too, like a tacit recognition that they were the same kind of people. Yet whatever similarities lay beneath the surface, whatever commonality there was in their backgrounds, he doubted somehow that they shared the same values, the same beliefs, that they felt the same way about life. Either way, it already seemed hard to believe this was a woman he’d dreaded meeting.
She was easy enough company too as they walked through the camouflage warmth of the woods, Susan pointing out the landmarks, explaining how the leaves would peak in a few weeks. Occasionally tourists passed them and strained to hear what she was saying, apparently recognizing a voice with some authority.
At one point they reached the top of a short climb and, turning, she pointed back down to where one end of the inn was visible between the trees; a couple of other buildings and a white church steeple were apparent farther on—the hotel was closer to the village than he’d thought at first.
“Beautiful, don’t you think?” she said as they stood there. “Sometimes I think we’re the luckiest people in the world to be living here.”
Sometimes, he noted, only sometimes, when the world didn’t intrude perhaps, and asked her then, “How long have you been here?”
“Since we married, nearly twenty years. The house was always too big for us but I fell in love with it at first sight. I like that it’s an inn now.” He glanced at her quickly, gauging the way she was thinking. She looked smitten with the place, even after all that time.
“Did you turn it into an inn when your husband died?”
“No, no, six years ago,” she said. “The kids were getting bigger, David was often away on business, and I wanted to do something with myself, you know? Then one day I just saw it, saw how beautiful it would be as an inn and how I could share it with people. It became my dream.” She turned to him. “And I’ve never looked back. I like being an innkeeper.”
“I can see that,” he said, smiling, and she laughed a little like he’d seen through her, that she was playacting, living a childhood fantasy like those children who dreamt of owning toy shops or candy stores.
They didn’t mention her husband again; JJ was eager not to seem too inquisitive. Instead he asked questions about the running of the inn, keeping her on a subject she enjoyed, hoping that in the process she might mention Holden, the close family friend he still hoped was simply failing to show on the radar screens but was there nonetheless.
Once again he got nothing, and he was already beginning to think how he might proceed if Holden didn’t show at all.
It wasn’t as if he had many choices but one obvious possibility was to go down to Yale, to look for signs of him there or signs of where he might be; another was simply to give it up and get out of there.
But there was still time yet, and if Susan knew about Holden’s background and knew he was in a fix, that would even explain why she hadn’t mentioned him, particularly to a man on his own with no defined reason for being there beyond relaxing between business trips.
He didn’t get the impression she was suspicious of him, particularly since she was out walking with him but, still stung from the way Esther had deceived him, he decided to test the water, saying when he had the opportunity, “The other people at breakfast seemed lukewarm about the chap who was here before me.”
“Mr. Lassiter? Really?” It was a token effort not to be seen criticizing a guest but she gave up almost instantly, adding, “He was a little odd. Only about your age, said he was here on business but didn’t say where or what he was doing. As a matter of fact he gave me the creeps; I think the other guests picked up on it too. Why, of course they did. They seem to have taken to you though.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“So am I. I pride myself on having a happy atmosphere among the guests.” She walked a few paces in silence and then said like an afterthought, “He’d come up from Washington. Wore a suit too.”
He wondered if she’d turned the tables and was testing him now so he deflected it by saying, “A spy perhaps, on important business.”