Chapter 11
“If you close the east wing for renovations, and fill the west wing to capacity with your existing bookings, you’ll be able to save some money on housekeeping by not bringing on the extra help for the summer season so early. Plus, then guests won’t feel so spread out.”
“Spread out?”
“Dude, I’ve practically got my own floor, do you know how spooky it is down there?”
“Fun fact: did you know that at the turn of the century, the twentieth not the twenty-first, something happened in a room just a few down from yours when—”
“If you finish that story I will walk out of this meeting so fast, Mr. Bryant, your head will spin. Have you ever read some of your online reviews? This place is known for its, and I quote, ‘abundance of spooky hallways.’ ”
“Duly noted, Ms. Morgan. Spooky hallways. Got it. Continue.”
Archie and I were meeting over breakfast in a quiet corner of the dining room. I’d insisted we be in public, in a brightly lit area to boot, to make sure no making out occurred. And we were back to Mr. Bryant and Ms. Morgan. But I couldn’t deny the innate thrill I felt when he called me by my name.
Clara.
He said it like he enjoyed saying it, like he was happy to string those letters together in the hopes of getting me to turn my head.
And inside my own head was the only place I’d be indulging this thought; I couldn’t let it manifest again and run wild. Again.
So I took steps to make sure. When he came in this morning, I’d already commandeered a large round table against the window and had my plans spread out everywhere. We needed to hash some things out once and for all before we brought it to everyone else this afternoon. And having a few feet of table in between was incredibly important, especially when he got that hungry gaze and started looking around for something to push me up against.
“Why did you stick me in that room anyway?” I asked, tucking into a bowl of steel-cut oats. It was raining again today, so while I couldn’t run outside I’d managed five miles on the treadmill, and I was starving. The breakfast buffet here was pretty good, hard to mess up breakfast, and was full of anything and everything you could think of. Unfortunately they set out a spread like there was a full house when there were fewer than fifty guests here right now. The amount of food was insane.
“You think I had anything to do with that?” he asked all serious. But it was his eyes that gave him away, dancing behind those tortoiseshell rims.
“Is it common practice to stick a guest two miles away from the next one?”
“You seemed like a girl who’d enjoy some . . . privacy.”
“Do I also seem like a girl who keeps bread crumbs in her pocket? Because I practically have to drop them to find my way back each night.”
He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t put you at the end of the hall, I put Melanie Bixby at the end of the hall.” He gave me a pointed look. “Clara Morgan wasn’t due to check in that night.”
“Point taken. Now that we’ve established I’m a sneaky fucker, I’ll be switching rooms. Suite, please and thank you.”
“You want a suite now?” He laughed.
“I checked with Becky in reservations, the Tower Lakeside suite isn’t booked until mid-April. Gimme.”
“That’s the most luxurious suite we have.”
“I’m aware.”
“We normally keep that suite empty in case of last-minute royalty.”
“Last-minute royalty? I sometimes wonder if you even hear yourself.”
He had the decency to look sheepish. “I admit, it doesn’t happen that often anymore, but it has in the past.”
“Right, in the past. And the woman who’s here in the present to save your future would like to move in by noon.”
He studied me for a moment, seeming to weigh my words. “Done,” he finally pronounced. “Pack your bags, Ms. Morgan, you’re moving on up.”
“Story of my life.” I grinned.
“I’d like to hear that sometime,” he replied, and my grin froze. “Have you always lived in Boston?”
“Mm-hmm.” I nodded through my frozen smile. “I’d like to go over some thoughts about the room renovations, particularly what you call the Victorian rooms.”
“It’s the oldest part of the hotel,” he answered, looking at me carefully. “What part of Boston, where’s your family from?”
“Oh. All over. Here and there.” I pointed to the Victorian wing on the map in front of me. “If it’s the oldest part of the hotel, that explains why it’s also the stuffiest.”
“I beg your pardon?” Archie said, positively offended. But offended meant he was off the scent.
“Beg me all you want, it’s stuffy and needs a freshening up.” I sighed in relief when I saw the little vein pop out on his left temple. That meant he was ready to argue and would forget asking me questions about where I grew up. I never knew how to answer those questions—you start telling someone you lived in foster care most of your life, and the pity parade started immediately. I hated parades.
But lucky for me that temple was throbbing. “Do you have any idea how much the antiques in those rooms are worth? And you want to bring something new, something cookie-cutter, in there?”
“I’d love for you to tell me when exactly I mentioned the words ‘cookie’ or ‘cutter,’ because that’s the last thing I want to do.”
