Finding Reese (Tremont Lodge Series Book 1) (4 page)

Tinley never came home last night. I can’t say that I’m surprised, though it would have been nice to get a text or something. Doubting that she’ll even show up to work, I make my way across the lawn to the staff elevator in the lodge. Finn is pulling weeds along the patio outside the back lodge door. Sweat has already soaked through his shirt, and it’s only 9:00 in the morning. The butterfly hovers on his neck and looks like it is flying every time he moves. When he stands up to carry the weeds to his yard waste basket, he sees me staring. I walk toward him.

“Considering we met when you caught me staring at you, it’s kind of ironic that you’ve become the one with the staring problem.” This time he doesn’t smile.

“Sorry. There’s something kind of hypnotic about that tattoo.” Finn grabs his neck and holds his hand over the butterfly to block my view.

“Does it mean something special?”

“Don’t you think you should get up to the floor before Helen gets mad at you for being late?”

“You know Helen?” I ask surprised that he’d know someone in the cleaning department who wasn’t his own age.

“Helen and my mom used to be friends. See you around, Reese.” He returns to pulling weeds. I start to walk away but can’t bite my cheek quick enough to stop from speaking again.

“You were wrong about me. I don’t have a boyfriend or some old boyfriend I can’t get over, either.” I’m about to enter the service door when I hear Finn yelling across the lawn. Guests sitting on their patios eating croissants and sipping coffee strain to see who he is yelling at.

“Then come to my show tonight.” All of a sudden, cleaning dirty hotel rooms doesn’t seem so bad.

Strains of
Yesterday
by the Beatles greet me in the elevator. “Good morning, Bree,” I say, guilty that I ditched her without warning last night. She stops whistling which seems a relief to the others on the elevator, none of whom are Tinley.

“You should have told me you were leaving with that guy,” whispers Bree, though I’m sure everyone else hears her, too.

“I didn’t leave with anyone.”

“A couple of girls claimed you stole the owner’s nephew away for the night.” There is snickering behind us.

“Well, they’re mistaken. You have to believe me. That guy’s a jerk. I assure you I went home alone.” The door opens to Bree’s floor.

“I’m meeting some people back there tonight if you want to go,” she says as she exits. “Text me.”

“Have a great day, Bree,” I say.

Helen is in the laundry room when I check in for my morning assignment. I’m right on time which is a relief. “Morning, Reese. Is Tinley behind you, dear?” I shake my head.

“Sorry, Helen. I haven’t seen her since last night.”

“Oh my, I hope she’s okay. We don’t need more tragedy at the Tremont.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s just shacked up with some guy and lost track of time. No worries. What kind of tragedy do you mean, Helen?”

“Don’t mind me. Sometimes I speak aloud when I should not. Yes, everything is great here at Tremont Lodge. Let’s get to work.” She hands me a clipboard and my cart, stocked with supplies for the day’s work.

“Helen, I…I can’t clean Mr. Oakley’s room,” I say.

“Reese, it’s your job, honey. I know he’s a slob, but a room’s a room. Now get going. There’s a high school band coming in this afternoon. Chaos! Sheer chaos! Chop, chop.” She waddles down the hallway, dragging the vacuum cleaner behind her.

I decide to tackle Lawson’s room first. Maybe he had an early morning tee time. I knock on the door. “Maid service,” I say.
Nothing.
Score one for Reese.

Slipping on my gloves and turning up the music on my iPhone, which I leave on the dresser instead of hooked into headphones over my ears, I start with the bed. Once it’s stripped and has new sheets on, I throw out the little bit of trash that litters the desk and end table—no empty pizza boxes and no condom wrapper.
Thank goodness.
Even the room smells fresher this morning. Could it be that Lawson was
trying
to be neater, for my benefit?

“Reese?”

“In here!” Tinley pops into the room wearing a large pair of sunglasses and a long sleeve cotton dress, hardly cleaning attire.

“Just wanted to say
good morning.
Sorry I’m late. Helen already chewed me out, though it lasted all of about two seconds before she hugged me and pushed the cart at me.” She smiles faintly.

“I take it you had a good night,” I say.

“It was…it was long.”

“Dean?” I ask. She shakes her head
yes
but doesn’t look particularly happy.

“Do you mind doing me a favor?”

“Maybe,” I say. “What do you need?”

“I’ll do everything I need to do in the rooms today. Honest. But can you run the vacuum? My head kind of feels like a two ton truck is slamming into it every time I hear that drat thing when Helen’s vacuuming in the hall.”

“So, let me get this straight. You have a massive hangover, and
I
have to vacuum. What’s in it for me?”

“Please, Reese.” She’s not begging or whining, and a single tear slides down her cheek. She scrunches her face like she’s in pain.

