On Monday, I’m working over dinner at Rum Room when I find something strange.
I’m prepping for tomorrow’s interview with Margaret, to continue her grandfather’s story after his affair with the actress Nina Gill ended, and I come across a news item, in Vanity Fair, covering the opulent 1949 wedding of Gerald’s niece, Ruth Allen. The little princess he’d raised more devotedly than his own children.
Ruth was twenty-one years old when she married the actor turned decorated World War II pilot turned talent manager James Oller, and their wedding was the event of the summer.
Starlets, politicians, famous artists of all stripes descended on the grounds of the House of Ives to celebrate the union. Margaret and her sister, Laura, eleven and eight years old at the time, acted as flower girls for their first cousin once removed, wearing crowns of vibrant yellow sunflowers to match Ruth’s bouquet.
Even Nina Gill, accompanied by her husband, had attended, sitting on the same expansive lawn as Gerald for the first time since their affair ended twenty-two years earlier.
The wedding festivities lasted three days, and were completely devoid of photography, which made every society journalist covering the affair that much more committed to making the reader feel as though she were there.
It’s effective. I’ve read four articles about the wedding back-to-back, my food going cold on the table at Rum Room, when I hit on the thing that jolts me back to the present.
To my reality.
It’s a line that contains Ruth’s middle name. Not legal middle name—a quick search tells me she doesn’t have one, officially. But apparently, among close family, her full name was Ruth Nicollet Ives Allen.
A sizzle of recognition goes down my spine. Where do I know that name from?
It only takes a second to hit me. I scroll back through my notes, double-checking.
The very first inn that Lawrence Richard Ives purchased, to capitalize on other prospectors once he’d struck silver ore. Margaret had called it the Ebner. When Lawrence had first bought it, it was called the Arledge. And then, for a chunk of time in between that, just like I thought: the Nicollet. Same spelling and everything.
Coincidence? Or is Nicollet a family name?
But if it is, it makes even less sense that Margaret referred to the hotel by its current name. Nicollet should’ve been burned into her brain.
I do a quick search of “Nicollet” paired with “Lawrence Ives,” and the results are scant. The only thing of note is the website for the current-day Ebner, whose “History” page proudly declares its former ownership by the famed family, where it also lists its previous monikers.
I shake my head. Most likely, Margaret read something years ago about the Nicollet’s new name, and simply called it by its latest name because that was what came to mind. And maybe Nicollet is a family name, but not one she’s familiar with.
It’s a far more likely explanation than the one my brain keeps circling: that Margaret Ives doesn’t want me looking closely at that hotel, even as she pretends to bare the Ives family’s history and soul.
What Hayden said keeps replaying in my mind.
Margaret Ives isn’t telling me the truth.
I shovel some now-cold lobster mac into my mouth and pull up the email address for the Ebner Hotel.
On Tuesday, we’re sitting out back in Adirondack chairs, sipping more of Jodi’s incredible mint lemonade, and I decide to take a big swing.
“What’s significant about the name Nicollet?” I ask.
Margaret’s glass clinks against her teeth. Rather than follow through with her sip, she returns the glass to the arm of her chair.
“What do you mean?” she says. Her tone is so innocent that, if not for that flicker of surprise in her reaction, I’d be sure I’d read too much into nothing.
“The Ebner Hotel,” I say. “It was called the Nicollet, for a long stretch of time when your family owned it. And Ruth Ives Allen’s unofficial middle name was Nicollet.”
Her head cocks, like she’s trying to anticipate where this is going.
“I’m curious why you’d call the inn by its new name,” I explain. “Have you been there recently?” I disregard the fact that she’s already told me she hasn’t. If she wants to give me new information now, I don’t want to call her a liar for withholding it earlier.
She considers for a beat, her eye contact unyielding. Then she sighs. “I suppose you’ll find out now, one way or another.”
“Probably,” I agree. “But remember: I’ve signed a nondisclosure. I’m not going to force you to publicly share anything you don’t want to. Whatever you tell me, it doesn’t have to go beyond this room.”