“You say words like ‘freshen up’ and I hear modern and streamlined and boring and suddenly we’re an airport Marriott.”
I slammed my spoon down, oatmeal flying. “Yes, that’s exactly why you hired me, so I could turn this place into an airport Marriott. Would you give me just the slightest amount of credit here?”
“How can I possibly when you are literally turning my entire world upside down?”
He flung his own spoon down in response, and a grapefruit wedge plopped into my coffee cup. We stared at each other as if in a standoff, both of us breathing heavily, faces flushed, fists clenched. Our waiter circled nervously, no doubt waffling back and forth between quickly cleaning up the mess his boss had made and not intruding into a heated conversation.
Archie’s glare made up the waiter’s mind, and he scurried away with a muffled “I’ll just give you two a moment.”
I folded my cloth napkin gracefully, stood up, and threw it onto my empty seat.
“There’s no one staying on the third floor in the Victorian wing right now.”
He looked back at me, his expression saying, Am I supposed to know what that means? “Go get a key for one of the rooms and meet me up there in twenty minutes,” I instructed. “I’m going to show you exactly what I mean.”
There it was. The fire. Hidden behind the tailored suit and the preppy glasses. “Make it fifteen,” he shot back.
I walked quickly back to my room to grab my camera. I wanted some pictures of these tired old rooms to show them to a few designers for some feedback, get some fresh ideas for how to renovate these rooms, bring them into the now instead of keeping them in the creaky old past that this guy seemed to want to live in!
Damn this guy! There was no way I’d be able to do my job with him fighting me at every turn, not to mention get any work done when the same fighting made not only my blood boil, but other parts of me also get warm in the storm.
Did he know when he was irritated he chewed his lower lip?
Did he know when he was angry his skin paled and his freckles jumped out?
Did he know when he was frustrated his voice lowered and got all kinds of gravelly?
Did he know it was all I could do to stop myself from launching over the breakfast table and wrestling him to the ground amid oatmeal flakes and plopping grapefruit?
I ran out of my room, down the main stairs, and across the lobby, getting more worked up as I went. Never had I ever encountered such a roadblock as this fucking guy. This breakfast meeting was supposed to be the beginning of a collaborative effort to save this place, and it was already beginning to unravel because I wanted to make necessary changes and he wanted to just keep on arguing. How can I work like this? How can I function?
I hit the main staircase on the opposite side and ran up two flights, arriving on the landing just in time to see Archie come around the corner at the other end.
He held a gold key on a ring, which he spun around his finger. We walked toward each other.
“Room three-seventeen good enough for you?”
“Perfect, nice and stuffy,” I replied. I dipped my head toward the door, indicating he should open it.
“What you think is stuffy, Ms. Morgan, is what we like to call classic,” he said, slipping the key into the lock smoothly and turning the knob.
“Whatever, just get me inside and out of this spooky hallway.”
He shot me a look over his shoulder, then pushed the door, holding it open for me to go first.
The rooms were smaller in this part of the hotel, lacking actual closets but having large armoires to house clothes. No Murphy beds either. But given that this was the Victorian wing, every single surface was covered in a lace doily. The cabbage roses that were in my room were here, times eleventy. Damask rose–printed wallpaper, portraits on the walls depicting fruit bowls and water pitchers framed by flowery gilt edging, and small uncomfortable-looking ladder-back chairs were flanking the window.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Grandma Esther’s room.” I walked the length of the room, pausing to admire the view of the mountains in the distance. No matter the stuffy, each room still had a helluva view. It had just started to rain, just barely a pitter-patter, but the mountains were still there.
“Every piece in this room is an antique,” he said, standing in the doorway.
“Every piece in this room is an antique,” I agreed, playing with the fringe on an old lamp, “but it also looks like Nellie Oleson might go running through here at any second on her way into the mercantile.”
“Who is Nellie Oleson?”
“Forget it,” I said, crossing over to the bed, “my point is, look at this bed. It’s an antique, but, for God’s sake, it’s a full size. Not a king, not even a queen, but a full. Who the hell sleeps in a full-sized bed anymore?”
“People. People do it all the time.”
“No, they really don’t. Unless you’re grad students in your first apartment, couples want at least a queen. And speaking of doing it, you need to be courting the weekend-away guest, the married couples who want to get away from their kids and spend a romantic weekend up in the mountains. Believe me, when they get here, they’ll want to do it in a big bed. A king, ideally. Doing it in a full-sized bed just feels like you’re still making out at your parents’ house.”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head.
