One of Hayden’s hands furls around the nape of my neck, tipping my head back, and at the small sound that escapes me, his tongue sweeps over mine, a shimmer of heat going through me. My hands slide up his chest. One of his glides down to my waist, pulling me toward him, and then, when I wrap mine tight around the back of his neck, it moves to my ass, lifting me against him.
I arch up, trying to get more of him. His heat, the friction of his chest against mine, the ridge of his erection pressing into me.
I break the kiss just long enough to whisper, “Come inside.”
He pushes back from me so abruptly, I stumble before catching myself.
“Fuck,” he says to himself, running his hands up his face and over his hair, like he’s putting himself together.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, still startled and off balance.
I essentially watch the haze of lust clear from his eyes, replaced by something cold and stern. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you the wrong idea.”
I take a half step back, a reedy laugh sneaking out of me. “And what idea is that?”
“That I was interested in something like this,” he says evenly. “With you.”
Heat rushes into my face, and I can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or anger.
To make things just a little worse, he adds, “I’m not.”
“Yeah. I got that.” I turn, searching for my jacket and bag, which I dropped in the fervor. I snap them up.
“Alice,” he says, almost chiding, like I’m the one being ridiculous here.
I try to remind myself he’s got his own stuff going on, that he’s probably not trying to be an asshole, but when I look up, he’s staring at me with those steely eyes and perfectly flat mouth of his.
“It’s really not personal,” he says.
Adding with you to the end of his statement about how this wasn’t something he’s interested in seems to suggest otherwise, but what do I know?
God, I couldn’t have possibly misread the signals that badly. Could I?
“I understand,” I lie, trying my hardest to smile. “I’m sorry too.”
He studies me for a moment, brow knit, both of us clearly unsure what to say. It’s not often that I’m rendered speechless, but I can’t think of a single thing that would make this less humiliating.
“I’m not going to hook up with someone,” he says, “whose dream job I’m about to take from them.”
My laugh is full throated, loud, and even a little bit angry.
The arrogance.
“You think you already have this, don’t you?” I demand. “Like I’m so insignificant I don’t stand a chance.”
His jaw sets. “I didn’t say you were insignificant.”
The rest of the sentiment, though, he has no issue with.
“Good night, Hayden,” I snort, and turn on my heel to march through the trees into my bungalow’s backyard, praying with every step that I never see Hayden Anderson again.
On Monday morning, I pretend not to see Hayden at Little Croissant, picking up a green tea after—judging by the sweat dripping down him—a productive run.
On Tuesday, eager to avoid another run-in, I again get coffee from another breakfast spot in Tourist Town on my way to meet Margaret.
It’s wretched—though the doughnuts are more than decent.
When I get to Margaret’s house, Jodi is weeding the front garden beds. “Margaret’s out back in the workshop,” she tells me. “Go on back.”
“Thanks, Jodi!” I chirp. Her only reply is a grunt.
I wind around the house, past the small swimming pool, to the white-clapboard-sided clubhouse just beyond it, the glass-paned French doors thrown open and Margaret visible moving around within.
The air is stiffer and hotter back here than it is out by the open ocean, and the high, unforgiving sun sends a rivulet of sweat down my neck and between my shoulder blades as I pick my way toward the small outbuilding.
From a distance, it looks like the floor inside is painted blue, but, as I get closer, I realize my mistake. It’s not painted at all.
It’s a massive mosaic, pieced together in glimmering shades of blue, white, green, amber. A massive mural of sea glass, arranged into a spiraling pattern of paths.
“It’s a labyrinth.” I look up toward the voice, shielding my eyes against the reflecting light to find Margaret in the back of the workshop. She’s wearing a lilac boilersuit with its sleeves rolled up, and her silver hair is knotted into a pom-pom atop her head. She pulls a pair of protective goggles from her eyes up onto her forehead as I step inside.
“Like a maze?” I ask, glancing around the room. A series of long, scarred tables have been arranged around the outside edge of the workshop, their tops covered in tools and wire, glass and shells and driftwood. Over each of the windows, an elaborate wind chime hangs, slowly twirling, waiting for a true breeze to make them dance.
“Not quite,” she says. “It’s unicursal. There’s only one path in and out. It’s not quite the game of a maze. You can’t get lost. You just walk the path, and it won’t be the shortest way to get you where you’re going, but you’ll wind up in the center eventually. As you walk, you’re supposed to meditate.”
“On?” I ask.
“Whatever you want,” she says.
“What do you meditate on?” I ask.
“Usually, what I want for lunch.” Even the sparkle in her eye can’t distract from the obvious dodge. Margaret Ives has an answer locked and loaded to that question—and I’m not getting it. Not yet.
