I almost tear up. “Thank you.”
“No coffee for the dog.”
I laugh, thoroughly enjoying the sound of her voice. It’s like taking a trip without having to go anywhere. “Agreed.”
“I will clean the salt. I gave it to him, I clean it. Good dog. Very funny. And his noise annoys Ms. Sussex-Williams.”
“You cheeky devil,” I whisper. “Can we be friends? What’s your name?”
“This is Fran?oise, Begonia,” Keisha says. Her hair is wild, like she had a very good night. She’s in a bright pink kimono, which is gaping open to her belly button and matches the silk pants that are threatening to fall off her tiny frame. She pauses halfway to the coffee maker and dusts off her bare feet with a frown. “Stay on her good side or she’ll put olives in your Frosted Flakes.”
“Or salt on your feet,” Fran?oise murmurs.
Keisha grins. “I’m gonna call Liliane and tell her Hayes thinks it’s sexy when women race barefoot through the front hall. And then I’m going to tell her it’s the latest craze—exfoliating your feet just by walking around your own house. What happened? The dog get into the salt?”
I nod.
“Wicked. He’s the coolest dog. Can I take him on tour?”
“No!”
She laughs. “Ah, man, you didn’t sleep well, did you? C’mon. I’ll fix your coffee. Fran?oise has your hangover cure coming, I see. Let’s go hide in the gazebo and you can tell me all of your secrets before Millie wakes up and realizes I’m wreaking havoc on the world.”
“But the salt—”
“B, the housekeeper vacuums here every day, whether Hayes is in residence or not, so don’t sweat it.”
“Truth,” Fran?oise agrees. “Annoying as the fuck.”
“I’m going to start using that,” Keisha says. She affects a French accent herself. “Liliane is annoying as the fuck too.”
Fran?oise’s nose twitches, and I don’t know if she’s amused or if she’s plotting Keisha’s demise. “Go, she orders. “Have coffee. Spill the kidneys.”
“She means beans,” Keisha stage-whispers.
“I prefer the kidneys.”
I don’t know if she’s making a joke about wanting to take people’s kidneys, and I don’t stick around to find out. Instead, I follow Keisha through making coffee and then out to the gazebo at the edge of the courtyard, overlooking the rolling green hills of the Hudson Valley. I can just glimpse the river tucked in down below too.
“So are you real, or are you the shield?” Keisha asks as soon as we’re comfortable.
I frown and don’t answer.
And then I sip my coffee and my entire world gets a little brighter. “Oh my god. What is this?”
“Properly fresh-roasted and fresh-ground Guatemalan beans, though you might’ve ruined it with all that sugar and cream and cinnamon.”
“That machine literally fresh-roasts and fresh-grinds the beans?”
“That’s what all the noise was, B.”
I sip again. Savor, I tell myself.
Screw that, there’s more where this came from, at least for today, I tell myself back, though it sounds like Hyacinth instead of like me.
But she’s not wrong.
“You didn’t answer the question. Real or a shield?”
I hate lying. So I don’t. “Do any of us ever know what’s going on in a man’s mind?”
She laughs. “Excellent avoidance tactic.”
“I like him.” Also the truth, and more than I wanted to admit to anyone. “But he’s so…guarded.”
“You would be too if the love of your life married your nemesis.”
I pause before gulping more coffee. “Hayes has a nemesis?”
“Brock Sturgis.”
I wait.
She waits.
Marshmallow strolls between us, looking back and forth, tongue hanging out, like he’s watching a tennis match.
“You don’t know who Brock Sturgis is,” Keisha finally says. A statement. Not a question, though she’s clearly having trouble believing it.
“I don’t read the tabloids, and Hayes and I met online.” My tongue trips, and I swear she sees through the lie, no matter how much I try to convince myself that I rented his house online without knowing it wasn’t mine to rent isn’t a lie, and is technically the reason we met. So I push ahead. “I didn’t know anything about his real life until we met in Maine.”