“Believe it, hotel boy, people fuck when they go on vacation.”
“Ms. Morgan, I don’t think there’s any need for language like that, please keep your voice down.”
“And they don’t want to fuck at Grandma Esther’s!” I said just as Mrs. Banning from housekeeping walked by.
“Well hello, what’s going on here?” she said, her eyes lighting up like a cat who just saw Tweety Bird.
Archie’s jaw clenched. “Nothing, Mrs. Banning. Just discussing some ideas Ms. Morgan has for breathing new life into our stuffy old hotel rooms.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “I’ve always thought some nice new lace curtains would work wonders to—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Banning,” Archie said, quickly patting her on the shoulder and closing the door. He turned back to me just as quickly. “Are you always this crass when you speak to a boss?”
“My boss is your father, and he hasn’t made me nearly as irritated as you have.”
“Ms. Morgan, let me tell you—”
I held up my hand. “Stop. Literally, stop. I’d love to go another ten rounds with you on who’s got the bigger dick, but honestly—”
“If that’s actually in question, then perhaps you have something to tell me that’s not visually apparent?”
“—it’s time to get some work done. Since we seem to be unable to get through a conversation without actually deciding something before the fighting begins, I’m going to tell you everything I think we need to be doing to turn this place around. Since we seem to be unable to stay on topic when we’re both allowed to speak, here’s what I propose. You will listen, you will not speak, and when I am done you may ask questions, but not before. Agreed?”
He fumed. He nodded.
“First, we revise. The hotel closes for ten weeks each winter, which we’ve already discussed. I’ve got a formal proposal I’ll email to you for review—it has all the details on how to handle staffing changes, existing reservations, all that fun stuff that we could argue over for hours or you can just read it, digest it, and then tell me what a genius I am.”
He opened his mouth, and I pointed at him. “Nope, not done.”
He closed his mouth. He fumed. He nodded.
“Second, the room renovations. When I said stuffy, I probably could’ve used another word. How about ‘dated’? I don’t want to get rid of any of the antiques, I agree they’re beautiful and perfect and the workmanship is exquisite and all the other platitudes that begin and end with ‘they don’t make ’em like that anymore.’ So they stay. Some of them. Some of them could maybe be repurposed. Did you know you can take antique bedsteads and convert them into modern sizes to fit a mattress made today? And for some, maybe it’s time to say bye-bye. Can you imagine how much fun selling off some of this stuff would be? Own a piece of Bryant Mountain House history, or something like that. The point is, even the antiques that stay don’t have to necessarily live in the land of flower and doily. I have a designer in mind who I think would be perfect for the job. She worked on a hotel redesign in California that is stunning and could be very much in line with the DNA of Bryant Mountain House.”
He opened his mouth, thought about it, then closed it again.
“If you were going to say anything about how in the world could I possibly know the DNA of this place in the short time I’ve been here, save it. It’s my job to know the DNA, okay? I’ve got this.”
Onward he fumed. Onward he nodded.
“Third, we revive. I want to bring Natalie in, make a bigger pitch for this place to be featured more prominently in the Bailey Falls campaign. While you were mentioned briefly in the initial rollout, I want us front and center in the second phase. Fourth, I want to bring in the community, get them more involved in this place. Chad mentioned to me the other night that he thought the town council would be really receptive to any promotions we wanted to do, and I’d like to talk to him again about it, feel him out. Holidays are a huge deal up here for your loyal guests, I’d like to make it part of the greater Bailey Falls experience as well. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all of it. Easter is right around the corner, let’s really go to town. You’ve talked to Roxie about bringing her Zombie Cakes in—do it. And while you’re at it, bring up Leo to help overhaul your summer garden, you could even sponsor a farmers’ market up here in the summer, get people up here to see what it’s like. Hell, let Oscar move some cows onto . . . well . . . no . . . cows can stink up the joint . . . but at least keep his butter in stock. The whole country is going gangbusters for locally grown, sustainably grown food, and you literally have producers in your backyard. Make it happen. You’ve priced this town right out of the mix for the most part, no one who lives around here can actually afford to stay up here, and that’s no good. You could be filling up this place in the off-season with local residents, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
I stopped to breathe. He wasn’t fuming or nodding anymore, just listening.
