CHAPTER 2
CASSIE
I find my grandmother in the kitchen the next morning, pulling a muffin pan out of the oven. She moves it to the cooling rack on the counter, next to the three other trays already sitting there.
“Morning, dear. Pick your poison,” Grandma chirps, glancing at me over her shoulder. “We’ve got banana nut, bran, carrot, and the blueberry just came out so it needs some time to cool.”
No doubt she’s been up since 7 A.M. baking up a storm. For a woman in her seventies, she’s still remarkably spry. Which is funny, because on the outside she appears so fragile. She’s got a slender build, delicate hands, and her skin is thinning in her old age so you can always see bluish veins rippling beneath it.
And yet Lydia Tanner is a force of nature. She and my grandpa Wally ran a hotel for fifty years. They bought the beachfront lot for a song in the late sixties, after Grandpa was injured in Vietnam and discharged from the military. Even wilder is that they were my age when they built the Beacon Hotel from the ground up. I can’t imagine building and then operating a hotel at twenty, especially one as grand as the Beacon. And up until two years ago, the waterfront property was my grandparents’ pride and joy.
But then Grandpa passed, and the hotel was nearly gutted by the last hurricane to ravage the coast. It wasn’t the first time the Beacon fell victim to a storm—it’s happened twice before—but unlike the previous times, nobody in the family wanted to renovate and restore it this time. Grandma was too old and tired to do the job herself, especially without Grandpa Wally by her side, and I know she’s secretly disappointed none of her kids chose to take up that mantle. But my mom and her siblings weren’t interested in salvaging the Beacon, so Grandma finally made the decision to sell. Not just the hotel, but her house too.
The house sale closes in two months, and the Beacon is being reopened in September under its new ownership, which is why we’re back. Grandma wanted to spend one last summer in Avalon Bay before she moves up north to be closer to her kids and grandkids.
“How was the party?” she asks as she settles into a chair at the kitchen table.
“It was okay.” I shrug. “I didn’t really know anyone there.”
“Who was hosting it?”
“Some guy named Luke. He’s a sailing instructor at the club. That’s how Joy met him. And speaking of Joy, she didn’t even show up! She invites me to a party and then deserts me. I felt like a random interloper.”
Grandma smiles. “Sometimes that’s more fun. Going someplace where nobody knows you…” She arches a thin eyebrow. “It can be exciting to reinvent yourself and play a role for the night.”
I grimace. “Please don’t tell me you and Grandpa used to meet at hotel bars back in the day and pretend to be other people in some weird role-play to spice up the marriage.”
“All right, dear. I won’t tell you that.”
Her brown eyes sparkle, giving her a youthful air. It’s funny, Grandma comes off as so elegant and unapproachable in public. Always dressed like she stepped off a yacht, sporting these preppy little outfits more suited for posh Nantucket than laid-back Avalon Bay. I swear she owns a thousand Hermès scarves. Yet when she’s around family the icy exterior melts and she’s the warmest woman you’ll ever meet. I love hanging out with her. And she’s hilarious. Sometimes she’ll drop a dirty joke out of nowhere at a big family dinner. It’s jarring when spoken in her delicate southern accent, and it puts us all in hysterics. My mother hates it. Then again, my mother doesn’t have a sense of humor. Never has.
“Did you make any new friends?” Grandma prompts.
“No. But that’s okay. I’ll see Joy while in town, and Peyton might come visit for a week or two in August.” I wander over to the baking trays and study the muffin selections. “I still wish I didn’t let you talk me out of getting a job this summer.”
Grandma plucks off a small piece of her bran muffin. As long as I’ve known her, her breakfast has consisted of a muffin and a cup of tea. That’s probably how she’s maintained her figure all these years.
“Cass, sweetheart, if you’d gotten a job, well, then you wouldn’t be able to have breakfast with me, would you?”
“That’s a good point.” I select a banana nut muffin and grab a small glass plate from the cupboard, then join her at the table. A little walnut falls off my muffin, and I pop it into my mouth. “So what are we doing today?”
“I thought we’d go into town and browse some of the new shops that have opened up? Levi Hartley has taken it upon himself to revamp the entire boardwalk. His construction company has been making its way through all the establishments hurt by the hurricane, fixing them up one by one. There’s a very nice hat shop I passed the other day that I wouldn’t mind visiting.”
Only Grandma Lydia would want to go to a hat shop. The only hat I’ve ever worn is the Briar U baseball cap they handed out at freshman orientation, and that’s because they forced us to put them on in order to swear fealty to our new school. I think it’s somewhere in the back of my closet now.
“Hat shopping. I can’t wait.”
She snorts softly.
“And I need to find a present for the girls’ birthday, so I wouldn’t mind peeking into a couple of those kid stores. Oh! Any chance we can pop into the hotel too? I really want to see what they did inside.”
“So do I,” Grandma says, a slight frown touching her lips. “The young woman who bought it—Mackenzie Cabot—promised she would preserve your grandfather’s and my intent for the property, maintain its charm and character. She sent me the drawings of the upgrades they’d be doing, along with pictures of her progress. They indeed showed her commitment to restoring everything as close to the original as possible. But I haven’t received an update since early June.”
Her concern is evident. I know that was Grandma’s biggest fear—the Beacon becoming completely unrecognizable. The hotel was her legacy. It survived three hurricanes, was lovingly rebuilt by my grandparents twice. They put everything they had into it. Their blood, sweat, and tears. Their love. And it irks me, just a bit, that not a single one of their four children fought to keep it in the family.
