Finding Reese (Tremont Lodge Series Book 1) Page 6

  “You wouldn’t understand. Hell, I don’t even understand.”

  “Try me.” When I open my eyes, Finn is leaning over me with one hand on the wall behind me and the other on my waist. His breath is fruity, like he’s been drinking my lemonade. I point to the wall behind him. He takes his hand off my waist and turns around to look at the picture.

  In the picture, the restaurant is packed. There are people in every booth and at every table. The spaces between are filled with wait staff to cater to the guests. A band is playing on a small stage in the center of the room—a singer, a guitar player, a keyboardist, and a drummer. If guests aren’t eating, they are watching the band…or watching the little girl who is dancing to the band in the only open space in the restaurant, right in front of the guitar player. And that little girl is me. I know it for sure because I’m wearing the sailor dress I’d been wearing the day that picture of our family was taken at Tremont Lodge. My hair is styled with two perfectly springy pigtails, and red patent leather shoes grace my feet. A man at a nearby table is clapping. The man is my father. He’s easily identifiable by the cigarette that hangs from his mouth and the receding hairline of his once plush brown head of hair. There is a woman sitting next to my father, her hand draped casually and familiarly over his broad shoulders. She has long blonde hair and a tight dress, her cleavage in full view, even from the picture. She is not my mother. I can’t stop the tears this time. They don’t rush out in heaving sobs, but their silent sting hurts my heart no less.

  Finn looks at the picture, and follows my finger to the little girl at the foot of the stage—me. He looks confused. I so understand. “Do you know her?” he asks. I shake my head yes.

  “Was she a relative?” I shake my head no.

  “That’s me.” Finn seems to relax, his shoulders falling from the tension I’d caused him.

  “Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know you’d been to Tremont before. What was it like back then?”

  “I…I don’t remember.”

  “Are you sure that’s you then?” he asks.

  “Positive. And that’s my father.” I point to him.

  “Cool. And that hot babe must be your mother.” He laughs, and the butterfly on his neck takes flight.

  “No,” I say.

  “Oh, Reese. Man, I am so sorry. I get it now. You think your dad was messing with some other woman at the lodge. How ironic that you saw that picture. I mean, how did you know it would be here?”

  “I didn’t, but I knew…I knew that I’d been here—.” I realize how much I don’t really want to be here at all right now. This was all a huge mistake. I should never have opened my mouth. No one knows my secrets. No one. Hell, even my own grandparents won’t talk about my parents. How could I be so stupid? The desire to fling myself off this mountain is very strong right now, though I’d never really do something so selfish, but I need to be alone—now. I start to walk away from Finn, leaving my shoes on the ground behind me.

  “No you don’t,” he says. “You are not leaving this mountain alone.”

  “I should never have involved you in my mess, Finn. Thanks for your help and all, but I have to go.”

  “And I’m going with you.” He grabs my hand, and I bat it away.

  “Dammit, Reese. At least let me get you down the mountain.” As I trip over a chair that’s been pulled out and almost go headfirst into a table, only catching myself before causing more pain than a stubbed toe, I relent.

  “Fine. You can deliver me to the dormitory.” Finn puts his hand on my back and leads me to the chair lifts.

  “Wait right here. Don’t move,” he says. “I’m going to tell Bree what we’re doing so she doesn’t worry.” I sit on the concrete curb near the chairlift and watch Finn walk off into the crowd. I can’t help but realize how pathetic I am that I can’t seem to spend a drama-free night on top of the mountain. My phone dings.

  Blake: When can I come and visit?

  The last thing I want is for my sixteen-year-old brother coming to Tremont Lodge. He doesn’t know anything about our family history with this place, and my grandparents made me swear that I wouldn’t tell him the real reason I was here. It’s a shocker they didn’t tie me down and lock me in a closet the minute I told them where I was spending my summer. “Don’t go digging your nose in business that’s closed up years ago, Reese,” my grandmother had said. “Ain’t no good gonna come of this place,” my grandfather had said. But would either one of them give me the answers that I wanted? No. Never. They’d made that clear many times over the years. So, the only way I’m going to learn why my parents left my brother and me in Room 1014 before we’d been found by hotel staff, abandoned and alone, is to go to the scene of the rejection. Maybe I won’t get any closer to the answers to the questions that keep me awake at night, but maybe I will. The next thing on my agenda: Find out who that woman in the picture is—the one way too cozy with my dad.

