I hadn’t thought about the beach lot in ages. Grant’s grandfather had left it to me — me specifically, my name on the deed — as a wedding gift the year we married. A quiet stretch of coast, nothing fancy, but his. He’d been very clear it was mine and mine alone. I hadn’t looked at that paperwork in over a decade.
The plane bounced through a patch of turbulence and I gripped the armrest.
“Just look at his face,” I told myself. “That’s all this is.”
Florida hit me like a wet towel the second I stepped off the jet bridge. I rented a small white sedan, typed the hotel address into the map, and drove thirty minutes with the AC roaring and my jaw tight.
The Tidewater sat right on the beach — palm trees, a valet in a red polo, a family laughing their way out through the sliding doors. I pulled into a parking space and reached for the door handle.
That’s when something caught my eye and my stomach dropped straight through the floor of the car.
Three spaces down, a silver sedan. Small dent in the rear bumper. And in the corner of the back windshield, a cartoon owl sticker — the mascot from my niece’s elementary school.
Nora’s car.
I sat back in my seat and pulled the door shut, hands going white on the wheel.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”
I gave myself every excuse I could think of. Maybe she was meeting a friend. Maybe a client. Maybe the car had been sitting there for hours and she was already three states away.
I called her. One ring, and the call cut dead. Declined.
She was close enough to see my name light up her screen and swipe it away without a second thought.
“Okay,” I whispered to the windshield. “Okay.”
Part of me wanted to reverse out of that lot right then, fly home, pour a glass of wine, and pretend I’d never seen an owl sticker in my life.
I didn’t do that.
I got out of the car instead. The heat pressed down on me as I crossed the lot, walking past Nora’s car without slowing, without touching it. The lobby was ice-cold and smelled like eucalyptus. A woman at the front desk gave me the kind of polite smile people give a woman traveling alone.
“Checking in?”
“Just visiting a friend,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.
I walked straight past her toward the elevators, pulling up the confirmation on my phone. Room 1412. Room 1414. Same hallway.
The doors opened with a soft chime. I stepped in and hit the button for fourteen. When I looked down, my hand was shaking hard enough that my wedding ring caught the light in nervous little flashes.
The doors slid shut, and the elevator started to climb.
Chapter 3 – What the Walls Let Slip
The doors opened on fourteen, and laughter drifted down the hallway before I’d even stepped out.
I followed it.
A room service cart propped a door open near the end of the corridor, and through the gap I saw Sandra setting tall glasses on a balcony table, laughing at something someone off to the side had said.
