When Lizbet checked out of her room, Zeke tucked her suitcase into the back of her Mini for the long drive home to her cottage on Bear Street, which was 1.2 miles away. Along with her bill, Lizbet was presented with a parting gift: a very cold bar of Nantucket Looms wildflower soap.
Lizbet knew it sounded ridiculous, but she wished she could stay. It had been luxurious, even though she was technically working. And she was pleased to report that there had been no scary noises, no cold blasts, no ethereal visions, no signs of any ghost.
The hotel sparkles in the June sun with its fresh cedar shingles and crisp white trim. The hotel’s landscaper, Anastasia, placed lavish pots overflowing with snapdragons, bluebells, lavender, and ivy on each step of the staircase leading up to the hotel entrance. The wide front porch of the hotel is set up with wide rockers with cushions in hydrangea blue and cocktail tables that can be turned into firepits. （The front desk sells a s’mores kit for eight dollars.） The porch will also be the site of the complimentary wine-and-cheese hour each evening. Lizbet has seen to it that they will serve excellent wine and a selection of imported cheeses garnished with ripe berries and plump, glistening olives.
Lizbet checks for mascara on her eyelids and lipstick on her teeth. She stayed up way too late last night trying on outfits. It’s a new job and she wants a new style. At the Deck, she always wore muumuus because they were forgiving （she averaged eight glasses of rosé and fourteen pieces of bacon daily）。 Now her closet is filled with things that are fitted and a bit more professional. Today she’s wearing a navy halter dress, nude stiletto sandals, and a Minnesota Golden Gophers charm on a chain around her neck.
She steps out of the car, so excited she could levitate. She feels like a living, breathing inspirational meme. She has stopped fighting the old and started building the new! She’s weathered the storm by adjusting her sails! She is a pineapple: standing tall, wearing a crown, and sweet on the inside!
Lizbet slips her phone into her navy-and-white-striped clutch and looks up to find her ex-boyfriend JJ O’Malley standing in the white-shell-covered parking lot with his hands behind his back.
This is not happening, she thinks. Lizbet hasn’t actually seen JJ since the awful day in late October when he moved the last of his belongings out of their cottage. He told Lizbet he was spending the off-season in upstate New York with his parents; he’d gotten a part-time gig cooking at the Hasbrouck House. By that time, Lizbet had already accepted the job at the hotel, but she didn’t tell JJ that. But clearly he’s heard the news. The Cobblestone Telegraph is real.
“What are you doing here, JJ?” Lizbet asks. He’s wearing cargo shorts, his Black Dog T-shirt, chef’s clogs, and a green bandanna around his neck. A thought occurs to Lizbet that’s so horrible, she nearly drops her clutch: the chef of the new hotel bar has been kept “a grand surprise” because, in the world’s most hideous twist, Xavier has hired JJ.
Lizbet will quit.
No, she won’t quit. She’ll make JJ quit. But one thing is for damn sure: she and JJ O’Malley are not working in the same building.
“Are you running the bar here?” she asks.
“What?” JJ says. “No. I wasn’t even approached. Why?”
Sweet lightning, Lizbet thinks.
JJ brings his hands out from behind his back. He’s holding a dozen long-stemmed pink roses wrapped in butcher paper. He gives her what she used to call his puppy-dog look—big eyes and protruding lower lip. In happier days, this would spur Lizbet to squeeze him tight and pepper his face with kisses, but now she thinks, Wow, he looks awful. It was normal for JJ to let his hair and beard grow out over the winter, but has it ever been this unruly? His beard straggles across his face like creeper vines on a brick wall.
“First of all, I came to wish you good luck for opening day.”
A text would have sufficed （though Lizbet blocked his number months ago）。 “You betcha. And I’m not taking those flowers. What else?”
He drops the roses to the ground, reaches into the deep flapped pocket of his cargo shorts, and pulls out a ring box.
“Don’t you dare,” Lizbet says.
JJ sinks to one knee on the crushed shells and Lizbet winces—but no, sorry, she’s finished empathizing with this guy’s pain.
He opens the box.
Don’t look at the ring! she thinks.
But come on, she’s only human. She crunches through the shells in her stilettos and studies the ring; it’s a dazzler. It’s either fake or JJ took out an enormous line of credit on the restaurant—a move she would have absolutely vetoed if they were still together. It’s over two carats, maybe even two and a half, and it’s a marquise cut, which is what she’s always wanted.