  “Okay, ready?” Finn puts out his hand for me to take. He pulls me up and directs me toward the next available chair lift which doesn’t take long as more people are coming up the mountain at this hour of the night than going down.

  When we are moving down the mountain, he drapes his arm around me and locks his hand onto my shoulder. “I’m not going to fall off,” I say, looking up at Finn who has worry lines across his forehead.

  “Just making sure.” He relaxes his grip but doesn’t let go.

  “Has it ever happened?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Has anyone ever fallen off the chair lift?”

  “Not while I’ve been here, but I’ve heard stories.”

  “That would be an awful way to die,” I say.

  “Don’t get any ideas. I’ve heard you have a pretty fierce right hook.” He laughs nervously.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  “If you mean taking care of you, it’s a pretty easy answer.” I raise my eyebrows as if to say, And? “I like you, Reese.” Despite the fact that a voice in the back of my mind tells me I’m just Finn’s hopeful summer fling, I rest my head against his shoulder and allow myself to relax. Because, truth be told, it’s nice to be liked, and it’s nice to be wanted. Finn seems satisfied by my silence and rests his head against mine, the butterfly landing softly between us, and I close my eyes. “Reese, we need to get off,” Finn whispers against my ear, slowly removing his arm from my shoulder. I blink open my eyes and watch the ground nearing below. When we step off the landing, he reaches down and starts to pick me up.

  “Finn!” I pull up Tinley’s dress before it falls down to my waist.

  “We have to cross a couple of cobblestone streets before we get to the dorm, and you left your shoes up there.” He points to the mountain. Light illuminates from the old restaurant, and the faint sound of music floats down.

  “I can walk.”

  “No way. I’m a staff landscaper here. I pull weeds from that street every week, and it’s full of chipped stone. You’ll tear your feet up.”

  “But I’ll look like a fool with you carrying me in front of everyone.”

  “I didn’t realize I was that repulsive,” Finn says.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s not a long walk, Reese. Deal with it.” I sigh. I don’t lay my head against Finn’s chest, not wanting anyone to get the wrong idea, so instead I try to talk about benign topics like the nice weather we’ve been having or what I expect to find Tinley watching on television when I get back to the room.

  “How’s your head?” Finn asks when he deposits me on the patio by the dormitory.

  “I feel great, Finn. Thanks for everything. I know it got a little weird up there.” Finn takes a strand of my hair and loops it around his finger.

  “No worries, Reese. This is a resort. You’re supposed to forget your problems here.” If only it was that easy.

  “Is that why you never left?” I ask.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Finn lets my hair go and drapes it behind my back
. I shiver when his hand grazes my back.

  “Are you cold?”

  “A little,” I lie.

  “Then let’s warm you up.” I shiver again as Finn takes my hand and leads me back to the stairs of the dormitory. But instead of leaving me to go to the A wing, he follows me up the stairs to my room.

  “Thanks again for everything, Finn. I totally get it if you don’t ever want to talk to me again.” I laugh, though the words I’ve spoken aren’t really funny.

  “Reese, what happened up there tonight, I…I don’t know how to make it better, but—.”

  “Finn, stop. There’s nothing you can do—.” His mouth finds mine before I can finish my sentence, kissing me firmly, the kind of kiss that leaves you needing air but wishing the sensation would pass so the kiss wouldn’t have to stop. He puts his arms around my waist and pulls me closer. The skin on the top of my chest rubs against his t-shirt, and I feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. This isn’t right. This isn’t good. Good things don’t happen at Tremont Lodge.

  “I have to go,” I say, moving away from Finn and slipping into my room before he has a chance to stop me.

  Chapter 8:

  Tinley’s eye looks better this morning. She could probably fool most people with her newly concocted story that she slipped and fell down the dormitory stairs on her way to work, but Helen won’t buy it. First, she’s wearing giant sunglasses to hide a supposed bug bite reaction. Now, this. No way, but that will be a battle Tinley will have to fight on her own.

