The Last to Vanish(9)

We continued sending proof-of-life photos back and forth, at least once a week—it had become a way to stay connected during busy days and opposite schedules. In the last few weeks, I’d received: an oar stuck in mud; a heap of life jackets in an open truck bed; legs crossed on a wooden deck railing, dirty sneakers half blocking the sunset.

I slid my phone into my back pocket and began my morning routine, tracing a path across our property. A decade here, and I could walk the grounds with my eyes closed, day or night. First, the expanse of back greenway with the periodic bench swing, where guests often had picnics and occasionally forgot a blanket, or an empty bottle, or food (but that would be gone by morning, if so). Then, the gated section along the side wall, with the hot tub, where there was currently one inn-issued towel forgotten on the brick patio, which I shook out and tossed in the bin against the wall.

Along the perimeter of the building, I checked the flower beds for any damage from animals, and the path lights for tangled cords or stakes that had become dislodged. I glanced toward the cabins, but nothing was stirring. Nothing but green grass and rocky outcrops from here to the trees.

A rustle in the tree line, and I froze. It wouldn’t be the first time a bear emerged onto the clearing, drawn by curiosity, or food left behind by a guest. But it was just a deer there now, staring back at me on its own high alert. I took a single step forward, and it darted back into the woods. A quick flutter of movement through the brush, and then it was gone.

As I turned back, I noticed movement through the trees by the employee lot: Someone crouched low near the carriage house.

My heart stilled, and I walked quietly in that direction, careful not to give myself away. The person stood, and I caught a clearer glimpse—a familiar, slightly hunched figure: Celeste.

She raised a hand as I approached, waiting for me to close the distance. The Celeste I knew looked much different from the Celeste in the photos that hung from the inn. As if, when she’d molded this place to her liking, it had molded her in return. The windswept brown hair now heavily laced through with gray, like the fog rolling through. Calloused hands and nails kept short, everything about her efficient. She projected a steadiness, a seriousness.

“Good morning, Celeste,” I said as I approached the back garden gate. Celeste was even shorter than I was, with hair falling to her midback. Up close, she had wide-set features, striking green eyes, and a downturned mouth that gave her an air of gravity. She was also generous and protective, with a wild and unrestrained laugh if you could surprise her into it, and the three great loves of her life were: this inn, her husband Vincent, and the mountain, in that order. Her husband had died a decade earlier, in the year before I arrived, so the mountain was bumped up a spot. She was up and on that trail more mornings than not, at dawn, like there was something new to discover each day.

But she wasn’t wearing her hiking boots this morning. Just khakis and a brown T-shirt and dark sneakers, which were currently toeing the mud in front of her.

“Someone left a cigarette out here, can you believe it?” she said with her trademark raspy voice. “Look around at this place.” She held her arms out wide. “How fast do they think it would take for everything to burn?”

Judging by the mud, and by the water I felt under the soles of my shoes as I approached, I didn’t think there was much of a fire hazard right now, but that was beside the point. She was probably more upset about the lack of courtesy, the fact that someone had encroached so far onto the territory she considered her own. Though there was nothing to designate it as such.

“We can put up a sign,” I said, not for the first time.

Celeste frowned, lines deepening between her eyes, around the corners of her mouth. “We don’t need signs, just common sense.” Then her focus shifted to somewhere over my shoulder. “Tell me about our mystery guest,” she said.

I smiled tightly. Celeste was probably out here waiting for me, for this very purpose. I ran through the possibilities of how she had heard so quickly: Georgia, even though I thought she would’ve left that up to me; Cory, who could’ve called her directly; or someone down at the tavern, who had heard about it from him. A place like this, a place with our type of history, information had a way of moving fast through the channel of people who had lived here forever.

“He’s in Cabin Four,” I answered.

“I see.” I heard it in her voice: A disappointment. A warning. “And tell me,” she said, turning back toward her house. “Is he leaving today?”

I fell into stride beside her. “I think, but I’m not sure.” I had charged a single night to his credit card, but had not confirmed. Maybe I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Well, let’s go ahead and be sure, dear.” Celeste attempted to soften her critiques by including herself in them. We should be more careful with the glass; and We don’t want to upset the guests; and Let’s try to keep up. The dear was new. It didn’t sound particularly gentle, but I took what I could get. Celeste didn’t give a compliment that hadn’t been earned, and often not even then. But I felt them in the things she entrusted to my care.

“Of course,” I said.

She stopped just outside the small gated garden at the back of the carriage house. “We could even find out what he wanted, while we were at it.”

“We will,” I said, my hand resting on a white picket fence.