“Finally, the last thing I want to mention today. Rejuvenate. Price reductions. Yes, this is a luxury hotel catering to a luxury clientele, and I don’t want to lose that experience. But I think we can work on the pricing at slower times of the year, implement a resident pricing system where we offer deep discounts for local residents, and start building up and going after the corporate retreat business. It used to be something this hotel was heavily involved with, and then after ’08 it slowed down to the point where now it’s almost nonexistent. We can get it back, I know we can. But we need to be competitive on pricing. After a few years, when things are on the upswing, you can revisit it. But for now, we need to dig deep.” I stopped, knowing I’d just thrown a lot of information at him all at once.
The only sound was the rain, which had changed from a pitter-patter to a full-on gusher. It was coming down so hard it was eclipsing every other sound. Outside the mountains were gone, everything was gone, the rain like a wall, literally a sheet of water pouring down, blurring the outside world and trapping us inside.
He walked over to the window, looking out at that wall of water, then back at me, and then scrubbed his hands over his face like he was trying to scrape it all away. It was a lot to take in. Everything would change.
“Are you done?” he asked, his voice muffled by his hands and by the rain.
“For now,” I replied, rocking on my heels a bit.
He took a step, then another, then another, until he was standing just in front of me, looking down. His eyes were serious, searching, poring over every inch of my face. I waited, giving him time to let this all sink in. He’d need to think about this, weigh some options, look at everything I’d presented. Which is why what he said next surprised the hell out of me.
“I’m in. Let’s do it.”
My breath let out in a whoosh. “What? Which part?”
“All of it,” he said, shaking his head even so. “Except the part about the staffing. We’ll need to work something out. Cash out some vacation, extend some vacation, hell, I’ll even stop taking a salary for a while, but I’m not letting anyone go.”
“That’s generous.”
He offered me a rueful smile. “What can I say, they’re family. You know how it is with family.”
I felt an unexpected lump rising in my throat, and I willed it to go back down. “Okay, well, um, we can go over the details now, if you like, why don’t we go back to—”
“Oh no, Ms. Morgan. I think we may have just agreed on something, don’t you think?” he said, reaching out and looping a finger through my belt buckle, pulling me forward.
I swallowed hard, harder than normal because that damn lump was still there.
“We shouldn’t,” I said, as I 100 percent let him pull me even closer. “Really, this is a terrible idea.”
Should I?
You’re alone with him in a hotel room. Kiss him.
Hmm, we were safe in here, no one could see. Plus, I’d just won an argument, so I should treat myself a little, right?
Maybe just a peck?
Just the one. I leaned in and quickly brushed my lips lightly over his, instantly feeling that spark of flame beginning to fan something that was getting harder and harder to ignore. I kissed him just the one time, and then looked down as his hands slipped from my buckle to my waist. I caught a flash of metal and realized, again, that this man was still wearing his wedding ring.
Dear God, he was still wearing his wedding ring. His wife was dead, several years now, and he was still wearing her ring. It was sweet, really. When you think about it in the abstract. And kind. And good. But as the person he was currently holding, it was also unnerving. And a little strange. And exactly what I needed to see to remind me of yet another reason why this just couldn’t happen.
He nuzzled my neck and with a strength I didn’t know I had, I pushed him away. “I’ll send you that email, put all those ideas together. Then how about we meet in the conference room this afternoon? Start making some real plans?” I scooped up his hands and gave them a squeeze, but moved them safely away from me. It was harder to think clearly when there was actual touching involved.
He looked puzzled. “You’re leaving . . . now?”
I didn’t want to. Jesus Christ, I didn’t want to, which is why I knew I should. I also didn’t trust myself to actually answer, so I nodded instead. He looked like he wanted to argue with me, to try to get me to stay . . . but in the end nodded back. This wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t.
“Why don’t you go out first, I’ll wait here a bit,” he suggested, straightening his tie.
“Sneaky,” I chided. “But a good idea. Don’t forget about switching my room, though.”
“Your room?” he asked, confused.
“My new suite, remember? I expect a TV in there, by the way.”
“No TV.”
“Goddammit,” I muttered.
I heard him laugh as I peeked into the hallway and made sure it was all clear. By the time I made it to the staircase, the lump in my throat was long gone. I was an expert at squashing it all down. I’d been doing it my entire life.
“You never call, you never write, it’s like you’ve forgotten all about me.”
“When have I ever written you?”
“An actual letter? Never. But an email every now and again might be nice, just so I know you haven’t fallen off the mountaintop.”
“I haven’t fallen off the mountaintop.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Barbara said, and we both laughed. “I know when you first dig in at a new property you tend to go radio silent.”
