I spend my first night at the Grande Lucia Resort eating Twizzlers and googling Hayden Anderson while convincing myself the world isn’t ending.
First I read a dozen rave reviews of his book. Then I stumble across a Publishers Weekly article that estimates its first year’s US sales to be upwards of two million. Lastly, just to torture myself, I watch an interview with Hayden and the book’s subject, Len Stirling, wherein Len informs the interviewer that he’d already considered nine writers before Hayden even threw his hat in the ring. Hayden, without any trace of humor or irony, leans forward to add, “I’m very competitive.”
I cut my own groan short.
There’s still a chance Margaret will choose to work with me.
Maybe she’d rather work with a woman. Maybe she always roots for the underdog. Maybe she just has a natural distaste for tall, muscular, talented men who write the kind of biographies that not only don’t make a person fall asleep but also go so far as to make said person weep multiple times while she’s reading alone at the bar of her neighborhood taqueria back in Highland Park.
There could be lots of reasons why she doesn’t want to work with Hayden, and surely there could be at least several why she would want to work with me.
I nod to myself, more enthusiastically than I feel, as I flop back on the cheery gingham bedspread, gazing out the window, upside down, toward the beach beyond the hotel’s courtyard.
I should’ve known a secret like Margaret’s whereabouts couldn’t last forever.
It had all started four months ago, when my profile on the former child star Bella Girardi came out. That piece was the thing I was absolute proudest of in my career thus far. I had a full folder of sweet emails from former colleagues and glowing screenshots of online chatter about the story after it went live.
And all of that, in itself, would’ve been more than enough to make the weeks of writing and rewriting and back-and-forths with my fact-checkers and editor all worth it.
But at the bottom of one very short email there was also a little something extra.
Loved the piece, Linda
That was it. No more information. And when I emailed Linda back, I got no reply.
I spent two weeks researching any connection Margaret might have to Georgia (none that I could find), and googling combinations of her name with “art” and “island,” to no avail. Margaret Ives vanished entirely from public view in the early two thousands, and mostly the rumor mill seemed to suggest she’d married an Italian olive farmer half her age and settled down on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
At first, I was ninety percent sure Linda was lying or misinformed.
There was no way Margaret Ives was in Georgia, on a little island that survived on local tourism, within a long day’s drive of the west Tennessee hometown of her late husband, Cosmo Sinclair.
But the idea wouldn’t let go of me. The rumor had to come from somewhere, I thought, even as I tried to talk myself out of my innate optimism.
I started trawling online message boards. Anything to do with Cosmo’s music, with the illustrious Ives family, with Margaret’s disappearance.
Nothing. On any of them.
And then I found the conspiracy theorists. People posting pictures of “Elvis” at a mall in Tuscaloosa. Or JFK wearing a bucket hat and a barely buttoned shirt, white chest hair spilling out around his gold chain necklace, in Miami. It took a while to find the Margaret post, just because the mystery of what happened to her had faded with time.
People knew about Ives Media, and they knew about the family’s palatial estate (now owned by the state and open for tours). They of course knew about the whole snafu with Margaret’s sister and the cult, and they could probably instantly call to mind the famous black-and-white photograph of Margaret and Cosmo running, hand in hand, up the courtroom steps the day that they eloped, his blond hair slicked back and hers teased into the beehive style of the time.
But after Cosmo’s tragic death, his widow had largely retreated from the glare of the spotlight. So that when she disappeared altogether, twenty years ago, no one was quite so interested as they might’ve been.
Most people had simply accepted that we’d never find out what happened to her. Just another Amelia Earhart, a woman lost to time.
But there were still some active Margaret Ives online communities dedicated to the rumors surrounding her vanishing. To debunking or proving them, depending on the poster’s point of view. They were treated like true-crime-junkie communities, bits of old interviews trotted out as evidence for or against a favorite theory.
Those specific message boards got me nowhere.
The Not So Dead Celebrities message board, however, led me here, to Little Crescent Island.
And if I could find her through that post, there’s no telling how many other Hayden Andersons might be flying cross-country to Little Crescent Island this very minute.
My phone buzzes on the mattress beside me, and I feel around until I find it. My stomach rises expectantly—maybe Margaret’s already made a decision—but then I see the screen.
Theo. Now, a different sensation rumbles in my stomach, that anxious flutter I still get when I hear from my on-again, off-again not-boyfriend.
How’d it go with the heiress? he asks. I’m touched he remembered. Probably too touched. I haven’t talked about much else the last few weeks. But still! He reached out to check in—that’s something!
I hesitate over how to phrase it and settle on: She’s intriguing and her house is a dream and I want the job so, so, so badly.
All true. It wouldn’t do me any good to add and I’m terrified I’m not going to get it, because a six-foot-three rock face of a man with a Pulitzer and a scowl to freeze a Gorgon is on the scene.
I watch the phone for a minute, two, three. I set it aside. I was drawn to Theo for his easy confidence and his laid-back, carefree way of moving through the world. There’s something so appealing about a person who doesn’t take anything too seriously. Until you have to text with one. Theo’s terrible at it. To be fair, I’m not amazing myself, but he’s the king of sending a message, to which I immediately reply, and then waiting a full day to acknowledge my response.