My two uncles, Will and Max, live in Boston with their wives, and they each have three young kids. Both were adamant they weren’t going to relocate to the South to renovate a hotel they didn’t care about. Aunt Jacqueline and her husband, Charlie, have a house in Connecticut, three kids, and zero interest in dipping their toes in the hospitality industry. And then there’s Mom, who has a full social calendar in Boston and is busy spending her ex-husband’s money, which at this point is out of pure spite because she went into the marriage independently wealthy; the Tanners are worth millions. But my former stepdad Stuart made the mistake of being the one to ask for a divorce, and my mother is nothing if not petty.
I scarf down the rest of my muffin before hopping out of my chair.
“Okay, if we’re going into town, let me change into something a little more presentable,” I say, gesturing to my ratty shorts and loose T-shirt. “I can’t be going hat shopping in this.” I aim a pointed glare at Grandma’s impeccably pressed chinos, sleeveless shirt, and striped silk scarf. “Especially next to you. Like, jeez, lady. You look like you’re going to a luncheon with a Kennedy.”
She chuckles. “Have you forgotten my most important rule of life, dear? Always leave the house dressed as if you’re going to—”
“—be murdered,” I finish, rolling my eyes. “Oh, I remember.”
I tell ya, Grandma can get dark sometimes. But it’s good advice. I think about it often, in fact. One time I accidentally left my dorm wearing my must-do-laundry panties, the neon-orange ones with the huge hole in the crotch. When I realized it, I almost broke out in hives at the thought that if I were to be killed today, the coroner would undress me on that metal slab and my crotch hole would be the first thing they saw. I’d be the only blushing dead body in the morgue.
Upstairs, I find a pink sundress and slip it on, then braid my hair. My phone rings as I’m slapping an elastic band around the end of the braid. It’s Peyton. I didn’t call her back when I got home last night, but I did send an intentionally cryptic text I knew would drive her nuts.
“Who is he?” she demands when I put her on speakerphone. “Tell me everything.”
“Nothing to tell.” I wander over to the vanity table and examine my chin. I feel a zit coming on, but my reflection says otherwise. “I met a hot guy, turned down his invitation to hang out with him at the party, and went home instead.”
“Cassandra.” Peyton is aghast.
“I know.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? The whole point of going last night was to meet a dude! And you found one! And you said he’s hot?”
“Hottest guy I’ve ever seen,” I moan.
“Then why did you leave?” Her confusion might as well be an accusation.
“I chickened out,” I confess. “He was too intimidating! And you should’ve seen the girls he was with—they were these perfect, tall, fit goddesses. With perfectly proportioned boobs … unlike someone you know.”
“Oh my God, Cass. Stop. You know how I feel about you beating up on yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, you want to punch me in the face. I can’t help it, though. Seriously, those girls were gorgeous.”
“And so are you.” A frazzled sound echoes over the speaker. “You know, I really hate your mother.”
“What does my mother have to do with this?” I snicker.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been to your house. I hear how she talks to you. I was actually speaking to my mom about it the other day, and she was saying all that hurtful shit is bound to affect your self-esteem.”
“Why are you speaking to your mom about me?” I demand, embarrassment climbing up my throat.
Having a best friend whose mother is a clinical psychologist is definitely a pain in the ass sometimes. I’ve known Peyton since we were eleven—we met not long after Mom and I moved to Boston—and Peyton’s mother would constantly pry into my psyche when I was a kid. She always tried getting me to talk about my parents’ divorce, how it made me feel, how my mother’s criticism affected me. Blah, blah, and blah. I don’t need a shrink to tell me there’s a direct correlation between my insecurities and my mother’s verbal attacks. Or that my mother is a raging bitch. I know it all too well.
On the rare occasions Dad and I have spoken about her, he’s admitted that Mom has always skewed more toward me me me on the altruism scale. But the divorce really twisted something inside her. Made her worse. It certainly didn’t help that he remarried within a year and a half and now has two other daughters.
“Mom thinks we need to silence your inner critic. Aka your mother’s horrible voice in your head.”
“I shut my inner critic up all the time. Silver lining, remember?” Because while my grandmother’s life rule is to make sure you get murdered in your Sunday best, mine has always been to look on the bright side. Find the silver lining in every situation, because the alternative—wallowing in the darkness—is bound to destroy you.
“Of course, Little Miss Sunshine,” Peyton says mockingly. “Always looking for the silver lining—how could I forget?” Her voice takes on a note of challenge. “Okay, fine. So tell me, what’s the silver lining in letting Hottie slip away?”
I mull it over. “He’s too hot,” I finally answer.
Laughter bursts out of the phone. “That would be the reason not to let him slip away.” She makes a loud buzzing sound. “Try again.”
“No, that’s really it,” I insist. “Imagine if the first guy I ever sleep with is at that level of hotness? It’ll spoil all future men for me! I’ll expect every man who comes afterward to be a perfect ten, and when nobody measures up I’m just going to be devastated.”
“You’re impossible. Did you get his number at least?”
“No, I told you, I ran away like a nervous babbling bunny.”
She lets out a loud, heavy sigh. “This is unacceptable to me, Cassandra Elise.”
“My deepest apologies, Peyton Marie.”
“If you see him again, you’re asking him out, understood?” My best friend has snapped into totalitarian mode. “No babbling. No excuses. Promise me you’ll ask him out next time you see him.”
“I will. I promise,” I say lightly, but only because I’m confident I’ll never see him again.
Joke’s on me, though.
The moment Grandma and I step outside five minutes later, I find none other than Tate standing in our driveway.