Her eyes narrow. Then, slowly, she leans forward and stops both of my recorders. “This includes the boy.”
“What boy?” I ask.
“I have two NDAs,” she says. “So whatever I tell you, you can’t take it to him. You understand that, don’t you?”
The word boy is so wrong that it takes me thirty seconds to track her train of thought. “Are we talking about Hayden here?”
She nods. “You’ve known I was here for months, and no one else has tracked me down, which makes me think I can trust you. But him, I’m not so sure of. I’m still figuring him out.”
I’m surprised by the swell of protectiveness in my gut. “You can trust him too. He won’t break your confidence.”
One of her silvery brows curves. It tugs on her lips, pulling her mouth into a sly smile. “Oh? So you’re campaigning for him to get the job now?”
“Definitely not,” I say quickly. “I want this. And I’ll do a great job. I know that. I just…You can trust him, that’s all.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” she says. “But still, my point remains. You’re about to be the first person outside of my immediate family to hear something, and I don’t want it going any further just yet.”
I set my pen down. “I swear.”
She gathers herself for a second. “My grandfather Gerald was the one to rename the inn. In 1919.”
“The year your great-grandfather Lawrence died,” I point out—I noticed the correlation while I was on the Arledge/Nicollet/Ebner’s History web page.
Margaret nods. “I told you that in those final days of Lawrence’s life, he was raving to his former business partner and apologizing to his little brother. But there was one more thing he kept saying.” A look of resolve steals over her, her shoulders relaxing as if whatever she’s just decided to share has given her some measure of relief. “Nicollet.”
I’ve read it dozens of times in the last couple of days, but still the way she says it, almost reverentially, sends goose bumps prickling down my arms. “Who was that?”
“The one it was all for.” The corner of her mouth twitches into a smile, small and fleeting. “That’s what Lawrence told her. Nicollet, this was all for you. Tell me to come home, and I’ll leave all of this behind. Gerald had never even heard his father say the name before. And he only found out who Nicollet was after Lawrence died, when Gerald read his father’s journals.”
A lover, I think at first, but then it dawns on me. “His sister.”
She nods confirmation. “In my family, that’s what the name came to represent: the person you’d do anything for. The only one who could make you give it all up. That’s why they gave Ruth that middle name.”
My chest pinches. “That’s beautiful.” I mean it. But it doesn’t answer the question. “Why didn’t you just…tell me about that?”
She studies me, another small smile unfurling over her lips. “And here I thought you’d already figured it out.”
I hadn’t, evidently, but there’s nothing like a challenge to get your brain turning, and as soon as she says it, my mind turns into a prime-time police procedural’s serial killer board, pinning details and suspects together with little bits of red string. Ruth’s mother, Gigi Ives Allen, wasn’t in the room with her father when he died. She wasn’t even in the country, until well after her father died. Only Gerald was there, at their father Lawrence’s bedside, to hear his ranting about Dicky and Thomas and Nicollet. Only Gerald had read their father’s diaries.
Then he’d fled the rest of his family, shortly after Lawrence’s death. He’d met Nina in Los Angeles, and they’d passed nearly a decade together, before her mystery illness took her overseas and she married someone else.
Right around the time Ruth Ives Allen was born.
“She wasn’t Gigi’s daughter,” I blurt, before I’m even sure of it.
Margaret doesn’t look scandalized or even surprised by the theory. If anything, she looks a little satisfied, slightly…smirky. “I knew you’d get there,” she says approvingly.
“Nina’s mystery illness,” I say. “The time spent in the Alps…it was a pregnancy?”
“Nine months would’ve been too suspicious,” Margaret explains. “They had to drag it out. And publicize it, when they were able. Staged hospital visits, complete with photographs, in those first few months of the pregnancy, and then again right after the birth, which happened overseas. When Gigi’s husband died, Gerald and Nina saw an opportunity to bring their daughter home without a scandal.”
“But their affair was an open secret,” I point out. “I mean, even Dove Franklin knew about it.”