“Take off your glasses,” I say, sitting on the end of Lawson’s bed.

“No.”

“Do it, or I’m getting Helen.” Tinley slides down the edge of the wall until she’s sitting on Lawson’s floor. Her dress hikes up to her knees, and she crosses her ankles. When she throws off her glasses, I gasp.

“Tinley, what happened? Did Dean do that?” She blinks back more tears from the swollen black eye, wincing in pain with even the slightest movement of the eye.

“He didn’t mean to,” she whispers. I am enraged, my knuckles aching as I grasp hold of the freshly made bed so that I don’t pick up the nearest object and hurl it across the room.

“You have to report this,” I say.

“NO! I cannot. You know we’re not supposed to mix with the guests. If the wrong person finds out…if Dean himself turns me in, then I’ll be fired and sent back home. I…can’t. I can’t go home.” Tinley is full on crying now.

“Why can’t you go home, Tinley?”

“Because this is my last chance—.”

“For what?”

“If I screw up again, my parents will cut me out—of everything—a place to live, my inheritance, their lives. You don’t understand what it’s like to have parents who hate you, Reese. If they know I’ve messed up after my dad pulled strings with his fraternity brother to get me this job, he’ll…he’ll disown me.” She swallows her last sob and starts coughing uncontrollably while dry heaving her pain.

“But you can’t let this guy hit you. You didn’t
do
anything to screw up. This jackass did this
to you
.”

“No, you’re wrong. I put myself in the situation, and when I wouldn’t…when I threw up before he got…well, he just pushed me off the bed. He didn’t mean to push my face into the wall.” I put my head in my hand and squeeze the tension headache that is suddenly all-consuming. I stand up and walk over to Tinley, giving her my hand to pull her up.

“I’ll vacuum. Just do what you can.” Then I hug her because I feel like she needs that right now. And it’s while I’m hugging her that I have another flashback. I was a little girl, hugging my mother who’d been crying. I’d tried to get out from her embrace to go play, but she’d pulled me in tighter, like her life depended upon holding me. Maybe it did. Maybe Mom needed me and I wasn’t there when she needed me most. Maybe she didn’t abandon me. Maybe
I
abandoned her. I wipe my own tears away and help Tinley get set up in her first room for the day.

When I return to Lawson’s room to restock his toiletries, I’m surprised to find him sitting at his desk with the television on. He’s holding my iPhone. “Fancy seeing you. I was just about to call this Blake guy and see whose phone I was holding, but then I thought he might get jealous and wonder why I had his girlfriend’s phone. Of course, then I was hatching a plan to ratchet up the tension and make him crazy jealous by telling him I spent the night riding the ski lift with his girlfriend, but, alas, you ruined everything by showing up.”

“I highly doubt my
brother
Blake would give a damn with whom I spent my time.” I grab the phone out of his hand, deposit the bathroom toiletries on his counter, and slam the door behind me.

After work, I am exhausted. Pulling double duty cleaning as many of Tinley’s rooms as possible has done its toll. She thought she fooled Helen with her sunglasses routine by telling her that she had a massive mosquito bite by her right eye that had caused it to swell to a grotesque sight. I don’t think for a minute that Helen bought the story, but she didn’t question Tinley, though she sent her support through me by squeezing my arm every time we passed each other in the hallway.

I tuck Tinley into bed with another dose of Ibuprofen and a warm washcloth for her eye. She tells me that her headache is almost gone, so I decide to catch the end of Finn’s show on the lawn. I know Tinley is feeling a bit better because she insists on picking out my clothes by barking orders from her bed. “No, not another tank top. For goodness sakes. Nothing says
white trash
more than a tank top. Take that purple dress on top of my bag.” She points to her Chanel suitcase. The dress is strapless but a long maxi-dress, so I guess it could be a good choice. She insists I wear heels, but I compromise with black wedge sandals. I make her keep her phone nearby in case she needs anything and wave
goodbye
as I close the door behind me.

