Edie is frozen, and there’s an awkward beat while August stands there, his arm extended. Edie merely stares at it like she’s never even heard of a handshake before.
August gives a bemused chuckle, and Edie finally shakes herself a little, slapping her palm into his. “Edie Vargas. Sorry about that. Still thinking about that stupid phone. Welcome to the Rosalie.”
She looks at Lo then, and Lo smiles at her, giving a little wave. “Hi!” she says brightly, and after another one of those weird pauses, Edie raises her own hand.
“Ms. Bailey, was it?” she asks, and Lo tilts her head to one side, a hand on her hip.
“Honey, the last people to call me ‘Ms. Bailey’ were lawyers at my trial. I’m Lo to everyone else.”
“Edie’s not from St. Medard’s Bay,” I say apologetically. I don’t understand her sudden social awkwardness, but I know it has nothing to do with Lo or her past. Edie couldn’t care less about true crime, always grimaces when she overhears one of my podcasts as I’m working, and while she’s lived in St. Medard’sfor several years now, she mostly keeps to herself. Decades-old gossip wouldn’t have reached her.
“Nope, Natchez,” Edie confirms, then points toward the front desk. “If y’all will excuse me—”
“Edie, can you get Lo booked into the room next to the Bayview Suite?” I turn to Lo and add, “It’s just as nice as August’s room, though the view is notquiteas good. It’s funny, I only call it the ‘Bayview Suite’ because that’s what someone else called it—my granddad, probably—even though we’re actually facing a gulf, not a bay.”
I’m rambling, but suddenly, with the two of them standing in front of me, all of this seems very… real.
And exciting.
Hopeis the thing that kills. But I’m still damn near giddy thinking about how much money this one stay is going to make for the inn.
The other thing about hope, though? It isn’t just fatal, it’s contagious.
It starts spilling out of me, and suddenly I’m imagining a gorgeous hardcover book with the Rosalie on the front, our reservation site suddenly filling up, me in one of those talking head interviews, smiling at Lester Holt or—be still my heart—Keith Morrison as I detail the fascinating history of the Rosalie Inn, the one place St. Medard’s Bay’s storms had never been able to kill.
Is it a little grubby, hoping to become some true crime hot spot?
Probably.
Is it what my great-grandparents would’ve envisioned when they built this place in the ’20s?
Absolutely not.
But I owe it to them to keep the inn open and running in anyway I can, and if August Fletcher and Lo Bailey will make that happen, my dead ancestors will have to get over it.
“Got it,” Edie calls now from the desk, and I pull out the plastic key card for the Bayview Suite, nodding down the hall.
“I’ll show you to your rooms. Lo, I can let you in with the master key, and Edie can drop off the actual key once she’s got you all situated.”
“Just use my card,” August says, handing over an American Express that I dutifully pass to Edie before saying, “This way.”
Lo and August pick up the two bags at their feet, following me out of the lobby and into the hallway as I continue my little lecture. I’ve never been that good at this part of the job, the chatting up guests, the local history, all of that.
“Like I said, St. Medard’s Bayitselfisn’t actually a bay, which makes the name kind of a misnomer.”
“Not really,” Lo replies, startling me and, I think, August, too.
We stop just outside their rooms, and I turn to face both of them.
Lo’s sunglasses hold her hair back from her face, and as the sun pours in from one of the second-story windows, I can make out the faint lines on her clear skin, the crease at the corner of her eyes, the only things that give her real age away. It makes me feel better, those reminders, because earlier, in the lobby, it was more like those pictures I’d seen had come to life, like time had passed for everyone else but somehow not for Lo Bailey.
“St. Medard’s Bay,” she says, waving a hand in the general direction of the town, “might not have a bay, but itisnamed after St. Medard, patron saint of hurricanes. Can’t think of a more fitting name than that.”
It’s funny, but never once in all my years here did it occur to me to wonder who St. Medard was, or why the town mightbe named after him. I think—not for the first time—how odd it is that I’ve ended up back in this place that I couldn’t wait to escape.
I hand August his key card, then use my master to unlock the room next door for Lo. As she sweeps past me, my eyes follow her, those plastic jewels on her sandals glinting as she walks across the pale wooden floors.
While Lo moves to open the balcony doors, August turns back to me.