“Yes, but back then having an affair was one thing. Maybe everyone wasn’t doing it, but loads of people in Gerald and Nina’s circles were. Not to mention all the showmances of the era. But Gerald was raised Catholic and was never going to subject Rosalind to a divorce. And even if he had been willing, the timeline wouldn’t have borne out, and Ruth would’ve been the one to suffer. Nina didn’t want that for her daughter, and neither did Gerald. So they split up. She married someone else. He raised their daughter as his niece, and they were only ever in the same room again the week Ruth got married. He gave up the woman he loved to be the father he should’ve been the first time around, and Nina…” Margaret’s voice settles into a flat, matter-of-fact tone. “Well, she gave up everything.”
The words seem to echo around us. It takes me close to a minute to muster a reply. “Did…did Ruth know?”
Margaret’s gaze falls. “No. You remember what happened, in the end, to Ruth Allen and her husband.”
My heart clenches. I can picture the headlines and the black-and-white photographs so clearly, their small plane mangled on a jetty south of San Francisco. “It was a tragedy.”
Margaret’s throat bobs. “I always thought the worst part was, she was so much more than that. She was smart and wickedly funny, and so kind she’d stop to help a caterpillar onto a branch before the gardener cut our lawns. More than anyone I know, she lived her short life in raging color, and all she’s remembered for is what she didn’t get to do.”
“Maybe by strangers,” I say. “But not by the people who knew her. And someday, everyone who reads your story will have the chance to know the real Ruth. The truth.”
A sad smile passes over Margaret’s lips. “Maybe.” She takes a long sip of lemonade, then sets it back in its ring of condensation and looks at me, shielding her face against the sun. “A few years after Ruth’s wedding, Nina Gill came to Gerald and begged him to finally tell their daughter the truth. Nina was sick. Actually sick. Lung cancer. In the fifties, the prognosis for that wasn’t so hot. Somehow, she managed to get Gerald to agree. But they never got the chance. The weekend of my sixteenth birthday, LP—Ruth,” she corrects herself, “and James were flying down to the House of Ives, and their plane malfunctioned on takeoff.”
Margaret clears her throat. “Hard not to feel like it was the truth that killed her. Like even the universe had bought Gerald’s lie, but once it figured out that Ruth Allen was well and truly Ruth Ives, her happiness couldn’t be allowed to continue.”
I swallow, emotion tightening my windpipe. “Do you believe that? That your family is cursed?”
“No, honey.” The flash of a smile doesn’t reach her once-sparkling blue eyes. “My family is the curse.”
An alarm goes off on her phone then, cracking the moment in half. “Ah,” she says, eyeing the screen. “Time for my massage.”
I clear my throat, emerging from the dark cloud of her story and reacclimating to this reality: a day full of sunshine, the smell of salt water and grass and pine, a world in which massages and mint lemonade are at your fingertips instead of loss and sorrow.
“I thought you didn’t leave the property,” I say.
“I don’t, usually,” she says.
“So Jodi knows Shiatsu?” I guess.
She cackles at this. “Good lord, it wouldn’t surprise me, but no. We have a routine. A gal comes to the house. I’m already lying on my stomach by the time she gets here.”
“And that works? She’s never seen your face?” I say, my skepticism only mounting.
Her narrow shoulders lift. “Maybe a glimpse or two across the years, but she’s young. I doubt she’d have any idea who I was. Doubt anyone would. The world’s moved on.”
“That’s not true,” I say. For all Margaret knows, this massage therapist is “Linda,” who emailed me the tip about Margaret’s life down here. A tip whose origins Margaret insisted she had no guess at, when I first tracked her down. I’m about to suggest as much when Margaret pushes herself up onto her feet.
“It is true,” she says, adamant. “The world moved on. Just like I hoped it would.”
On Wednesday morning, I step out into the thick mist and immediately kick something sitting on the walkway.
A cup of iced coffee—now toppled onto its side and leaking onto the stone—beside a paper bag. I crouch to pick them up, heart floating upward at the chocolate croissant inside the bag and the word scribbled on the outside of the coffee cup.
