15
Selma walked into the lobby of the Water Park Hotel. She rolled her eyes as she looked around. A hotel this nice nearby, and yet she’d chosen to spend every summer for the past thirty years at Lost Lake. The hotel was located next to the water park—an amusement park whose biggest attraction seemed to be waterslides and some great pool that made waves children could surf on. The park was for the children, but the hotel was for the adults. Smart move, she thought. Lazlo was not an idiot. At least there was that.
The chandeliers sprinkled multicolored lights onto the marble floors. The entire far wall was a water feature, a thin sheet of water flowing down two stories of rocks, looking as if you could walk right through it into another world. There were signs pointing to the spa, several gift shops, two restaurants—one family-friendly, one more elegant—and a bar.
This might not be so bad, Selma kept telling herself. She could probably get a new car and a condo out of this. Some jewelry she could pawn later. But this wasn’t how she’d planned to use her last charm. The last one was supposed to be used to finally get everything she wanted.
She walked up to the reception desk. The clerk was a young man, but his eyes did what all male eyes did when she wore this particular dress: They dropped to her outrageously exposed cleavage and lingered helplessly.
“Would you please ring Mr. Lazlo Patterson and tell him his four-o’clock appointment is here,” Selma said, giving him a slow smile.
“Certainly, ma’am,” the boy said, tearing his eyes away from her. She was old enough to be his grandmother. She wondered if he realized that. Probably not. No one sees your age if you’re bold enough. He murmured a few words into the phone, then paused and said to Selma, “Ma’am, he says he doesn’t have a four-o’clock appointment.”
“How silly of him to forget,” Selma said. “Tell him it’s Selma, from Lost Lake.”
The boy relayed her message, then hung up the phone. “He said he’ll be right down.”
Selma turned and walked across the lobby to the bar, giving the boy a show. She took a seat and ordered a Scotch, neat.
She sighed and shook her head in disbelief that she was actually doing this. She’d seduced a lot of men in her life, but never one that she actively disliked.
She reached into her small red purse. She found the charm inside by its warmth. Her fingers closed around it gently, and she felt it tremble like a caught butterfly. For a moment she felt sadness. She didn’t want to let it go. This was the last of who she was, of what she’d spent a lifetime being.
“You could have gotten me into a lot of trouble. I was with my wife,” Lazlo said, appearing by her side. He was as distasteful as she remembered—hair dyed that ridiculous black, a bad face-lift that raised his brows to an unnatural angle. His eyes went right to her cleavage. He didn’t even look away to order his drink “That was a nice touch, saying we have an appointment.”
“You sound surprised,” Selma said seductively. “I’m very good at what I do.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But we have to be discreet. My wife…”
Selma leaned in and whispered, “You don’t need her. You have me.”
She could see he was amused by that. He’d probably been faced with clingy women before. He wanted a good tickle, but then he would send her on her way. She had a sudden vision of her life if she’d never had her charms. How desperate and how sad it would have been, meeting men like this in bars for only a few hours of attention. A whole night, at best.
She’d gotten what she wanted out of life. And she didn’t regret it.
She didn’t regret a thing.
And with that, she opened her palm and watched her last charm disappear.
*
The next morning, at the lake, Selma was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is Selma?” Bulahdeen asked when she walked into the main house for breakfast. She was glad they weren’t having cake again. Sugar was nice, but her childhood would always have her believing that protien was the best treat. “She wasn’t here for dinner last night on the lawn, and now she’s not here for breakfast. Her car is gone. Did she check out?” For a moment, Bulahdeen wondered if Selma had made good on her promise to leave her here.
“No,” Eby said, as Bulahdeen’s eyes followed the plate of bacon Eby set on the buffet table. There was a tension in the air that no one was acknowledging. Lazlo hadn’t shown up yesterday, like he was toying with them. Hateful man. “She’s still booked.”
“When was the last time anyone saw her?” Bulahdeen asked.
“I saw her yesterday,” Devin said. “She went back to her cabin and got really dressed up, then left.”
“Has anyone checked her cabin?” Everyone shook their heads. They didn’t seem terribly concerned. “Eby, could I take the spare key and check?”
Eby smiled and went to the front desk. She handed Bulahdeen the key and said, “It’s on your head if she finds out someone went into her cabin without her permission.”
Bulahdeen took the key and walked to Selma’s cabin. She’d been sharp with Selma yesterday on the dock, and she regretted it. She’d been mad at her for saying good-bye at the party. But being mad at someone for acting exactly the way you assume they’ll act is no one’s fault but your own.
When Bulahdeen entered, Selma’s perfume greeted her like a wet dog, getting all over her. That woman loved her perfume.
Bulahdeen stood in the middle of the cabin and looked around, frowning. Nothing looked out of place. Well, everything was out of place, but that was how Selma liked it. The couch was littered with reading materials carelessly scattered around. The bathroom was full of her pots and potions and scented lotions. She could see from here that the bed was covered in candy wrappers and hadn’t been slept in. Where did she go? Bulahdeen worried about Selma. She was always pushing people away. That’s why Bulahdeen always pushed back. For nearly thirty years, ever since meeting her here at the lake, she had called Selma on the first Thursday of every month, and if Selma didn’t feel like talking, well, then, Bulahdeen did all the talking, filling her in on everything going on in her life. The one month Bulahdeen forgot to call, when Charlie was first moved into the nursing home and Bulahdeen was tired and frazzled and spending all her time getting him settled, Selma showed up, having driven all night from Mississippi, because she couldn’t get in touch with Bulahdeen. She’d been mad that Bulahdeen wasn’t dead, for all the trouble she’d caused, and she’d refused to take Bulahdeen’s calls for months afterward. But she’d come around.
Bulahdeen’s eyes landed on the mantle, where Selma had placed the photos of her husbands. She displayed them in much the same way a hunter displays a moose head. She’d hunted them down. It had taken work. And she was proud of her trophies. Bulahdeen had always been fascinated by Selma’s power over men. She was utterly in control. Always. That seemed to defeat the point of being with a man, but to each his own. Selma too made her own endings.
That’s when it occurred to her.
Bulahdeen saw the box on the mantle and picked it up. She slowly lifted the lid.
When she looked inside, she thought, I’ll be damned.
Sometimes, the best endings are the ones that surprise you. Sometimes, the best are the ones that have everything happening exactly how you want it to happen. But the absolute perfect endings are when you get a little of both.
She put the box back, then she locked the door behind her and went back to the main house.
“Any clues?” Kate asked.
“One or two,” Bulahdeen said, handing the key back to Eby. “She’ll be back. She never goes anywhere without her husbands.”
The phone rang and Eby went to answer it.
Bulahdeen went to the buffet table to fill up her plate. Being nosy was hard work. She stopped when she saw a chair in the corner. “Isn’t that the chair Lisette always keeps in the kitchen?”
“Yes,” Jack said from his table by the door. He was supposed to have left yesterday. When Bulahdeen saw Lisette sneaking out of his cabin early this morning, she knew why he hadn’t.
“What’s it doing out here?”
“She doesn’t need it anymore.”
She turned to him curiously. “And how do you know that?”
Jack kept his eyes on his plate, but he began to blush. Bulahdeen laughed and turned back to the buffet. She paused when she saw the bowl of mixed fruit. For the first time ever, they were cut into all sorts of shapes. The pineapples were stars. The strawberries were mice faces. What the…? This was happy food. Lisette was making happy food.