The moisture of the June night hangs in the air. I wonder if I should have pulled my hair up in a ponytail rather than let it fall behind my shoulders. Humidity is to my hair like a steamroller is to a bed of flowers. Everything goes flat
.
Finn is talking with a little girl on stage. He’s sitting on a stool, and she’s got his pick and is strumming the notes he tells her to play. It’s adorable. She has a huge grin on her face, and her mother is taking a video with her camera phone. The one and only picture I have of Tremont Lodge from my last visit was found a decade after our trip. I was rummaging through a box of my parents’ things that my grandparents had stuffed in the back of a closet in the basement. I’d discovered it a year earlier when I was looking for a heavy jacket in the same closet during a cold early fall day before Grandma had changed out the closet with the one that held the light jackets upstairs. At the time, I’d only seen the label on the box:
JOHN and FRANNIE.
It didn’t interest me enough to come back to the box when I had more time, and, honestly, I’d forgotten about it. My junior year of high school I’d needed some baby pictures for a collage project at school, and I was tired of always using the pictures that Grandma and Grandpa had. I wondered if there might be other pictures in that old box in the basement. There weren’t any, mostly old school papers, their marriage certificate, my ID bracelet from the hospital—in other words—nothing important. But there was also an old camera, the kind where you have to pop the film out and take somewhere to develop. The number in the window showed a
2.
Grandpa told me that it meant that only 1 picture had been taken, and that if I wanted to develop it, I had to take 23 more pictures. My dog Baxter and my grandparents indulged me while I took a lot of candid shots. I’d run down the street to our local drugstore only to be told that it would take three days for the pictures to come back. It was the longest three days of my life, at least of the life that I could remember. But it was worth the wait because amongst the close-ups of Baxter sleeping and Grandma canning tomatoes and Grandpa watching
Wheel of Fortune,
was a picture of my family: Dad, Mom, Blake, and me, standing in front of Tremont Lodge. Dad looked so young, though in my mind he never ages. He held my hand as I squinted into the sun. Mom was wearing a navy blue dress and flat sandals. She cradled Blake in her arms as he clutched the necklace around her neck. That necklace is the only thing I have now that I know belonged to Mom. Grandma had given it to me when I was eighteen. You’d have thought it would have been a big production, maybe a gift for my birthday or my graduation, but
no.
She’d been cleaning out her dresser drawers and found it then. With cleaning gloves on and dust bunnies on the floor in front of her, she’d called me into her room.
“Here, Reese. Your mom wore this necklace all the time. It was with her things at the lodge. I’ll throw it out if you don’t want it.”
I’d snatched the necklace out of her hands before she changed her mind, her
generosity
overwhelming.

The crowd applauds, and the little girl walks offstage, the owner of a new guitar pick. Finn waves when he sees me standing behind the wooden chairs that surround the stage. “And for my final song of the night I’d like to close with a classic Sinatra hit. An older woman standing next to her husband leans into him, and I listen to Finn serenade me with
The Way You Look Tonight.
The older man in the couple hands his wife a paper bill to put in Finn’s guitar case. She waits in line behind the little girl with the new guitar pick who adds her own dollar.

While Finn packs up his guitar and the next act prepares to take the stage—a comedian who I’ve heard isn’t supposed to be all that funny—I walk over to the campfire and grab a box of graham crackers. “Need help separating these for the s’mores?” I ask Bree. She’s dressed down again in a khaki pair of shorts and green polo shirt. She looks rather manly, actually, with her short haircut. I’d suggest a flower in her hair. Now
I know
I’ve been spending too much time with Tinley.

“Sure, that’d be great,” she says.

“Look, I wanted to apologize again for leaving so suddenly last night without telling you. Something kind of weird happened, and I needed to go.” Bree raises her eyebrows at me.

“Care to elaborate?”

“Not really, not here. But, anyway, you mentioned you were heading back up there tonight?”

“Yeah, my roommate is going with me. After you left, there was a massive game of flashlight tag. It was pretty awesome if I do say so myself, though I felt about eleven years old for half an hour.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Do you want to come?”

“Maybe later. I have, uh…plans.” I look toward the stage, and Finn is walking in our direction. Bree smiles.

“Have fun. I hope we see you guys later.” I wave
goodbye
and catch up to Finn.

“Thanks for the song,” I say.

“What song?” Finn asks coyly. “
I’m Too Sexy?
”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Can you even play that on a guitar?”

“Reese, I can play
anything
on the guitar.” His hand brushes against mine as we walk across the lawn, and for a second I think he’s going to grab hold. “So, where would you like to go for dinner? Pizza? Bar food? Nothing but the best from me.” He laughs and runs his hand through his hair, which falls right back into place on his head in the same spot from which it started.

“Not, pizza. I....” The thought of running into Lawson again makes me shudder. “Let’s try bar food.”

“Good choice. We’ll go to Jack’s. They have great burgers. Wait over there while I run my guitar up to my room. I’ll be right back.” I sit down on a bench that overlooks the cobbled roads that surround the lodge. They are only made for foot traffic, and parking for patrons not staying at the lodge is in the large lot in front of the lodge. Most of the stores sell knick knacks like the store in the lodge where Murphy works, but there are higher-end things, too, like art and jewelry. I doubt I’ll even step foot in those stores, though it’s fun to peek in the windows on my way home from work. I’m staring at a whirligig outside one of the stores, meant to get people’s attention, which apparently works, when I see Harrison, the rich guy from the lodge pool coming out of the jewelry store. He’s alone, and I have a little message for him to pass along to his cousin.