By then I may have lost my dream job and also fully melted into this bed, the puddle formerly known as the writer Alice Scott.
“Get yourself together, Scott!” I cry, pitching myself back onto my feet and slapping my laptop shut.
“You’re on a beautiful island with a growling stomach and an open schedule,” I tell myself, snatching my phone and stuffing my feet into my sandals. “Might as well make the most of it.”
Little Crescent Island is a vacation destination, but it’s not a nightlife hot spot. Most of the people here seem to be either retirees or families with kids, and it’s nine o’clock on a Tuesday night, so pickings are slim on the main drag.
The first open restaurant I come to is called Fish Bowl, and the menu posted out front seems to be ninety percent alcohol and ten percent seafood.
Inside, it’s cramped and wonderfully kitschy, with bamboo wall paneling and fishnets suspended from the ceiling, all manner of colorful plastic fish and glow-in-the-dark seaweed caught in them. A ponytailed server in a tight white shirt and short shorts whisks past me, tray in hand, and says cheerfully, “Sit anywhere you want, hon. We’re slow tonight.”
There are plenty of open tables, but two older gentlemen in matching bowling shirts are sitting at the bar, and I’m feeling kind of chatty, so I head their way. Right as I’m sidling onto a stool two down from them, though, they’re tossing money onto the glossy, dark wooden countertop and standing to go.
One catches my eyes, and I flash a smile.
He smiles back. “Highly recommend the Captain’s Bowl!”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I promise, and he tips an invisible hat before shuffling off after his companion. On the way out, the two of them stop to have a word with the ponytailed server, and she gives the lover of the Captain’s Bowl a peck on the cheek, so either they’re all locals or this place just has over-the-top service.
I go back to perusing the menu, resuming a practically lifelong debate of mine: whether to order fish tacos or fish and chips.
I’m still working on this when someone plops a massive bowl of startlingly blue liquid, ice, and roughly five fruit spears down in front of me. I look up, surprised, to find the ponytailed server smiling at me from behind the bar. “Captain’s Bowl,” she says. “Courtesy of the captains themselves.”
“Oh?” I glance toward the front door, the gentlemen from earlier long gone now. “What are they the captains of?”
“Uncle Ralph is the captain of the bowling team, and Cecil is the captain of this restaurant,” she muses. “Each has his own seat of power, but Cecil’s carries a bit more weight here, understandably.”
“Well, next time you see him, thank him for me,” I say.
She nods once. “Will do. Now, are you eating too tonight or just swimming?” She tips her chin toward the gargantuan bowl of violently unnatural blue, and I burst out laughing.
“What’s even in this?” I ask.
“Everything,” she says. “Plus some Coca-Cola.”
I take a tiny sip through the neon-pink straw, and it feels like I just inhaled sugar, then poured gasoline down my throat, but in a fun way.
“Food?” the woman—her name tag says Sheri—asks again.
I tell her my predicament, tacos versus fish and chips.
“Tacos,” she says decisively. “Always go with the tacos.”
“Perfect.” I set my menu down, and she whirls off through the door behind the bar. I look down at my drink and burst into laughter again. I’ve never been a big drinker, but I’d give this concoction a ten out of ten on presentation alone. I snap a picture and text it to Theo while I start nibbling on the first spear of fruit. You as a drink, he replies immediately. Have fun!
I will! I tell him, then set my phone down and give the restaurant another once-over. Other than me, there are two parties present at the moment: a family of five at the table under the front windows, and a guy nursing an ice water and eating a salad at the tiny booth back by the bathroom hallway.
He looks up from his water at that exact moment.
Nearly black hair, angular nose, a stern brow.
I whip back around to face the bar, nearly capsizing my stool in the process. I grab the edge of the counter to steady myself, heart racing. It probably isn’t even him. It’s probably my mind and the glow-in-the-dark ceiling playing tricks on me, forming Hayden Andersons out of random shadows.
I take another small sip of Captain’s Bowl to steel myself and then slowly, casually, throw a glance over my shoulder toward the booth.
He’s no longer looking this way. Instead he’s staring down at something in front of him, his brow tightly furrowed. Hunched over the tiny table like that, he gives the impression of a bear at a tea party, everything around him just a little too small and breakable.
Definitely him.
And seeing him now, a not-so-small part of me wants to run and hide. Which makes no sense.
He’s not a grizzly. He’s a guy who happens to want the same job as me. A guy who wrote a book I loved!
It’s ridiculous to treat him like some kind of enemy, just because we both want to write Margaret’s story. And it’s ridiculous to sit here and ignore him when we’re ten feet apart.
I should say hi.
Just one more sip of Captain’s Bowl for good luck, and then I hop down from my stool and cross the restaurant to stand in front of Hayden’s table.
He doesn’t look up. I give him a second to finish his page, but even after he taps to the next one, he doesn’t peel his eyes off his e-reader.
“Hi!” I chirp.
He flinches at the sound of my voice, then slowly, very slowly, drags his eyes up to mine from beneath a creased brow.
“We met earlier?” I remind him. “I’m Alice.”
