I spend my first night at the Grande Lucia Resort eating Twizzlers and deep-diving into Hayden Anderson, all while convincing myself the world isn't ending.
First, I read a dozen rave reviews of his book. Then I stumbled across a *Publishers Weekly* article estimating first-year U.S. sales upwards of two million. Lastly, just to torture myself, I watched an interview with Hayden and the book's subject, Len Stirling. During the segment, Len informed the interviewer that he'd considered nine other writers before Hayden even threw his hat in the ring. Hayden, without a trace of humor or irony, leaned forward to add, "I'm very competitive."
I cut the groan short before it could fully escape.
There was still a chance Margaret would choose to work with me.
Maybe she'd rather work with a woman. Maybe she always rooted for the underdog. Maybe she just had a natural distaste for tall, muscular, talented men who wrote biographies that didn't just keep a person awake but made them weep multiple times while reading alone at the bar of their neighborhood taqueria back in Highland Park.
There could be lots of reasons why she didn't want to work with Hayden, and surely there were at least several reasons why she would want to work with me.
I nodded to myself, more enthusiastically than I felt, as I flopped back on the cheery gingham bedspread. I gazed 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 absolutely 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.
All of that, in itself, would've been more than enough to make the weeks of writing, rewriting, and back-and-forths with my fact-checkers and editor worth it.
But at the bottom of one very short email, there was also a little something extra.
*Loved the piece, LindaTakesBackHerLifeAt53 wrote. P.S. That Cosmo Sinclair song about Margaret Ives that u and Bella talked about is one of my all-time faves. Did u know Margaret's living down on an island in Georgia now, selling art under a fake name?*
That was it. No more information. 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 suggested she'd married an Italian olive farmer half her age and settled 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, the illustrious Ives family, or 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, mostly 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 they eloped—his blond hair slicked back, 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 when she disappeared altogether, twenty years ago, no one was quite as interested as they might have 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 was no telling how many other Hayden Andersons might be flying cross-country to Little Crescent Island this very minute.
My phone buzzed on the mattress beside me, and I felt around until I found it. My stomach rose expectantly—maybe Margaret had already made a decision—but then I saw the screen.
Theo.
Immediately, a different sensation rumbled in my stomach, that anxious flutter I still got when I heard from my on-again, off-again not-boyfriend.
*How'd it go with the heiress?* he asked.
I was touched he remembered. Probably too touched. I hadn't talked about much else the last few weeks. But still! He reached out to check in—that was something!
I hesitated over how to phrase it and settled 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 granite-faced man with a Pulitzer and a scowl to freeze a Gorgon is on the scene.*
I watched 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 was something so appealing about a person who didn't take anything too seriously. Until you had to text with one. Theo was terrible at it. To be fair, I wasn't amazing myself, but he was the king of sending a message to which I immediately replied, and then waiting a full day to acknowledge my response.
By then I might 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 cried, 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 told myself, snatching my phone and stuffing my feet into my sandals. "Might as well make the most of it."
Little Crescent Island was a vacation destination, but it wasn't a nightlife hot spot. Most of the people here seemed to be either retirees or families with kids, and it was nine o'clock on a Tuesday night, so pickings were slim on the main drag.
The first open restaurant I came to was called Fish Bowl, and the menu posted out front seemed to be ninety percent alcohol and ten percent seafood.
Inside, it was 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 whisked past me, tray in hand, and said cheerfully, "Sit anywhere you want, hon. We're slow tonight."
There were plenty of open tables, but two older gentlemen in matching bowling shirts were sitting at the bar, and I was feeling kind of chatty, so I headed their way. Right as I was sidling onto a stool two down from them, though, they were tossing money onto the glossy, dark wooden countertop and standing to go.
One caught my eye, and I flashed a smile.
He smiled back. "Highly recommend the Captain's Bowl!"
"I'll take that under advisement," I promised, and he tipped an invisible hat before shuffling off after his companion. On the way out, the two of them stopped to have a word with the ponytailed server, and she gave the lover of the Captain's Bowl a peck on the cheek. So either they were all locals, or this place just had over-the-top service.
I went back to perusing the menu, resuming a practically lifelong debate of mine: whether to order fish tacos or fish and chips.
I was still working on this when someone plopped a massive bowl of startlingly blue liquid, ice, and roughly five fruit spears down in front of me. I looked up, surprised, to find the ponytailed server smiling at me from behind the bar.
"Captain's Bowl," she said. "Courtesy of the captains themselves."
"Oh?" I glanced 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 mused. "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 said.
She nodded once. "Will do. Now, are you eating too tonight or just swimming?" She tipped her chin toward the gargantuan bowl of violently unnatural blue, and I burst out laughing.
"What's even in this?" I asked.
"Everything," she said. "Plus some Coca-Cola."
I took a tiny sip through the neon-pink straw, and it felt like I'd just inhaled sugar, then poured gasoline down my throat, but in a fun way.
"Food?" the woman—her name tag said Sheri—asked again.
I told her my predicament, tacos versus fish and chips.
