“All your days are long.” Jolene refilled her mug without being asked. “Somebody let you down. Badly, from the sound of it.”
Margot turned the mug a slow quarter-turn and looked away.
“I’m not asking for details.” Jolene’s voice was matter-of-fact, not gentle. That was what made it land. “But I’ve been watching you run around this resort for a week, checking every lightbulb, every contract, every name tag. You’re not delegating. You’re white-knuckling.” A pause. “How long have you been doing that?”
Margot didn’t answer right away. The ceiling fan clicked overhead. The man by the window shifted in his sleep and went still again. Outside, the channel boat horn sounded a second time, farther off now.
She thought about the kitchen table. The bank statements. The forty vendors and their bounced checks. The way she’d rebuilt Pine Event Planning one careful contract at a time, never letting another person near the books, never letting another person near anything.
“About two years,” she said.
“That’s a long time to hold on that hard.” Jolene leaned forward, elbows on the bar. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to trust somebody again. Or you’re going to drown in your own to-do lists.”
The words sat between them. Outside, the waves kept their rhythm against the beach. The ice machine hummed behind the wall.
“That’s easy to say.”
“Never said it was easy. Said it was necessary.” Jolene straightened up. “Trust doesn’t mean handing someone the keys and walking away. It means letting someone carry one bag while you carry the other. That’s it. One bag.”
Margot gripped the mug and stared at her contracts. The text blurred and cleared. She wasn’t going to cry in a resort bar. She was not.
“Start small.” Jolene’s voice was softer now. “One bag. One person. See what happens.” She slung the rag over her shoulder. “That dock man, Evan Cole. He’s quiet, but he notices more than most. If you need someone reliable for the security walk-through, start there.”
Margot looked up. “You’re the second person who’s mentioned him to me.”
“Who was the first?”
“Me. To myself. On the boardwalk yesterday.” She hadn’t meant to say that. It came out before the filter caught it.
Jolene’s expression didn’t change. “Interesting.”
“It’s not interesting. It’s logistics.”
“Honey, I’ve been married, divorced, and remarried. I know the difference between logistics and that feeling you’re pretending is logistics.” Jolene picked up another glass. “But I’ll let you figure that out on your own timeline.”
Heat rose in Margot’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the coffee
“The brother-sister thing with Caleb and Elaine?” Jolene set the glass down. “Keep that in your back pocket. I’m not saying it’s a problem. I’m saying it’s good to know.”
Margot stood, gathered her contracts, and paused in the doorway. The hallway was quiet, lit by the soft glow of Christmas lights strung along the ceiling.
“It’s in my back pocket.”
She walked down the quiet hallway toward her room, contracts under her arm, Jolene’s voice still in her head.
One bag. One person.
The Christmas lights cast a soft glow across the corridor, and her thoughts went to the man on the dock who’d stood beside her on a boardwalk and talked about the wind like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She’d spent two years carrying every bag herself.
And somewhere between the dock and the boardwalk, she’d started setting one down.
Chapter nine
Three Open Sides
Thewhitevanarrivedat seven forty-five on a Thursday morning.