“You know me, you know me very well,” I replied, feeling my grin spread across my face. No one on the planet, not even Roxie and Natalie sometimes, knew me like my boss did. Friends got some of you, most of you, but when you spend forty hours a week with someone, they see everything. And she could read me like a book. I don’t rely on much in this world, but knowing I had someone like Barbara in my corner was a constant that I needed in my life.
And knowing me like she did, she knew I could handle things on my own and gave me a very long leash. I just had to check in from time to time which, when buried in my work, I had a tendency to forget to do.
“Sorry I’ve been MIA, I meant to throw up a flare so you knew I was still breathing.”
“No big, but now that I’ve got you, how are things going, kiddo?”
“I should have an actual status report ready to email to you tomorrow, but so far, so good. Really good, actually. Full swing, all systems firing, green across the board.”
“What’s wrong.” A statement, not a question, from my boss was never a good thing.
“What do you mean?”
“When you start in with your mission control lingo I know something’s up. Spill.”
I bit my lip. Whatever could be up? I’m only making out with the man who hired me whenever we can steal a few minutes away, the man who will ultimately decide whether I’d done a good job or not, the man who holds the fate of my partnership in his hands while I’m dying to hold something else in my hands, whatever could be up?
“It’s all good, Barbara, I just get carried away sometimes. They were showing SpaceCamp in the TV room the other night.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, not buying it for a second. “How’s the Bryant family doing?”
“Pretty good, I think. Some resistance at first, especially from the son, but he’s on board now.”
I heard her shuffling some papers. “Archibald, right?”
I stifled a laugh. I’d have to ask him about that later. “He goes by Archie, but yes. He’s playing ball now.”
“That’s good. How fast do you think you can wrap this up?”
I frowned. “Um, we’re just at the very beginning stages, but I’m on track. Why, what’s up?”
“Nothing, nothing’s wrong. Just some stuff going on here at the home office. I’d love to have this locked down sooner rather than later, that’s all.”
Now I wondered what was up. “Is there something I need to know?”
“Oh goodness, no, nothing like that.” She laughed, and I instantly felt better. If Barbara said everything was good, then everything was good. “Just thinking ahead to the fall, trying to line things up. You know me, always planning ahead.”
“Did you ever find out if the Waterside Hotel in Virginia was bringing someone in to consult?”
“I did, and let me tell you that story, it’s a doozy,” she said, and launched into the tale. We chatted for a while and I brought her up to speed on everything going on at the hotel. She made some notes, made some suggestions that were astute as always, and by the end of the conversation I thought she’d forgotten about the beginning of the conversation.
“You take care of yourself up there, and if you ever need to talk, you know you can always talk to me. You know that, right, kiddo?”
“Of course I do,” I assured her, crossing my fingers behind my back. I could, just not about this.
Maybe after I was partner. Then I could tell her. Only after. Until then, I was determined to squash this down.
What I would have an even harder time squashing down was the goose-down featherbed that came standard in my new Tower Lakeside suite! A king bed, four-poster no less, stretched out before a grand fireplace, resplendent in rose marble with ebony inlaid trim. If I stacked my pillows three high I found I could see both the crackling fire and the lake, the very definition of Hudson Valley luxury. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two balconies, and one glorious sitting room—this suite had a waiting list a mile long in the summer season. But good luck to anyone on that list. The same three families reserved it all summer long, June through August. They’d been coming here for years, multiple generations vacationed here together, occasionally renting out entire floors of the main tower. I’d seen how much it cost per night; I didn’t need a calculator to know that if they could afford four weeks of that, they deserved to see both fireplace and lake at the same time.
I used one of the bedrooms as my base of operations, asking housekeeping to help me clear out the furniture and move in my heavy artillery. Dry-erase boards, vision boards, a cheese board courtesy of Bailey Falls Creamery, and an entire wall dedicated to parking lot questions . . . the land of questions that hadn’t yet been answered but would be, and soon.
Things were beginning to move up on this mountain. We were still a couple of weeks away from Easter, plenty of time to roll out a few new ideas before the first wave of loyal guests returned.
The team was mostly on board with all the new changes, and Jonathan was ecstatic. He, like Archie, had initial concerns about the price reduction, but I’d eventually won him over, although we were still working out the details. He loved the idea about bringing the town back into the picture, and wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner. “Sometimes when it’s right in front of you, you can’t see it,” he quipped one day while we previewed some of Natalie’s TV spots that would run in the big East Coast markets next week.