“I remember,” he says, his voice a flat rumble.
“I actually already know who you are,” I say.
One of his dark eyebrows arches.
I slide into the booth, across from him, our knees bumping together. I’d always wondered why it seemed like enormously tall men tend to date adorably tiny women, and now I have my answer, apparently: A man as tall as Hayden Anderson can’t comfortably sit opposite anyone over five three. I’m about six inches into the red here.
I turn to perch sideways instead. He’s still staring at me with that brow arched, the visual equivalent of a question mark.
“Because of your book,” I explain. “Our Friend Len. I loved it. I mean, obviously. Everyone who read it loved it. After the Pulitzer, hearing that from a random woman in a bar probably feels a little anticlimactic, but still, I wanted you to know.”
His shoulders relax, just a bit. “Are you a friend or family?”
“What?” I say.
“Of Margaret’s,” he clarifies.
“Oh, neither.” I wave a hand. “I’m a writer too.”
His gaze dips down me again, sizing me up now that he has this new information. His irises are lighter than I thought. Still brown, but a pale shade of it.
“What sort of things do you write?” he asks.
“All sorts,” I say. “A lot of human interest, and pop culture stuff. I work at The Scratch.”
His face remains completely impassive. I try a different tack: “Have you ever been to Georgia?”
“First time,” he says.
“Really?” I say, surprised. “Where are you from?”
“New York,” he says.
“The city or the state?” I ask.
“City,” he replies.
“Born and raised?” I say.
“No,” he says.
“Then where’d you grow up?” I ask.
“Indiana,” he says.
“Did you like it?” I ask.
His brow sinks into a scowl, his wide mouth still keeping to an utterly straight line. “Why?”
I laugh. “What do you mean why?”
“Why would you want to know if I liked growing up in Indiana?” he says, face and voice perfectly matched in surliness.
I fight a smile. “Because I’m considering buying it.”
His eyes narrow, irises seeming to darken. “Buying what?”
“Indiana,” I say.
He stares.
I can’t fight it anymore. The amusement wins out, and another laugh escapes me. “I’m just trying to get to know you,” I explain.
He sets his forearms on the table, his posture very nearly a challenge. His head tilts to the left, and he says, quite possibly, the last thing I’m expecting: “This isn’t going to work.”
I draw back, surprised and confused. “What isn’t?”
“You, trying to throw me off my game,” he growls.
“And what ‘game’ exactly are we talking about here?” I say, glancing around the now totally empty Fish Bowl. “Wait, Sheri?” I spin back to face him, our knees colliding again.
“Who is Sheri,” he says, with some distaste.
“Our server!” I drop my voice, in case she pops out of the kitchen. “If you’re trying to make a move, all you had to do was say so, and I would’ve gone right back to my fishbowl—”
“Not the server,” he interrupts. “The book.”
“The book?” I repeat. Then it dawns on me. He means the book. Margaret’s book.
Hayden goes on: “I don’t know what this”—he waves one large hand between us—“is supposed to accomplish exactly, but this is Margaret Ives we’re talking about. I want this job and I’m not going to back off, so you can stop.”
At first, it stings, being talked to like this by a stranger. That someone whose work I admired has just accused me of trying to somehow professionally thwart him when I actually was just trying to get to know him.
But underneath the sting, there’s another feeling growing, getting traction all through my limbs.
Hope.
In life, I’ve learned there’s almost always a silver lining. Here’s one now.
Hayden’s brow furrows, his arms sliding off the table. “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Smiling,” he says dryly.
I snort out a laugh and slide out of the booth to stand, practically floating back to the bar, because his reaction has told me one important thing—I mean, aside from the fact that he’s a mistrustful cynic. “Because,” I call to him, “now I know I still have a chance.”
He rolls his eyes, and I plop back down on my stool, buzzing with excitement, just as Sheri bumps the kitchen door open with one hip and marches out with my basket of fried fish tacos. “I see that Captain’s Bowl got you grinning,” she says.
“It’s great,” I tell her with another big, appreciative slurp. Probably one of the last few I’ll be able to handle, honestly, unless I plan on being hospitalized or arrested later.
“Glad to hear it,” she says. “You’re not driving, are you?”
“No, I’m over at the Grande Lucia, so I’m on foot tonight,” I tell her.
“Aw, my husband, Robbie, and I honeymooned there,” she tells me.
Sheri doesn’t look quite old enough to be married, but I guess that’s going by Los Angeles standards. Most of the girls I went to high school with are married now, and my mom and dad were married by the time they were twenty-three, though they didn’t have my sister or me until much later.
“Get you anything else?” she asks, one hand on her hip.
“Actually,” I say, “I’d like to send a drink to someone, if you don’t mind.” A little something to brighten his mood the way he just brightened mine.
Sheri’s eyes wander over my shoulder and back to the corner, locking onto the only other patron in this fine establishment. “What are we thinking here? Whiskey? Beer?”
“Do you have anything bigger or bluer than this?” I ask, pointing down toward my bowl.
“Aside from the freshly cleaned toilets, no,” she says, “but I can throw in some candied hibiscus to spice things up if that helps.”
“That,” I say, “would be perfect.”
