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“What is it?”
“Just some things I thought were important enough to save,” she said, still holding the box out. He didn’t know why he was reluctant to take it. “They’re the only things I’ve found so far that haven’t been junk paper.”
He looked in the box and saw that it contained a cheap-looking framed print of an abandoned fishing boat on a beach, a necklace with the word “Duncan” written in bent-wire cursive, and a glass vase he immediately recognized as the one he’d given to Lizbeth, full of cheap grocery-store flowers, for her fortieth birthday. That she’d kept it was no surprise, it was the guilt he felt for the pitiful gesture it had been, so last-minute, so late in the day, and how absolutely thrilled she’d been to get it.
“No one wants these things,” Frasier said, more brusquely than he intended.
“Not evenLucy?”
“The only person who wants something in here is Roscoe. And he’s looking for something that probably doesn’t exist.”
“But it doesn’t feel right, throwing these things away,” she said.
There it was again. That confusing sadness. “All right. Use your best judgment, and Oliver can make the final decision.”
“Who is Oliver?” she said as she set the box down.
He thought of the brown envelope in his office. “Her son.”
“She hasa son?”
“He hasn’t been home in years.”
“Is he coming home now?”
“I seriously doubt it. Carry on.” He walked back to his office before she could ask any more questions. The dellawisps had gathered in front of his door, hopping around, waiting for him. When he entered, old Otis tried to hop inside with him.
“Not now, Otis,” he said, and Otis was very vocal about his displeasure as Frasier closed the door on him.
Lizbeth was hovering near his filing cabinets. She’d always wanted to go through them. She’d wanted to know everything about everyone who lived here. If he hadn’t locked his door every night before going home, he felt sure she would have come in and taken all the resident files and put them in her boxes.
He sat down at his desk and stared at the envelope, stroking his long, wiry beard. He had pulled some strings to get the information he needed quickly. He knew a PI in Charleston he used to go to school with on the island. Like many boys here at the time, Robert could have easily gone down a criminal path. He was retired from the police force and now used his uncanny snooping skills to catch cheating husbands instead. He and Frasier would get together for beers every once in a while. They would talk about rough boys they had grown up with, most of them long gone now, and in silences they would exchange looks of the same guilty relief that they’d survived relatively unscathed.
Frasier reached for the envelope. He tore it open and pulled out a single piece of paper.
The only thing written on it was ten numbers.
He grabbed his phone and dialed before he lost his nerve.
NORRIE BEACH, CALIFORNIA
Oliver awoke suddenly and tried to puzzle out the reason why.
A nightmare? A muscle cramp?
Whatever the reason, he was wide awake now. He slowly extricated himself from Garland, who had wrapped herself around himin her sleep like a vine. He went to her window and opened it and took some deep breaths. The early-morning air was strangely sweet. The scent reminded him of the brugmansia trees that were probably blooming now on Mallow Island. It made him stagger back. He went directly to her shower and stayed there for half an hour, trying to wash away the smell.
He never should have agreed to this, a week with Garland at her father’s house in quaint, moneyed Norrie Beach. Several of Garland’s friends were here, too, but they didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay now that they were out of their dorm rooms. They already had apartments in cities where jobs were waiting for them. And if by some chance those plans fell through, they could always go home. They had a soft place to land. Oliver didn’t have that luxury, yet here he was pretending he didn’t have a care in the world. He’d had several interviews before graduation, even one good offer in San Diego, but Garland told him her dad was going to give him that job at the Rondo, so he would definitely be moving to Norrie Beach. He should be looking for a place to live right now, but Garland had the whole week planned down to the hour. He had no idea what he was going to do when the week was up. Sleep in his car, probably.
But it would be worth it. He wanted that job at the Rondo more than he wanted anything.
He told himself it was because it had won so many awards for its environmentally friendly practices. Who with a major in hotel management and a minor in environmental science wouldn’t want the Norrie Beach Rondo? He didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with the fact that the resort looked like something from the Old South—white columns, big porches, fat trees. He didn’t want to believe it had anything whatsoever to do with Mallow Island.
Until he’d set eyes on the Rondo, nothing about this coast had ever reminded him of home. That was the very reason he’d chosen to come here. He and his mother had been like opposite ends of a magnet, repelling each other. The force of her had pushed him so far away only the Pacific Ocean had stopped him. The school therapist he’d seen his freshman year in college when he’d been struggling to find his footing told him to be prepared for triggers eventually. He could get away from home physically, but getting away from it emotionally would be harder.
Later that morning, bleary from lack of sleep, Oliver stood at the brunch table, looking things over. Garland had given the housekeeper specific instructions on what should be served. For whatever reason, this week was very, very important to her. He took apain aux raisinsand a cup of coffee and walked through the open French doors with their white curtains flapping in the chlorinated breeze.
They were all there by the pool—Garland, her best friend Heather One, her second-best friend Heather Two, her gay male best friend Roy, and her straight male best friend Cooper. This was how she referred to them, like they were all dolls in her dollhouse. They were thin and tan and draped on lounge chairs like silk, their hangovers from last night barely having time to register with the mimosas now slipping down their throats.