Friends?
I carry my bounty with me to the driveway and head toward downtown.
The gallery that carries Margaret’s wind chimes and mosaics sits between a seafood shack and an ice cream shop, one block from the water, and because this is a world of retirees and vacationers, it hardly matters that it’s late morning on a weekday.
The shop is crowded with women in sun hats, men in sandals, and teenagers either glued to their phones or surreptitiously checking each other out.
I fight a smile as I pass a couple of sunburnt ladies excitedly cooing over a “darling little turtle mosaic”—not one of Margaret’s, of course.
But there is a large rectangular one framed in the dead center of the back wall, a spiral of pale blues, the shades so similar that you can’t quite see the pattern until you squint. And when I do, it’s like one of those old Magic Eyes, a clear path coming into focus.
Unicursal, with one way in and out.
I find it strange that someone like Margaret, who comes from a family so thoroughly ensconced in history and culture, would be drawn to this idea, that no matter what you do, you’ll end up in the same place.
It would be much easier for me to imagine her strangely specific upbringing shaping her into the kind of person who fancies herself the master of her own fate.
Then again, maybe suffering the kind of loss she has makes a person need to yield some control. To stop asking What could I have done differently? and just accept that this is the path she’s on.
One that started with a man who tried to control the world with money, and then one who tried to control it with the written word, and eventually led to her and Cosmo Sinclair in a doomed car chase.
Maybe it’s a kind of comfort to her, to believe she was never the one in the driver’s seat.
Even that day. Even when she lost the love of her life in a stupid, preventable accident.
“This one’s underappreciated.”
I jump at the voice just over my shoulder and turn to find the shopkeeper smiling up at me, her curly hair held back from her freckled face with a neon-green headband to reveal large wooden hoop earrings.
“Is it for sale?” I ask her.
“Technically,” she says. “But I can’t bring myself to drop the price any lower. I love it too much. So it will probably live here for the rest of its days.”
“How much?” I ask.
“Twenty-three hundred,” she says.
I try not to flinch, which makes her crack a smile.
“Yep, that’s about the usual reaction I get,” she says. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you buy as a vacation memento. But I thought someone would at least want it for their vacation home down here.” She leans toward me conspiratorially. “You interested?”
“Currently I don’t even have a wall big enough for this,” I say, “let alone the money to buy it. Who’s the artist?”
“Her name’s Irene Mayberry,” she says. “A local. A gruff sort, not very chatty, but she’s a true artist.”
“Not to be a plebeian,” I say, “but how exactly can you tell?”
She screws up her mouth as she thinks. “I think what it is…is that just from looking at it, you can tell she had a reason for making it. I mean, aside from making it to sell, you know? A lot of the people I work with, I’d consider artisans. They’re great at their craft and they make things they love, and that they know my customers will love. And that’s extremely valuable.
“But there’s another way of making things too. Irene’s stuff…every time I look at it, I can’t help but feel like she was trying to find something. Or maybe get somewhere. Like she was bushwhacking through a very dense forest because something she just had to know lay on the other side.”
She flashes a knowing smile. “Or who knows? Maybe she’s a total charlatan, and I’m an easy mark. Either way, I like it.”
“Me too,” I say honestly. “Do you have any smaller ones? Or…more specifically, cheaper ones.”
She chuckles and jerks her head toward the opposite wall. “I might have just the thing.”
I follow her to a much smaller mosaic, no larger than five inches by five inches, the slivers of glass so small they must’ve been pieced together with tweezers and a magnifying glass, and—unlike every other piece I’ve seen of Margaret’s—composed of amber, red, translucent gold, a tiny tight spiral that almost looks like a galaxy.
“Two hundred and fifty,” the shopkeeper says.
Then I see the tiny penciled title at the bottom right corner, just inside the frame. Beside Margaret’s assumed initials, her own in reverse, in her own handwriting: Nicollet.
“I’ll take it,” I say.