Roxie was a big help as well. When she came up to chat with Archie about featuring Zombie Cakes on the dessert menu, the existing pastry chef took one look at her 7 Layer Blueberry Dream Cake and threatened to quit on the spot. The head chef was only too happy to take her resignation—apparently that’d been brewing for quite some time.
“He’s not leaving because of all the changes, is he?” I asked Mrs. Toomey when I heard the news. I’d hurried down to the kitchen before the dinner service staff started to find out.
“Mostly no, he’s been thinking of retiring for a while now, but I think he feels this place needs some new blood to take over, someone new in the kitchen who is a little more up-to-date.”
“Oh no, I feel terrible,” I moaned, leaning on the counter with my head in my hands. “I never wanted anyone to feel like they were being pushed out.”
“That’s not what’s happening here, dear, not at all. These changes are good. They needed to be made. The staff is excited, that I can promise you. And I’ll tell you something else,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one could hear her.
“What?” I asked warily, also looking over my shoulder.
“I haven’t seen Archie this happy since . . . well . . . since . . .”
“Since before his wife died?” I asked, wincing.
She thought a moment, her eyes going soft. “You know, I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen him this happy. And that’s the truth.”
And with that, she turned on her heel and headed back into the dining room.
Huh.
Speaking of Archie, the man was a machine. No no, not like that.
He worked sixteen hours a day. He never stopped. Once I got his buy-in on the changes, he was all in. Something I’d noticed in that very first meeting was proving true. He really valued other people’s opinions, and he listened. That was hard to find sometimes in a boss, but he really went out of his way to make sure the entire team was involved and felt they were being heard.
Had he always worked this hard? Or had work taken over his life since his wife passed away? When there was pain or hurt, or bad memories crowded in, work could be a literal lifeline, taking your mind away from what you couldn’t deal with and channeling it into something good, something tangible.
Was work how he coped too?
One night after dinner, I took a wrong turn and found myself in a part of the hotel I hadn’t been before. Having nowhere to go and not at all tired, I wandered a bit before heading back to my room.
Tucked away at the far end of the east wing, on the first floor down by some of the offices, there was a portrait gallery. Every generation of the Bryant family, starting with paintings of Ebenezer and Theophilus—the brothers who had started it all—hung on the walls. As I walked along the hallway, the same expression reflected back to me in many of the faces. Strong, fearless, patrician, and yet somehow all carefully guarded. No chink in the armor here, no insight into what made any of these folks tick beyond a sense of duty to their family and the life they’d created here on their mountain.
I could see suggestions of Archie here and there, Jonathan too—they all shared some similar features. The elegant jawline, the strong straight nose, the indigo eyes, all clearly noteworthy throughout the family history.
But at the end of the line there was a portrait I hadn’t expected to see, but was unable to tear my eyes away from.
Ashley Bryant. Archie’s wife. She was beautiful.
Icy blond hair, tumbling in soft curls. Gorgeous green eyes, captured by the artist in a tone resembling freshly grown summer grass. She had a warm smile, high cheekbones, and the same easy going “isn’t life grand?” expression that everyone in this family seemed to have.
An image jumped to mind of a picture I had in my apartment, one of the few photographs I’d actually taken the time to frame. Me with Natalie and Roxie after just crossing the finish line in my first-ever Tough Mudder race. Literally covered head to toe in dirt and mud, hay and somehow sunflower petals, I’d finished strong and immediately hugged my friends who’d come to cheer me on, and got them just as dirty as I was. It was one of my favorite pictures of the three of us. I told them I’d framed it because it was a great picture of all of us smiling, and that was true, but I also selfishly loved that picture because it reminded me of how strong I was. Covered in earth and sweat was when I felt the most alive, the most able to conquer anything and everything that got in my way, and whenever I looked at that picture I felt a flickering of pride, an emotion that wasn’t one I experienced often.
Ashley didn’t seem like a woman who’d ever had a hair out of place, a dress that was wrinkled, or forgotten a birthday. She had engraved stationery. She drove an immaculate car. This was a woman who’d lived for a finger sandwich.
None of this I knew for certain, mind you, but I’d been around enough of these types my entire adult life. But she wasn’t snobby. She was likely a genuinely good person, the kind you think you’ll hate immediately, but she’s so darn charming it’s impossible to do so.
I didn’t know her. I barely knew Archie for that matter. But staring at this gorgeous woman, cut down in her prime, I could see she was a perfect match for her husband.
A husband who was still wearing his wedding ring.
I allowed myself another moment to study this seemingly perfect woman, and when I was done tallying up all the many ways I was her total opposite, I went back to my room.