11. The Late-Night Special at the Holiday Inn

The Late-Night Special at the Holiday Inn

We settle on going to The Ranch.

Neither of us wants to go back to Windbreak or to Uncle Joe's. And it's too far, and too late, to start the 140-mile drive all the way back to Los Angeles.

It's a little after nine when we turn onto The Ranch's long cobblestone road. I drive past the guardhouse and head around to the circular drive that houses reception, where I spy the nondescript WELCOME sign by the front door.

Sam pops out to get the room keys. I stay behind the wheel and stare at the stone main house, lantern-lit and quaint. Nothing about it suggests what lies just beyond it: forty-eight vine-covered cottages, surrounded by mountain trails and gardens, graciously spaced over a five-hundred-acre estate.

After my father rebranded Hayes as Noone Properties and Resorts, he opened The Ranch. It was his first new property and the way he announced the shift in the company's mission. They were no longer a small, regional hotel chain. This West Coast hotel, his flagship property, stood as the model for what he wanted all his hotels to deliver: luxury comfort and seminal design. Even more than that, he was rebranding the idea of what a small hotel could be. Each hotel would not only stand on its own, holding on to the specificity found in individual hotel ownership, but also adhere to global standards not historically seen in small properties, offering as many amenities as hotels three times their size.

And he was going to do it while providing the thing even the most luxurious large hotel couldn't—complete and total privacy. No property would have more than fifty rooms, each hotel revolving around the singular principle of total retreat and sanctuary, but the type of retreat where all your needs were anticipated and cared for. The way my father described it to me (one of the few times we talked about it): He wanted to provide the opportunity to disappear from your life for a while. Or, you know, to become someone else entirely.

I would love, at this very moment, to be here for that kind of a visit. Apparently, I don't get to stay at The Ranch under those conditions. Despite how seminal this hotel was to my father's work life (or maybe because of it), I've only been here twice before—once with my parents, shortly before they told me they were separating; the next time for my father's wedding to his second wife, Sylvia. For entirely different reasons, but in equal measure, each of those visits created the same kind of dread as I was feeling now.

"We're all set," Sam says, walking back to the car.

Sam called on the way and the receptionist had our keys waiting. There is only one cottage available for us to share. We're lucky it has two bedrooms. We're lucky, really, that the hotel has anything vacant at all, even if the reason they do is that the cottage we are staying in had a short-circuit earlier in the week and is still without electricity.

Sam hands me the map, and we head on foot toward our cottage, white lights strung through the oak trees, orange magnolias lining the trails. The nighttime air, soft and bright, centering me.

"Under different circumstances this is a vacation I could really use," he says.

Then he keys the front door. And races to pick the better bedroom.

I stand in the foyer, take in the living room. The electricity may be out, but someone has lit the fireplace in the living area, placing candles around the room, so we aren't walking into the pitch-dark. And it's hard not to feel like I've walked into a kind of refuge—the comforting smell of that fire, those soft lights.

It's different from the other cottage I remember staying in when I was a child—different from the cottage I stayed in a few years later attending Sylvia and my father's wedding. And yet it carries a similar cozy and rustic feel, that nod to the Arts and Crafts Movement, full of the thoughtful fixtures and antiques that make it feel more like a home than a room frequently visited.

I get it, being here as an adult. I get why people would want to disappear here for a while.

I text Jack to let him know where I am—that I'm not making that red-eye after all. Then I drop my phone on the end table and head into the bathroom to take a shower, put on fresh clothes for the first time in eighteen hours.

When I come back into the living room, Sam is sitting by the fire, wearing a jersey and track shorts, the brace visible on his wrist. Maybe it's that combination, but he looks like the little-boy version of himself about to head out to a Little League game, his baseball bag too big for his body.

I sit down on the couch across from him and he looks over, nods in my direction.

"Nothing from the Coopers yet," he says.

"Is that a question?"

He shakes his head. "Not really. I looked through your phone while you were in the shower."

"I'm choosing to ignore that."

I lean back on the soft cushions, crossing my legs beneath myself, when I notice the covered trays on the coffee table between us.

"What's all this?"

"I ordered dinner while you were in the shower," he says.

He pulls the lids off the trays.

"Lettuce and tomato sandwiches, and beer."

I look down at the tray of sandwiches, unable to hide my surprise. They're just like the sandwiches my father used to make for me—for me and for Sam, the few times Sam and I had been at our father's apartment at the same time. It may sound like a weird sandwich, but I relished it when I was a kid, at least the way my father would make it (which, incidentally, was the way my grandmother made it for him): thick tomato slices on griddled rustic bread, crisp romaine lettuce, mayonnaise, and flaky salt.

"This was my favorite growing up."

"I know, that's why I ordered it," he said. "I'm just drinking the beer."