  I take my wedge sandals which Bree handed back to me in the elevator this morning, and stuff them under the clean towels on the bottom of my cleaning cart. She was whistling Happy this morning. I guess she had a good night.

  I open the door to my fifth room of the morning and slip on a new pair of gloves. This is a kid room, meaning that there isn’t a clear place anywhere that isn’t littered with something related to children: sippy cups, portable cribs (two, in fact), diaper bags, dirty, smelly diapers spilling out of the garbage can in the bedroom and the bathroom, and enough Cheerios to lead Hansel and Gretel back down the path and out of the forest. It’s still better than cleaning Lawson’s filth. Watching Good Morning America provides a nice background canvas while I work.

  “Reese, how’s it going today?” asks Helen, as she wanders into the room, newly vacuumed and smelling much fresher already with the new garbage bags. And with no Cheerio in sight.

  “It’s good, Helen,” I say.

  “I know you’ve been here a week now. Are you homesick at all? It’s quite normal, many of my girls feel this way.”

  “No, Helen. I’m not homesick.” Well, unless you count being sick for the home you’ll never know.

  “Good. I’ve heard wonderful things about the work you’re doing. Mr. Oakley says he’s never had his room so clean from summer help in the years he’s been here.” I roll my eyes. “Now, don’t be disrespectful, Reese. I’m giving you a compliment.”

  “Sorry, Helen. Thanks for that and all, but it’s really the source that kind of makes me sick.”

  “Lawson’s not so bad when you get to know him. He’s grown up a lot since he started coming here when he was a little boy.”

  “Helen, have you seen that guy’s room?”

  “Well, that’s why I don’t clean it myself, I guess.” She laughs and straightens the shampoos and lotions on my cart. “What about Tinley?” I bite the inside of my cheek because keeping Tinley’s secrets is difficult. “She’s having a rough time, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask her.” Helen nods her head and looks like there’s much more she wants to say. She refolds the towel on top of the cart.

  “Let me know if you girls need anything—anything.” She doesn’t wait for an answer as she shuffles back into the hallway, and for a second I wonder if that’s what it’s like to have unconditional love from a parent. It’s not that my grandparents didn’t love Blake and me, but they put up a wall that couldn’t be knocked down—no matter how hard we tried. Our basic needs were met. That was never a question, but the emotional support we craved was sorely lacking. I just hope Blake doesn’t remember all of the nights he cried himself to sleep after we moved in with our grandparents and how I’d bury my own tears in my pillow so he wouldn’t see me cry, too. Sure, he may have been a tiny baby, but you can’t tell me that kid didn’t sense a major shift in the course of his life.

  Tinley is folding sheets in the laundry room on the ninth floor when I look for her after work. How she manages to still look adorable despite a gray eye and cracking fingernails is beside me. “Hey, don’t sneak up on my like that,” she says. “You scared me. There are some creepy old men staying on this floor today. Do you know that I entered a room after knocking three times and announcing Maid Service with no response, and not until I had the television blaring Dr. Phil did this guy come waltzing out of the bathroom—wearing only his bath towel! He was wrinkly and gross, and he walked right up to me and pinched my butt! Can you believe that?” I want to laugh because I absolutely believe it the way Tinley’s shorts barely peek out from under the maid’s smock we have to wear. No wonder she gets better tips than me.

  “What did you do?”

  “I stormed out of the room and told him he had better be fully dressed and out of that room in ten minutes or he was not getting maid service for the day. I also told him to turn up his hearing aids!”

  “You did not!”

  “I most certainly did.”

  “So, did you go back?”

  “I sure did, and there was a twenty dollar tip waiting for me next to the television.” I shake my head.

  “Only you, Tinley. So anyway, I wanted to remind you about the staff meeting tonight.”

  “I’ll be there, but I want to go back to the room and change. Do you think my eye’s looking better?”

  “It’s better,” I say, though I don’t feel like I’m being completely truthful.

  “If I see that scum again, he’d better run—.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry,” I say, remembering my encounter with Harrison.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I gave his cousin Harrison a little message to pass along. Just stay away from Dean. He won’t mess with you again.”

  “Hmm…I guess it pays to have a roommate with street smarts.”