I wander around the workshop, studying the things she’s made and the things she’s working on at the tables. It’s cooler here, thanks to the shade of the roof and the ceiling fans, but not by much. The humidity holds the summer in the workshop’s walls, and the open windows bring in nothing but brackishness.
I gently run my fingers through one of her wind chimes, listening to the soft clatter and tinkle. There are more mosaics on the walls, like the one on the floor, though smaller and trapped in both resin and driftwood frames. Most are abstract or arranged in geometric patterns. Like someone took a Hilma af Klint painting, shattered it, and put the pieces back together with their rough, jagged edges.
“Those don’t do so hot with the tourists,” Margaret says, coming to stand at my shoulder. “They mostly want turtles and palm trees.”
“They’re also a great tool for helping desperate journalists track you down,” I remind her.
She chuckles, turning back to her tool-strewn tables. “You mind if I work while we talk?”
“Sure—are we recording today?” I traipse after her, dropping my bag on the far end of the surface and sinking onto the schoolhouse-style stool there, feeling like I’m back in art class freshman year.
She makes a gesture like, Be my guest, then pulls her goggles back into place. I notice then that it’s not just tiny, smooth pieces of sea glass arranged in front of her, but also full bottles, aluminum cans, and, down on the floor, buckets of sand-and-grime-coated trash, things she must’ve found on the beach or maybe floating in the marsh.
There’s a sink in the rear corner of the space, and on the countertop next to it, more bottles and cans are arranged on a drying rack as though freshly rinsed.
“Here.” Margaret holds a pair of goggles out to me and I put them on, then set up my phone and recorder between us. She pulls on some purple work gloves, drapes a towel over a green beer bottle, and cracks a hammer down against it.
I try not to jump at the sound, but even muffled by the terry cloth, it’s harsh.
“So where did we leave off?” Margaret asks.
“Well…” I flip through my notes.
Another harsh crash as the hammer comes down again. I’ve conducted full interviews while an interviewee was pounding away at a Peloton stationary bike class. I should be able to drown out the sounds of Margaret’s work and focus.
She opens the towel to rearrange the pieces, then flops it back into place and keeps breaking them down.
I debate bringing up the Ebner Hotel of it all, right then. But if there is something worth poking around there, I don’t want her to close off before we can get to it. This month is about building trust. “Lawrence had just bought his first newspaper. He’d gotten settled in San Francisco and sent for his sister, but she wouldn’t come.”
“Right, right,” she says.
“But we don’t have to pick up there,” I say. “I’m excited to hear more about you, whenever you’re ready.”
“This is about me, Alice,” she says pointedly. “I told you that.”
“All right, then.” I gesture for her to go on.
Three more taps of the hammer first. Clink. Clink. Clink. “Lawrence’s sister begged him to come home and make amends, to stop his quest for more. Instead, he decided it was time to start a new family, one of his own. He was around forty when he met Amelia Lowe. Of the San Francisco Lowes.” As she says this, she does a little eye roll, like she knows it’s pretentious to describe someone this way, but it simply can’t be helped.
I suppress a laugh.
“A railroad family,” she explains. “AKA rich. Anyway, Amelia’s father hated Lawrence. Hated.” She notices my expression. “You’re surprised.”
“A bit,” I admit. “Everything I read suggested it was a kind of…not an arranged marriage, but, you know, a business decision. Like things used to be back then.”
She lifts her eyes to mine, a smirk lurking on her lips. “That’s by design. See, Lawrence wanted to marry Amelia, and Amelia wanted out from under her domineering father. She saw an opportunity with Lawrence, but her father forbade them from seeing each other. So they eloped.”
Margaret punctuates the word with a hearty whack of her hammer. “Mr. Lowe was furious of course, but by then, Lawrence had acquired four more papers. And wouldn’t you know it, in the days following their elopement, each of his five papers ran its own story about the union of these two powerful families. It was sheer flattery, praising the Lowes, spreading gossip about business that hadn’t happened yet. It forced Lowe’s hand.”
She opens the towel, arranges the glass, replaces the towel, swings the hammer.
“Amelia was welcomed right back into the fold, and what’s more, Mr. Lowe and Lawrence went into business together. Everyone got what they wanted out of it.”
“And then your grandfather Gerald was born, right?” I say. “A few years after Amelia and Lawrence got married?”
“That’s right.” She covers the glass with the towel again. Hits it with the hammer. “In 1875, Gerald Rupert Ives came screaming into the world.” She flicks a glance my way. “He was the one who built the House of Ives as the world knows it. But I’ve always thought of him as the beginning of the end. The stepping stone that decided the entire path. The first domino that tipped. The one who, for better or worse, set every moment of my life into motion.”