It's so kind—so kind and so surprising—that he knows that I liked it, let alone ordered it for me, that I'm not sure what to do.

"I can't believe you remembered that."

"How could I forget? You and Dad both liking the dumbest sandwich in the world," he says. "You're missing half of it. Where's the bacon? Where's the turkey?"

I smile at him. "Dad always said that Grandma couldn't afford that," I say. "So he got really good at making a sandwich without."

"That's a nice story," Sam says. "You're still missing a cheeseburger."

I reach for a sandwich and lean in to take a bite, closing my eyes to properly savor it. The first piece of joy in this crazy day. This perfect sandwich: an ideal mix of crispy, tangy, and sweet. No other food item need apply.

Sam reaches for a handful of onion-fries that room service had included. Then he cracks open a beer and sits back.

"So I was just thinking," he says. "You see any point in trying to talk to Joe again tomorrow?"

"I don't think we'll get anywhere different with him," I say. "Whatever he knows, he's not looking to share."

"Yeah, I think that's true," he says.

I'm still trying to make sense of why that is. Is Uncle Joe trying to protect my father? Or is he trying to protect himself? It's disorienting to be wondering that about my dad's closest friend, his constant. There was no one else my father was as close to, certainly professionally, with maybe the exception of Grace, or perhaps my father's general counsel. His face comes to my mind before his name does: ice-blue eyes, slicked back hair. He hadn't been working with my father for as long as Grace and Joe, but he had been there for a long time, nevertheless. He had certainly been there long enough to have access to things we don't.

Jonathan. That's his name. I'm guessing that attorney-client privilege would end any conversations with him before they started, but it feels like Grace would have been a different story.

"I've thought about Grace a bunch since she's passed," I say. "And I don't know. I wish she were here. I'm not saying she would have any insight necessarily, but I bet she would help us if she could…"

"I think you're giving her a lot of credit there. I liked Grace, but she wasn't exactly forthcoming, either."

"That's not the read I got on her."

"Well, as much as I hate to discount the four times you met her, I doubt she would talk to us, even if she were here."

That strikes me as off base. It might not have been often, but I certainly saw Grace several times over the years. And she'd always been open with me. But before I decide whether to argue, my phone starts to buzz. I pick it off the table, Sam's fiancée, Morgan, coming up on the caller ID.

I hold the phone up so Sam can see the screen—can see for himself that it's Morgan calling.

"Don't pick up," he says. "She's just trying to reach me."

"How do you know?"

"?'Cause I've sent her to voicemail like eight times already."

"I refuse to be in the middle of whatever's going on with you two."

"Hence why I said don't pick up."

I click the volume off and put my phone back on the end table, watch as Sam cracks open a second beer.

"What's going on, Sam?"

"What do you mean?"

"Who is the other woman?"

"Morgan."

"No. The other woman."

"Morgan is the other woman," he says.

I look at him confused. "I'm not following."

"I was with someone else for a long time before Morgan and I started dating. Taylor, that was her name. Is her name. We broke up about nine months ago…"

"What happened?"

"She apparently had doubts about whether I could commit."

"So you got engaged to Morgan to prove that you could commit?"

"Well, when you say it that way…"

I know he's trying to make light of this, but I can see that he doesn't feel light. I don't, either. I feel heavy. All these questions about my father are gnawing at me in the way things tend to gnaw at you right before you figure out that they're worse than you thought.

Sam opens another beer, hands it to me. I take a long sip.

"Dad said that you're getting married too?"

"I am."

"And you're happy about it?"

"Very," I say.

It relaxes me, how instinctively my answer shoots out of me. I shouldn't need it to relax me, but it's a nice reminder that my inherent certainty about Jack is holding steady.

"Whatever happened to the guy you were with before? The one with a kid. He was a veterinarian, wasn't he?"

"A pediatric cardiologist."

"Dogs, kids. Both close to the ground."

I give him a smile.

"Elliot, right? He seemed… proud of himself."

They had met once. Accidentally. Sam walking into my father's apartment as Elliot and I were walking out.

"Why the questions about him?"

"He called while you were in the shower." He holds up two fingers. "Twice."

"It's not what you think."

He shrugs. "All I think is that he called twice."

I don't want to think about Elliot calling twice. I don't want to lean into what I know to be true: Elliot shouldn't be calling me, and certainly not the way he's been calling me, at all. I move the food out of the way so I can sit down on the edge of the table, his side of the table. So I can meet him at eye level.

"Sam, it's really not my business," I say. "Your relationship with Morgan. But nine months is pretty short to be dating, engaged, and moving to Brooklyn."

"What's that expression? When you know, you know."

"Do you know? Because I'm pretty sure you just said the opposite."

"What I said is you probably shouldn't pick up the phone," he says. Then he clears his throat and takes another sip of his beer. "But, for the record, I wouldn't mind if you did…"

"Did what?"