  Today is the first full staff meeting of the summer since we arrived a week ago. We’re meeting on the patio where we had our staff party earlier in the week. Mr. Oakley, the owner of Tremont Lodge, is supposed to be talking to all of us, so the email we got said we should dress nicely and be professional. I’m not so sure how a bunch of college kids working at a summer resort know how to be professional when most people are here just to have a good time, but it should be fun watching them try.

  I pull a chair next to Bree who is sitting at a table with two other girls I’m introduced to as Rachel and Raquel, twins from New Jersey, and the two girls I’d seen hanging on Lawson that night at the pizza restaurant. I can’t help but dismiss them right away because of their association with him, but for Bree’s sake I am polite.

  “Where are you from?” they ask in unison. Oh man, this should be fun.

  “I live in downstate Michigan. See.” I hold up my hand which every Michigander knows how to do. When the right hand is open palm up, it resembles the shape of the state. I point to the location of Tremont Lodge and to the location of my hometown in the Southwest corner.

  “Oh, that’s not very far away at all,” says the bottle blonde named Rachel.

  “Are you going to go home and visit?” asks Raquel, her near identical twin except for a shorter haircut.

  “No, I’m here for the whole summer, just like you all.” Then Tinley joins us and they continue the Where are you from? game with each other.

  “Oh my, holy hotness, just looook at Lawson,” says Rachel.

  “Uh-huh, but you promised I could have dibs on the next guy we both like,” says
Raquel.

  “Maybe he’s not picky,” I mumble under my breath. We all watch Lawson walk up to a podium that is set up next to the pool. An man in his late 40s or early 50s sits in a chair behind the podium. I feel like I’m back at high school graduation waiting for the senior class president to introduce the superintendent.

  “I mean, Lawson could probably bench both of us at the same time,” says Rachel.

  “Stop that. You’re making me think things I shouldn’t. I promised Tommy I’d be good this summer.”

  “Is Tommy your boyfriend?” Bree asks.

  “Yeah, I guess, but it’s so hard to keep my word.” Something tells me it isn’t hard for her to break her word, either. Tinley rolls her eyes which makes me giggle because Tinley looks like a saint compared to these girls. I look around for Finn, but I don’t see him. Maybe he’s running late.

  “Attention. Can I have your attention, please?” Lawson taps the microphone on the podium which sets off a high-pitched squeal that makes me throw my hands over my ears. “Sorry, about that,” he says. “I guess I have your attention now.”

  “Oh you have it, baby,” I hear from behind.

  “Welcome to Tremont Lodge, where guests come to relax and to forget about their problems and to make memories. RFM—that’s our motto here at the lodge: Relax, Forget—Memories.” That is about the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time. Do you want your guests to forget their memories? Because that’s what it sounds like in the motto. Of course, that’s exactly what happened with my vacation at Tremont Lodge. The irony is killing me. “It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you my uncle, the owner of Tremont Lodge: Mr. Ted Oakley.” There is rousing applause, and Mr. Oakley changes places with his nephew.

  “Thank you, Lawson.” For an older man, Mr. Oakley is quite handsome. In fact, it’s easy to see that good genes run in the family. No doubt he has the pick of the ladies, too. I wonder if he’s an ass like Lawson. There’s a lot of talk about taking pride in Tremont Lodge and the success of the college staff summer program and reminders about rules like staff not fraternizing with guests, etc. I wonder if this rule applies to everyone or if there would be a Tinley rule if your father was Mr. Oakley’s old fraternity brother. Then he says he’ll pay the tab at the bar for the next hour, and the crowd goes crazy. I guess he knows how to keep his minions in line. “And please don’t hesitate to speak with Lawson if there are any problems. He’s my closest advisor.” Lawson beams as his uncle clutches his shoulder and fist bumps him in an attempt at cool gratitude. It doesn’t work. He looks like an idiot. And whoever in her right mind thinks that going to Lawson about any problem would help the situation is delusional. “In fact, it is with great pleasure that I would like to announce the promotion of Lawson to acting general manager, effective immediately.” The crowd erupts in applause again, and for a brief second, Lawson sits planted in his seat, his mouth hanging open. I guess the promotion is a surprise. Then he recovers in true Lawson style, bows for the crowd of well-wishers, and gives his uncle another fist bump.