Page 19 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“The kind who wants help, Goldie.” We stare at each other through the pixels. “The kind who doesn’t want to bury their feelings.”
“Okay.” She rolls her enormous eyes. Goldie has cartoon eyes, baby deer eyes, fringed in impossibly long lashes I wasn’t lucky enough to inherit. “So this is about me now?”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “You said it, not me. And the hosting platform does some kind of background check. No one’s going to be a serial killer.”
“No one ever thinks anyone’s going to be a serial killer.”
“Goldie, I need you to trust me on this. I’m going to make it work.”
“And I’m helping!” Mei shouts from across the living room. She’s in pajama pants and a silk blouse, laptop balanced on her knees. Her company agreed to let her work remote until November, and she’s been fielding video calls all morning.
“And Mei’s helping,” I echo. We screamed, standing together in the kitchen, when the first booking came in a week ago. This was actually going tohappen. “She even got one of her media contacts atThe Denver Postto run a story about it.”
They sent a photographer up yesterday, a guy in his forties who took pictures of me standing on the front porch and leaning over the kitchen sink and fluffing a pillow in the Juniper Room. I was proud of the photos, when he sent them to me. Each of the guest rooms that I’ve spent the last couple weeks so carefully curating: the Aspen Room’s iron bedframe and antique framed postcards; the Pine Room’s double beds and thrifted coatrack; the Lupine Room—small but mighty—with its Turkish rug and wicker bookshelf.
The story runs tomorrow, a week before my permit goes into effect. No turning back now.
“Okay, but who’s the renter?” Goldie presses. A car horn wails behind her. “Do they seem normal?”
“Very,” I assure her. “Mom of two who’s recently divorced. She’s staying four nights.”
“When does she arrive?”
“My permit starts October first, and she shows up the following weekend.”
Goldie hesitates, and suddenly she’s inside—out of thesidewalk chaos and into the marble-walled lobby of her law firm. She brings the phone a little closer to her face. “Did you tell Mom?”
In my peripheral vision, Mei turns to look at me. “No,” I say. “I haven’t heard from Mom since July. Have you?”
“No,” Goldie says. She steps closer to the wall, out of the flow of people returning from lunch. “I just didn’t know if you’d given her an update on Nate or the house or any of it.”
As a general rule, I don’t give my mother updates. Mom tends to claim space in our lives when she needs something and hardly ever else, so I learned to stop sharing myself with her years ago. When enough time has passed I’ll start to feel guilty about it—I always do—but I’m not there yet. I was nine when Goldie graduated from high school and started at Ohio State; her scholarship covered housing, her meal plan, all of it. It’s been a long, long time since Mom’s had a vested interest in either of our lives.
And besides—she loved Nate. I don’t want to hear her lament the loss of him.
“I haven’t,” I tell Goldie. “And I’d rather you didn’t, either, if you talk to her.”
“You know I won’t,” she says. Goldie doesn’t carry the same guilt I do about avoiding our mother.
“Well, her home and auto insurance draws next month,” I say. “So we may be hearing from her if that becomes a problem.”
Goldie sighs. “And if we do, we can send her to voicemail.”
This is the game we play: Goldie reminding me that I can ignore Mom the way she does. I won’t do it, but she likes to pretend that I could.
“I know,” I say.
Goldie glances at something across the lobby, then back at me. “I’ve got to get back up there. I love you. Don’t get killed by the divorcée.”
“I’ll try not to,” I tell her, but she’s already gone.
I wake up on Tuesdayto voices—angry ones, floating up from the garden. I can’t make out what they’re saying, just the rumble of someone unhappy, then the gentler lilt of someone trying to soothe them. When I pull back the curtain just far enough to peek down, all I can see is Joss. She’s in a sun hat and long sleeves, spade in one hand. The garden is in full, frantic bloom: frothy zinnias and towering Russian sage, nearly shoulder height and arcing toward Joss where she stands on the stone path. Next month, when October sets in and the nights get frosty, the flowers will start to pale. But for now, they’re as arresting as the voices rising up to my bedroom.
Another hand waves into my field of vision—a male one. A familiar one. One that may have recently crushed my own hand beneath it on an espresso machine.
It’s clutching something. Joss takes it, and when I squint, pressing my nose to the glass, I clock it as a copy ofThe Denver Post, open to the article that ran yesterday. Henry’s voice rises again, his pointer finger appearing to tap the photo on the page. Me, on the front porch, beneath the headlineNew Estes Park Bed & Breakfast Offers a Soft Landing for the Brokenhearted.
When Joss glances up at the bedroom window, I suck in a breath and retreat behind the curtain. I scramble to get down there, yanking on a pair of ancient sweatpants and raking a handthrough my hair. If Henry’s mad about the article, he shouldn’t be taking it out on Joss. The last thing I want to do is cause an issue for her with her boss, and why would he even bring her into it? Why would he even be mad in the first place?