"Make it your business," he says. "It's starting to feel like I could use the assist."

It's so earnest that it catches me off guard. I don't know if this is all new since losing our father (his emotions raw and elevated) or if he'd been like this all along. Either way, it feels like something has shifted in him, a seismic shift, where now he is doing exactly the opposite of what I'd historically known him to do. He is reaching toward me.

My desire to meet him there, to offer something like protection, comes in fierce and quick.

I lean toward him. "Were you hoping this conversation was going to the place where we realize that we're in the same boat?"

"Which boat is that?"

"The sinking one."

He laughs. "I guess so."

He pulls the Velcro on his brace, taking it off, and rotating his free fingers, stretching them out. Holding that palm tight.

"You know, it wouldn't have been the worst thing for me to have been around more when we were growing up," I say. "I wish Dad hadn't felt the need to…"

"Keep us apart?"

I nod. He knows as well as I do that this was the best way my father knew how to be there for us. It was easier for him to focus on each of us, separately, rather than do the more complicated work of trying to merge us all together—even though it meant that in trying to keep everyone happy, he often was letting someone down. This part I've known and mostly accepted, because I understood that in always insisting on only putting forth his best self for each of us, the person he was probably letting down the most was himself.

But here's this other part that I'm starting to suspect: Maybe not merging his children's lives together was about something else too. Maybe he thought that if we all left our respective corners, we would have started talking. And it would have revealed something he wasn't ready to look at—or something that he didn't want his children to look at. The version of himself he needed to keep private.

"I think that was more about him than about us," I say. "But it doesn't make it better."

He looks up at me, holds my gaze. "So when do we get to the part where you tell me what to do?"

"I can't tell you what to do, Sam."

"Well. Then maybe it's okay Dad kept us apart."

A little after 2:00 a.m., I get out of bed.

I take my blanket and go sit on the small deck, the moon bright tonight, the sky so cloudless that I can see all the way out over the hills, down to the Pacific Ocean, glistening in the distance.

I take a photograph on my phone, focusing in on the shimmer coming in off that distant ocean. The blue lines skimming the bottom half of the frame.

My professor in graduate school, the one whose house I now own, taught a workshop that focused on neuroarchitecture. She opened the first lesson in a way that sits with me still, by talking about how buildings can make people sicker. Or they can make them better. And she wrote a question on the blackboard—a question that she always asks herself early in the conception stage to ensure she is doing the latter: Where does the joy come in?

For me, that axis always centers around light (or an angle of light) that I try to honor in the construction of any space. I had nothing to do with constructing this space, of course, but for a moment it brings me joy to imagine that it was built around this very seat, this very view, for a moment where someone needed it.

Because this is what I keep thinking: What happens if you lose your own axis? Since my parents died, that's how it feels. That the axis on which I spun—like a certain angle of light, like a prayer—is gone. I can't find it. I'm not even sure it still exists.

I think of Sam's question to me about Jack. I think of my steadying and true answer. Yes, I want to marry him. I want to be with him and keep loving him. But what if that's true and there's still nothing I can do about the other part? The part that keeps me isolated from him—all my grief, all its ache—erecting an invisible wall that I can't seem to climb over. Toward him. Toward us.

I look down at my phone and focus in on the photograph, the stream of light—the soft and gentle beauty.

Jack is probably already up, heading to the restaurant to start his morning prep. I want to call him. I want to finish our conversation from earlier. But how am I? He'll want to hear a real answer. I'm fine. I'm lonely. I'm worried, every time I hear your voice, how and when I'll lose you too.

So, I don't call. I shoot off a text with the photograph attached.

Then I shut off my phone and decide to move.

I walk the property. It's eerily silent, even considering it's the middle of the night. No other person is anywhere in sight. I pass by the landscape gardens and citrus groves, circle a lily pond, lanterns in gnarled oaks lighting my way. I end up back in the reception area. The only cottage lit up.

The overnight receptionist is behind the front desk in a button-down shirt and trousers. He nods in my direction as I walk through the living area. The room low-lit and quiet. A fire going strong in the stone fireplace.

There are framed photographs covering the wall above that fireplace. Framed articles about the property. Each of my father's properties has this kind of area designated to the history of the property, leaning into a mythical story behind what makes the property specific, what makes it singular.

I start to read through the articles here, focusing in on a cover story in the Santa Barbara News-Press , announcing the sale of The Ranch to my father. He had bought the land from citrus farmers who harvested an average of 500,000 lemons and oranges a year. He was turning it into a boutique hotel. He was promising to preserve almost all the acreage.

I move farther down the wall and spot the one photograph of me at six years old, my father carrying me on his shoulders, standing not too far from this exact spot. The first time I was ever here, the time shortly before my parents split up. My mother was not in the photograph. Maybe she already knew. Maybe they both already knew what was coming.

