So many times. Training, dancing, climbing together. Defusing one of Aunt Iris’s smoke bombs, fingers brushing, eyes meeting, almost leaning in. The unspoken game of not yielding to that gravitational pull.
Acquiescence is surrender. Consent, sinister.
“It’s better if we’re friends.” Rivals. Allies. Whatever we’d been before Peter’s death. I sometimes wondered if we’d return to that. If Sebastian would speak to me again.
He’d have to acknowledge me once we were both home. But would he forgive me?
“So you ignore the sparks.”
“Mortons aren’t ruled by our desires.”
Hiromi got out at last, making a show of straightening her dress. “You could’ve fooled me.”
“You and I are the right amount of different.” I came around the car, giving into gravity, kissing her again, wanting to pull her back into the car, this time with the ragtop deployed.
“I still need a milkshake,” she said.
37
We shared french fries and a vanilla milkshake.
We ignored the scandalized expression of the waitress I’d seen watching through the window. Then we drove up the mountain guided by my phone. The voice coaxed us through switchbacks, along carriage roads, past a derelict gatehouse.
Lyon had bought the abandoned resort five years ago. It hailed from the age of Catskills family summers—a swimming pool and ice rink, a ballroom, a bowling alley, all in ruins when Lyon’s reconstruction had begun. As we crept toward the resort’s main building, we saw that the outer structures were broken and deserted.
Here on the west side of the mountain, sunset still angled through the trees. Manhattan seemed more than a few hours away. Like Helshire’s Old Campus, or the tumbledown brickyards near Upper Falls, the resort was a different era, a lost world.
When the main building came into view, the sense of ruin vanished. The windows were ablaze, the eaves lined with colored lights that pulsed in time with calypso playing from hidden speakers. Another vintage car—some kind of Daimler—was pulling away, leaving behind a couple in party clothes, who climbed the porch stairs and disappeared through the doors of the resort.
As we pulled into the turnaround, a young woman in capri pants and kitten heels came down the stairs to greet us. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wore cat-eye glasses and soft pink lipstick.
She looked up from her clipboard. “Hiromi Kennedy and Jessica Anderson?”
“That’s us,” I said.
“Welcome to Visage. If you’d be so kind as to give me your keys, your car and luggage will be waiting at Cabin Sixteen.”
“But we haven’t dressed,” Hiromi said.
“The pre-party is casual.” The woman glanced at the clipboard again, then gave us a kindly smile. “This is your first Visage, I see.”
I handed over Uncle Orrin’s keys. “Be careful. It’s a family heirloom.”
Another woman had appeared, with the same outfit and makeup, holding a tray of champagne. I took a glass, then looked at Hiromi.
“A special drink for Ms. Kennedy,” the woman said, rotating the tray a quarter turn—one of the glasses was a pearly color.
Hiromi took a sip. “Lychee juice? I love it.”
The woman smiled in apology. “Mangosteen.”
She ushered us toward the entrance, the sounds of party chatter building. Two young men in golf shirts opened the doors for us.
“I wasn’t expecting this level of theme,” I said softly.
“We didn’t even RSVP. How’d they know your name?”
“Uncanny,” I said.