“Hey!” I yell in his direction, but about four other people all turn toward me at the same time. “Harrison!”

“It’s you, uh, Rory,” he says, puffing his chest out like I should want to notice his pectoral muscles. I don’t.

“
Reese
,” I say.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Look, I don’t have time for small talk.” I point my finger into his chest, and it deflates. “You tell your little friend Dean that if I see him, he’d better run in the other direction or he’s going to be sorry.”

“Whoa, if this has anything to do with Tinley, you might have the wrong information. That girl was butt-wasted last night. She was making a fool out of my cousin.
Nobody
does that. We have a certain reputation. She’s lucky we even helped her sorry ass home and didn’t leave her in the gutter where help like that belongs.” This time I don’t even try to hold back.

“You bastard!” Harrison’s face hitting the open palm of my hand startles both of us. “That’s from Tinley.”

“What the hell’s going on?” asks Finn, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Just a little playground justice,” I say, daring Harrison to say anything.

“This bitch better find herself a new job.”

“Let’s go, slugger. Your dinner’s getting cold.” Finn grabs me from behind and pulls me away from Harrison. He turns back toward Harrison who is rooted to the sidewalk.

“You have to forgive her. She gets a little nutty when she’s low on sugar.” He makes the crazy sign with his fingers.

I’m still shaking when we sit in a booth in the back of Jack’s Bar. Finn takes both of my hands into his and rubs them with his thumb until they relax. He orders two beers and burger baskets. The background noise of the vacationers celebrating their break from everyday life is calming to my nerves. Finn doesn’t talk until our beers arrive.

“Do you want to talk about that?”

“I’m not a bully,” I say, swigging my beer. It’s cold and feels good going down.

“I never said you were a bully, but I might try harder not to piss you off.” That makes me laugh because I know I have a short fuse.

“His friend gave Tinley a black eye last night, and he was talking trash about her.” Finn takes a drink now and considers my words.

“You’re not supposed to mix with the guests. He could really get you fired. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know.” I pick at the label on my beer bottle.

“Did you report it?” I shake my head
no
.

“And risk being sent home for breaking the rules?” I say, sarcastically. “No way. I need to be here. I don’t have all the ans…I’m just not ready to leave, and Tinley says her parents will be pissed if she screws up and gets sent back home. That was a bonehead move, wasn’t it?”

“Not the brightest move, but I get it. The guy is going to get away with what he did which sucks.” I shrug my shoulders in a,
what are we supposed to do?
look. “Well, let’s hope they check out of the lodge today.”

“I don’t think they’re doing that any time soon. They told us that some relative is getting married here on Saturday.”

“The Albert wedding?”

“I have no idea what the wedding party name is.” The burgers arrive, reminding me that I am starving after the busy day.

“I’m playing dinner music at the reception until the DJ takes over.”

“Lucky you. Look, let’s change the subject, okay?”

It’s been so long since I’ve had a normal conversation with someone that it feels good to let that guard down. He has lots of stories about guests like the one about the man that proposed to his girlfriend by using landscape rocks to spell out
Jami, will you marry me?
on the lawn. He’d played security for the guy so he wouldn’t get caught removing all the rocks from the flower beds. When she’d come out on her balcony the next morning to drink her coffee, he was waiting below, on bended knee. She’d dropped her coffee cup, shattering on the patio below and nicking an old lady on the foot. I wonder if the couple is still married. Because happily ever after isn’t real, not in my world anyway.

“So, why did you come to Tremont Lodge and why did you stay?” I ask, not wanting my question to seem like a judgment.

“My parents grew up in Colorado where learning to ski ranks up there with learning how to walk. When they got married, though, my dad’s computer job moved him all around the country. I went to seven elementary schools. Mom gave Dad an ultimatum that we had to settle in one spot for four years so I could go to high school without having to be uprooted.”

“That’s cool of her,” I say.

“Yeah, but they fought all the time about
where
we should put down roots. You’ll never guess how they decided.”

“Surprise me.” I tangle my hair around my finger and lean back in the booth, entertained by the natural-born storyteller across from me.

“They pulled out a map of the US. Dad told Mom to close her eyes. He spun her around a bunch of times and told her to point at the map.”

“No way.” I lean back into the table. Finn does, too, and he grabs hold of my hand.

“Yep. We moved to the upper peninsula of Michigan three weeks later.”

“Well, it’s a good thing she didn’t stray east to Detroit.” He laughs, and the butterfly on his neck rises and falls.

“Anyway, Tremont Lodge and a couple of other resorts became our weekend retreat. I spent
a lot
of time here. You could say I kind of fell in love with this place, and after I got my associate degree at a community college, I decided to use my business degree by begging for money to fly into my guitar case.”