Great Big Beautiful Life(25)

He hums. “Like…somewhere a crime has been committed, perhaps?”

I tuck my phone between my shoulder and ear and sit back down in front of my computer, searching for news stories about the Ebner and garnering nothing much of interest. “Maybe,” I say. “But probably not.”

He thinks again. “Maybe it was, like, a rendezvous spot. Maybe she was having an affair. Cheating on the Boy Wonder of Rock ’n’ Roll before he died.”

I roll my eyes. “I never said she.”

“Fine,” he relents. “Maybe this person was cheating on their husband, Cosmo Sinclair.”

I take a sip of my now-cold afternoon coffee and swish it around in my mouth, like I might be able to taste the answer. Cosmo was already gone before the Nicollet Inn became the Ebner.

If Margaret’s hiding a visit—or multiple visits—it’s not because of an affair.

Besides, an affair might be a shocking revelation, but this is a woman who also wore her wedding dress to her husband’s funeral, knowing full well there’d be miles of paparazzi in every direction. I’m not sure I’d buy her cheating on him, and I’m even less convinced she’d feel the need to hide it so long after the fact.

“Or I don’t know,” Theo says, breaking into my thoughts. “Maybe she just forgot. The woman is, like, eighty-something.”

“Never said I’m talking about a woman,” I remind him. “Or about an eighty-something-year-old, for that matter.”

“Why not just ask her?” he says.

“Next time I talk to them,” I reply, “I will. But that’s not until Tuesday.”

“So she’s giving you a couple of days off,” he says. “Interesting.”

There’s a distinctively flirty edge to his voice. It makes my stomach flip-flop in a not entirely pleasant way. I know what he’s getting at: that I could come home and we could hook up. And that sounds pretty nice.

But a few weeks ago, when I’d sent a screenshot of one of his late-night text messages to my friends, Bianca had pointed out something that had been bothering me ever since.

Have you noticed, she wrote, that this man NEVER just asks you to hang out? He literally only ever sets you up to ask HIM to hang out.

Cillian wrote back, I’ve noticed. He is my enemy.

Priya chimed in, As long as you’re getting what you want out of this arrangement, ignore the haters, Alice.

The thing is, I’m technically not. I would’ve gladly agreed to be Theo’s girlfriend months ago if it was on the table. But it wasn’t, and there wasn’t anyone else I was interested in, so I didn’t really see the point of giving him an ultimatum. So we’d continued on like this, and it was mostly fine—I really liked being with him, whenever we actually were together.

But I’d been paying attention since Bianca’s observation. And she and Cillian were right.

Every text was what are you up to tonight, or a picture of a bottle of nice bourbon he’d gotten, or a shirtless photo he thought might be enticing but was mostly just embarrassing, no matter how good he looked in it.

The man would not just say, Hey, Alice, want to come over tonight?

And because I hadn’t taken any of his bait since that fateful day in the group chat, I hadn’t seen him for my last two weeks in LA before shipping out this way.

“Alice?” he says now, in my ear. “You still there?”

“Yeah, but I’ve actually got to go,” I say. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime,” he says.

He thinks he means it, but he doesn’t.



* * *



? ? ?

After perusing online for a solid hour, I find a place to pass a Saturday night.

Rum Room sits tucked behind a row of scraggly trees, on the opposite side of the road from Little Croissant, though a half mile down the road.

I never would’ve seen it from the street, and it’s not close enough to the beach to be a proper tourist spot, which is better for my purposes.

It’s also only a ten-minute walk from my rental, so I leave my car behind and head over.

It looks like a small ranch home, with a wooden deck wrapped around its front half, green-and-white-striped awnings hanging over its rectangular windows. Several massive live oaks lean over the patio, multicolored Christmas lights strung haphazardly between them to illuminate the wooden tables below, all of which are full.

I walk up the ramp to the front door, past both a neon hot dog sign and a fake shark head, mounted directly to the white clapboard exterior.

The inside of the restaurant is an exercise in chintzy maximalism, every inch clad in either tropical wallpaper, tacky hot dog–related signs, or jewel-toned tile. A host dressed in black greets me with a smile and an efficient nod. “Do you have a reservation with us tonight?”

“No, sorry,” I say.

“How many?” he asks.

“Just one,” I say, peeking over his shoulder toward the bar. One open stool, wedged between two groups. “Can I order food if I sit there?”

“Definitely,” he says. “Otherwise, we’re probably running at about a thirty-minute wait.”

“The bar works great for me,” I tell him, and he gestures me past. I squeeze between the two parties and plop my bag on the counter. “Sorry,” I tell the woman next to me when I accidentally elbow her while trying to get my jacket off.