Page 76 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“I told you seventy-five times, Ibiza,” Rosa snaps.

“Well, what the fuck is Eye-beefa? That ain’t a real place. You’re makin’ it up. But wherever it is, it’s cool. Can we visit?”

Rosa takes the phone away from Crystal and moves it away from her.

“Maybe we will visit one day,” Cass says. “Anyway, just wanted to be the first to tell you.”

“Thanks. I’ll be back at some point before all of the trial stuff starts. I’ll come and say hello,” I say, and Rosa waves goodbye.

Cass gives a tight little smile and nods. “Good. It’ll be nice to see you,” she says, and then I click off the video and I walk out to my terrace overlooking the cobalt sea and sit on a lounger.

I prop my laptop on my knees, and I watch some kids making a turtle out of sand with plastic shovels and buckets on the beach, and I think of Henry. He was right about this place. After the house sold and the arrest happened, I thought Playa D’en Bossa was the perfect place—the place I always wanted to end up because of a fond memory on spring break years ago. But it ended up being a party town with twentysomethings barfing into garbage cans on the street and marijuana wafting on the coconut breeze, giving me a constant contact high. It’s noisy, crowded, young. Fine for college, but it really was just a memory I was trying to save, just like Henry always said.

Did I hang on to this past part of my life so hard that I couldn’t see a future as an adult in the real world because I would be letting go of a perceived happiness that was never real?

I was a whiny brat about everything—including expecting journalist jobs to come to me and expecting Henry to never change and always look at life through the same lens we did as college freshmen, and maybe blaming him when he grew up and I didn’t. Of course he found love with Lily. It breaks my heart that some of his last words were through tears, afraid that he “killed someone.” He truly thought her death was his fault, and now I understand why. I hope he’s somewhere beautiful where he is at peace and knows none of this was his fault.

I forgive him. I hope he can forgive me.

Within days, I left party town and found a small rental on the beach where I plan to spend a few more weeks until Monica flies into Palermo, and we eat our way through Italy for a week and discuss what I’m meant to do with my life now.

I felt pretty embarrassed when she explained that the phone calls between her and Henry were because she asked him to help plan a surprise birthday dinner at Giovanni’s the next month with all of my old college friends in attendance because she thought it would cheer me up, as I seemed out of sorts in the days before. I’m glad I sought out the truth before exploding on her with accusations and destroying a friendship, but I still feel bad for doubting her and plan to make it up to her in gelato and margherita pizzas as much as I can.

But in the meantime, I’ve written it all down. Henry wanted me to keep chasing it—keep going after that dream, and I was too paralyzed by rejection to listen. Or maybe I didn’t have a story to tell.

So I decide to try again. I tell my story now from the day Henry died: The Sycamores, the missing paintings, Lily, the pool girls, the storage unit, the threats, the affair, Callum, the video—all of it. Of course there are parts I don’t tell. Parts I’ll never tell anyone.

But I do tell the important pieces—how you don’t always end up with the love of your life, but how they can still breathe new life into you and teach you forgiveness and grace.

As I read over my story that starts with a phone call at the gas station on a rainy afternoon and ends on a Spanish island, I whisper to Henry, “This is for you,” and then I type in the email address of the editor at the New York Post who said she’d consider taking a look, and I say a little prayer, and I push Send.

31

CASS

The headlines sensationalized everything, as they do, and made it sound like I single-handedly was responsible for capturing a serial killer. That’s, of course, not exactly how it happened.

The more attention I receive, the more Reid calls and asks to take me out or just to talk. Finally, after things with the police and press started to settle down, he called and invited me to dinner at Maggiano’s, my favorite. I declined. He pushed and said it was a celebratory dinner for my bravery and for having the right guy headed to trial because of me. Anytime I hear this sentiment, I feel slightly nauseous, but I agree to go and finally have some closure, I tell myself.

So on a Friday night when the weather has cooled and life has returned to normal, and everyone is doing the usual barbecue by the pool but now in sweatshirts and jackets, I get ready to walk back into my old life for an evening. I cross the pool deck in my favorite sequin mini and Gucci shoes, and Jackie hands me a sagging paper plate with a hunk of corn on the cob on it before she really looks at me, and then says, “Well, shit. I guess you don’t want this. The kernels will stick all over your teeth. Where the hell are you going anyway?”

“Nowhere,” I say.

“Look, Rosa. She’s goin’ nowhere. I wish I looked that good goin’ to the toilet, but okay, whatever you say,” she says and hands a paper plate of hot dogs to Gordy.

Rosa looks up from her card game and raises her eyebrows at me. I look at Mary on a nearby deck chair who also gives me a go-get-’em look without even knowing where I’m going or what I’m getting. Then Frank runs over and throws his arms around my waist and starts listing all the things we did that day to Grandma Mary who listens intently, eating a large piece of sheet cake off a paper plate.

“And a fork got stuck in the garbage disposal, and Cass had to stick her hand down in it, and I told her if it got stuck she’d have a bloody pirate hand, but she got it out and then she gave it to me, and I brought it to eat my potato salad with,” he says, delighted, as he takes the bent fork out of his back pocket.

Mary smiles at me and tells him to make sure to wash it first.

Frank looks at my heels and then up at me. “Why are you wearing that? You can’t play hopscotch in that. We drew one with sidewalk chalk all the way up to fifty,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Oh, cool. Well, I just have a dinner thing tonight, but I’ll be back.”

“You think in time for hopscotch, ’cause my bedtime’s ten on Fridays,” he says, a concerned tone in his voice now.

“I’ll do my best, promise,” I say and then I walk to my car and can feel everyone’s eyes on my back because I know I look like someone they scarcely recognize dressed like this. And I feel a sense of guilt, because there’s this little nagging part of me that doesn’t know if I will come back. I mean, of course I have things here and a job to quit, but I mean really, truly come back, because my other life is inviting me back—my real life.

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