Page 23 of The Night We Lost Him

There’s One Way into Hope, One Way Back Out

I drive.

Sam is too worked up, his words tumbling out on top of one another, coming out too quickly. Like he isn’t only trying to explain the situation to me. Like he is also trying to get hold of it himself.

“Cece and Dad go way back,” he says. “She started building out her hotel business when Dad was taking over Hayes, so in a weird way they came up together. They were on these parallel tracks. But also totally different. I mean very different, obviously—”

I pick up speed as I merge onto the highway, heading toward Santa Barbara. “How do you mean?”

“I mean we’re small in comparison,” he says. “She has more than a hundred hotels all over the world. Larger hotels, but really nicely done. Their main competition is Four Seasons, the Ritz. With a nod to local architecture, uniform service. The opposite of how we do things. Of how Dad did things…”

“I’m familiar with the largest hotel chain in the country, Sam.”

“Well, you may not be familiar with the fact that I almost went to work for her.”

“What? When was that?”

“Hotels are a core business for Cece, but they’re also just a piece of the Salinger Group portfolio,” he says. “She’s across a bunch of sectors. Entertainment, book publishing, sports. Including this sports marketing firm called PNG. After I got injured, someone at PNG reached out to me. Not uncommon to recruit old athletes, so I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t think about any connection to us, to Dad, until I saw his reaction when I told him I was thinking of taking a job there.”

“Which was?”

“Not great. Apparently he and Cece have a long history.”

Sam opens the window and motions for me to take the exit for La Cumbre Road. “He told you not to take the job?”

“You know Dad. He wasn’t going to tell me not to take the job, but he told me not to take the job.”

“What was the deal with them?”

“Cece had tried to break into the luxury boutique market for a long time, exclusive properties, privacy driven. Small footprint,” he said. “Apparently, she’d been after Dad for years to sell her Noone Properties. She wanted to go into the boutique market wholesale that way, use his branding, all of it. Because Dad had figured out how to scale it. That’s not easy to do. Which is probably why Cece made some pretty generous acquisition offers.”

“So?”

“So he always turned her down,” he says.

“I’m not following.”

“Unfortunately, that makes two of us.”

* * *

Hope Ranch is a stunning coastal community just west of Santa Barbara proper, just south of the Pacific Ocean. It’s hilly and serene. Beautiful homes blending in with the oaks, equestrian trails crisscrossing the roadways.

We wind our way down Las Palmas and up Via Esperanza until we pull up to Joe’s house. It’s a gorgeous old Spanish hacienda, lined with weeping willows, horse stables, and a circular cobblestone driveway—which is alive with activity. Several trucks are parked there, movers unloading flower arrangements and boxes of dinnerware and furniture rentals.

“What the hell is all this?” Sam asks.

He steps out onto the cobblestones, closing the passenger-side door before I’ve even put the car in park.

I turn off the ignition, jump out after him. “Sam, just wait a second. Pull it together,” I say. “We don’t need this to escalate.”

He looks at me and nods like he hears me. I can even see him trying to take a breath in. But then our Uncle Joe opens the big oak door. That’s all it takes—seeing him in that doorway—and Sam’s face turns red again.

“What the fuck, Joe?”

“Or go ahead and escalate it,” I say under my breath.

Uncle Joe weaves past the staff and trucks and walks toward us. He is in a wet suit. Even in his late sixties, he looks twenty years younger than he is: his wet hair still thick, his skin tan from several decades in the California sunshine, his frame strong and lean.

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