“No no, that’s not what Clara is saying.”
“Not at all, but maybe we could change things up a bit. Keep some classics, clearly the ones that have been here forever, but maybe update others a bit.” I pulled out my notebook and jotted a few ideas down while I was thinking about them. “Rox, you should come back up here again. Meet with Archie about Zombie Cakes, but maybe we could also get into the kitchen a bit more, see what’s actually going on back there. I’ll pull some menu cards and see how often they get changed.”
“I can do that.”
“I want to come too,” Natalie said.
“You stay in town with Oscar, churning butter or whatever the hell it is you two get up to down there.”
“We get up to plenty. Just last night he had me on top of the kitchen counter, dress over my head, his mouth full of—”
“So anyway, with you involved I’m hoping that Archie will be a little more receptive to the changes I want to make around here.” I looked pointedly at Roxie, knowing better than to let Natalie continue.
“Is he not playing nice?”
“He’s playing kind of jerky, which believe me when I say is honestly the best word for it. But it feels different this time, more . . . I don’t know. When it’s happened before at other hotels I’ve worked at, it’s because they think I show up with a giant red pen and start changing anything and everything I can get my hands on, and they see it as me throwing out everything they’ve ever worked for when in fact it’s the opposite. This place is incredible, I just need to make it profitable again. Bring it into this century, dust it off a bit.”
“It’s pretty pricey. I mean, there’s plenty of money in the Hudson Valley, but what they charge per night is pretty tough to swing for most people,” Roxie agreed.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to talk to them about their pricing. I’m sure Archie will go through the roof. Any tips on how to get through to him?”
“Me? I barely know him.”
“Come on, you grew up in this town.”
“True, but there are two sides to Bailey Falls. I’m on the diner side, families like the Bryants and the Maxwells are on the country club side. Plus, he’s older than I am, I only know the little bits my mom has told me over the years. She’s good friends with Hilda Banning who works up here, and she said he changed a lot after Ashley.”
“Ashley?” I asked.
“Ashley?” Natalie asked, through a mouthful of Baked Alaska.
Roxie nodded. “His wife.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my spine deflate and sinking back into my chair. Of course he was married, what guy looked like that and wasn’t married. I looked across the room to where he was talking to a group of waiters and noticed for the first time the wedding band he wore on his left hand. Of course.
Wait, why of course? Why do you care? Whether or not Archie Bryant is married has absolutely nothing to do with the job you were hired to do. So eat your Alaska and go back to work.
I picked up my fork while Roxie continued. “Yeah, according to Mrs. Banning he was a mess when she passed away.”
My head snapped back.
“Whoa, wait, what?” Natalie asked.
“Oh,” I breathed. Oh.
I looked at Archie again, watching him move around the dining room, greeting and meeting, all the while knowing now that something terrible had happened to him.
“How did she—”
Roxie interrupted Natalie. “I don’t know, I didn’t live here at the time so I never got the details.”
“Jesus, does it matter?” I asked as his eyes met mine across the dining room. For just one instant, I saw something flash across his face. Interest? Intrigue? And for just an instant, I felt that flash run wild across my body. But before I could finish flashing, the look was gone and that cool, reserved expression was back.
Chapter 7
“No . . . no . . . please . . . no . . . NO!”
I awoke suddenly, soaked through with sweat, tangled in the sheets, clutching my pillow with tears streaming down my face. My breathing, my panting were so loud in this room, this entirely too-silent room. “Dammit,” I snarled, still clutching the pillow with one hand and dragging the other through my damp hair. “Dammit,” I repeated, a little softer this time as my heartbeat began to slow, the stored-up tension beginning to leave, relaxing my frozen-in-fear joints.
This fucking nightmare. I’d been having it for as long as I could remember but not nearly as often anymore. And usually not after a night spent with my girls. Always the same dream, always the same beginning.
I’d picked up my suitcase and started out walking through the front door of a pretty brick colonial house, just your average house on your average street in average town USA. But on the other side of that door was another door, on another street in another town. I kept pushing through the doors, one after the other, never getting anywhere, never able to stop and settle and breathe. Each time I looked down, I had another suitcase in my hand, stacking up one by one until a mountain of trunks and boxes was dragging behind me.
I finally pushed open the last door, and there they were. A mom, a dad, a dog, a cat. My family. They were waiting for me. Set your bags down, they said. Stay awhile, they said. You have a beautiful room waiting for you, they said, it’s just up that staircase.
But as I started for that staircase, my heart beating fast and a nervous smile beginning to creep across my face, I heard another voice. Loud, authoritative, unflinching.
“A mistake has been made.”
I turned to see a woman, severe in her high-buttoned collar and tight suit, too tight for her to wear comfortably. How does she sit down in that, I’d always wonder, without popping every single button off?
“A mistake has been made,” she repeated, quickly crossing the floor to me.
My hands were slick with sweat as I struggled to hang on to my suitcase. “A mistake?” I heard my own voice ask, tiny and tinny and small and yet, still so hopeful.
“You don’t belong here.”
The family turned away, even the cat, turned away from me and my suitcases. The dog growled, low and slow and in that grumbly way that almost doesn’t register at first in your ears. “Go away,” he seemed to say, “you don’t belong here.”
Now I heard them all saying it, chanting it, singing it. Loud voices, nasty and cruel, razor sharp and thin. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here.
I ran, suitcases banging against my little-girl shins, which were covered in bruises, not from falling down on the playground but from those never-ending doors, those never-ending suitcases, bruised inside and out and crying, crying so hard as every single door slammed shut behind me and I was alone. In the world. Alone.
Until I woke quick, thrashing in my bed, tears streaming down my face as I whispered the words I always did . . .
“Let me come home.”