"You look the same," he says.

I turn to see the night receptionist coming out from behind his desk and walking toward me.

"Sorry?" I say.

He motions to the wall, to that photograph of me. "You look the same as you did when you were little," he says.

"You think?"

I turn and look at the photograph. Then I look back at him as he comes over to stand beside me, his hands in his pockets.

"Your father would talk to me about you. You and your brothers. He'd come over after he had dinner in the cellar and we'd play cards."

"What kind?"

"Gin rummy. Poker occasionally, but only for pretzels."

I smile at him. How strange—and how nice—to know this now. To imagine my father sitting here in the middle of the night.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Carmen."

"You've worked here for a long time?"

"A long time, yeah." He motions toward the photograph. "He was a pretty good guy to work for, your father."

"I don't hear that often."

"Sure, he was tough. I've seen a lot of guys get sacked over the years for not taking their jobs seriously," he says. "But he let you know that up front. And he didn't think he was above it, either. I remember one night when we were playing cards, the toilet in here overflowed. And the plumber was taking a long time to get here, too long for your father, and so he just went in there and snaked the damn thing himself. Came out covered in toilet water, smelling a little like shit. Had to borrow a shirt so we could finish the game."

I let out a small laugh. "That's disgusting."

"Yeah, well. He came up that way, right? And from where I stand, he was real generous. And decent. You had to work hard to earn his respect, but once you earned it, he would do anything for you."

"How do you mean?"

"My wife had a tough pregnancy a few years back. He gave me nine months off, paid. So I could be home with the babies."

He pulls out his phone, starts scrolling through his photographs. "They just turned three," he says. "But they were so small at first, three and a half pounds. And he just kept promising me it was all going to turn out okay. He would show me photographs of your brothers. How small they were. What they turned into."

Then he holds out his own phone, anxious to show me his twins—his girls—and how big and strong they are now.

I take his phone and look at the photographs of his girls, who are so cute—beyond so cute—and so happy. I start flipping through to see other photographs of them. Other pieces of his history.

I think of my father standing here, showing him my brothers. His own history. We all want to show that, don't we? Like proof. We helped them survive. They will survive.

Which is when I realize.

I start to shake, his phone still in my hand.

"What's wrong?" he asks. Because I must be wearing it all over my face—my rising concern.

"Maybe nothing," I say.

But I hand him back his phone and say a fast goodbye, running quickly back to the cottage.

In the living room, I find a flashlight in the coat closet and check the police report to make sure I'm correct.

Then I go straight into Sam's room and shake him awake. "Where's his cell phone?" I ask.

He rubs his eyes. "What? What are you talking about?"

I hold up the police report.

"They recovered his wallet and his glasses and a pen from his front pocket. But no phone," I say. "Why wasn't he carrying his phone?"

"Yeah, I don't know…"

"He called Cece that night, right? We know that much. We know he had it with him. Did you see it anywhere at Windbreak?"

"No… I didn't see it in his office," he says. "We can ask Clark to double-check, but I don't think it was there."

"It's possible that it got swept away on the beach," I say. "Or it hit the cliff during the fall."

He sits up, considering. "Or someone took it."

I look back down at the police report, then up at my brother. I feel it moving forward, that thing that's been coming at me, moving into the light. That thing I need to see clearly to get us somewhere better.

"Maybe you're not entirely wrong," I say.

"Of course I'm not. About what?"

"You keep saying Dad wouldn't sell the company," I say. "That he would never wake up one day and suddenly want to sell—"

"This doesn't sound like the part I was right about."

I ignore him.

"We've been looking at this from the wrong angle," I say.

"Okay…"

"What if it wasn't his choice? What if, for some reason, Dad was compelled to sell the company?"

He shakes his head, confused. "Compelled how?" he says. "The company was doing great. It is doing great."

"Still, isn't it possible there was something going on that you didn't know about? That made him need to get out all of a sudden? It would help explain it. Dad's absence. Why he was so off."

He looks at me. "Like what?"

"I don't know yet. All I know is trying to talk about him, to all these people, it feels like we can't trust them."

"Careful there, you're starting to sound like me."

"Well, Uncle Joe, Cece, Detective O'Brien. It feels like they're all pushing their own agenda, like they're sharing just a small piece of a puzzle that they don't want us to solve. That's the one thing I'm sure of." I pause. "Trying to talk to them isn't going to get us to the bottom of this."

"Okay. So who should we be talking to?"

I think of Carmen. I think of the photographs of my father on the wall. He was always presenting himself in the same way—smart and eager and solid. The best version of himself. That's the only version of himself that he showed me—in the pieces, the compartments, he'd allow me to see him. But what didn't he want to show me? What didn't he want to share with any of his children? And why?

"Nora? Who should we be talking to?"

"Dad," I say.