"Tacos," she said decisively. "Always go with the tacos."
"Perfect." I set my menu down, and she whirled off through the door behind the bar. I looked down at my drink and burst into laughter again. I'd never been a big drinker, but I'd give this concoction a ten out of ten on presentation alone. I snapped a picture and texted it to Theo while I started nibbling on the first spear of fruit.
*You as a drink,* he replied immediately. *Have fun!*
*I will!* I told him, then set my phone down and gave the restaurant another once-over. Other than me, there were 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 looked up from his water at that exact moment.
Nearly black hair, angular nose, a stern brow.
I whipped back around to face the bar, nearly capsizing my stool in the process. I grabbed the edge of the counter to steady myself, heart racing. It probably wasn't even him. It was probably my mind and the glow-in-the-dark ceiling playing tricks on me, forming Hayden Andersons out of random shadows.
I took another small sip of Captain's Bowl to steel myself and then slowly, casually, threw a glance over my shoulder toward the booth.
He was no longer looking this way. Instead, he was staring down at something in front of him, his brow tightly furrowed. Hunched over the tiny table like that, he gave 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 wanted to run and hide. Which made no sense.
He wasn't a grizzly. He was a guy who happened to want the same job as me. A guy who wrote a book I loved!
It was ridiculous to treat him like some kind of enemy, just because we both wanted to write Margaret's story. And it was ridiculous to sit here and ignore him when we were ten feet apart.
I should say hi.
Just one more sip of Captain's Bowl for good luck, and then I hopped down from my stool and crossed the restaurant to stand in front of Hayden's table.
He didn't look up. I gave him a second to finish his page, but even after he tapped to the next one, he didn't peel his eyes off his e-reader.
"Hi!" I chirped.
He flinched at the sound of my voice, then slowly, very slowly, dragged his eyes up to mine from beneath a creased brow.
"We met earlier?" I reminded him. "I'm Alice."
"I remember," he said, his voice a flat rumble.
"I actually already know who you are," I said.
One of his dark eyebrows arched.
I slid into the booth, across from him, our knees bumping together. I'd always wondered why it seemed like enormously tall men tended to date adorably tiny women, and now I had my answer, apparently: A man as tall as Hayden Anderson couldn't comfortably sit opposite anyone over five-three. I was about six inches into the red here.
I turned to perch sideways instead. He was still staring at me with that brow arched, the visual equivalent of a question mark.
"Because of your book," I explained. "*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 relaxed, just a bit. "Are you a friend or family?"
"What?" I said.
"Of Margaret's," he clarified.
"Oh, neither." I waved a hand. "I'm a writer too."
His gaze dipped down me again, sizing me up now that he had this new information. His irises were lighter than I thought. Still brown, but a pale shade of it.
"What sort of things do you write?" he asked.
"All sorts," I said. "A lot of human interest, and pop culture stuff. I work at *The Scratch*."
His face remained completely impassive. I tried a different tack. "Have you ever been to Georgia?"
"First time," he said.
"Really?" I said, surprised. "Where are you from?"
"New York," he said.
"The city or the state?" I asked.
"City," he replied.
"Born and raised?" I said.
"No," he said.
"Then where'd you grow up?" I asked.
"Indiana," he said.
"Did you like it?" I asked.
His brow sank into a scowl, his wide mouth still keeping to an utterly straight line. "Why?"
I laughed. "What do you mean why?"
"Why would you want to know if I liked growing up in Indiana?" he said, face and voice perfectly matched in surliness.
I fought a smile. "Because I'm considering buying it."
His eyes narrowed, irises seeming to darken. "Buying what?"
"Indiana," I said.
He stared.
I couldn't fight it anymore. The amusement won out, and another laugh escaped me. "I'm just trying to get to know you," I explained.
He set his forearms on the table, his posture very nearly a challenge. His head tilted to the left, and he said, quite possibly, the last thing I was expecting: "This isn't going to work."
I drew back, surprised and confused. "What isn't?"
"You, trying to throw me off my game," he growled.
"And what 'game' exactly are we talking about here?" I said, glancing around the now totally empty Fish Bowl. "Wait, Sheri?" I spun back to face him, our knees colliding again.
"Who is Sheri," he said, with some distaste.
"Our server!" I dropped my voice, in case she popped 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 interrupted. "The book."
"The book?" I repeated. Then it dawned on me. He meant *the* book. Margaret's book.
Hayden went on: "I don't know what this"—he waved 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 stung, being talked to like this by a stranger. That someone whose work I admired had 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 was another feeling growing, getting traction all through my limbs.
Hope.
In life, I'd learned there was almost always a silver lining. Here was one now.
Hayden's brow furrowed, his arms sliding off the table. "Why are you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Smiling," he said dryly.
I snorted out a laugh and slid out of the booth to stand, practically floating back to the bar, because his reaction had told me one important thing—I mean, aside from the fact that he was a mistrustful cynic. "Because," I called to him, "now I know I still have a chance."
He rolled his eyes, and I plopped back down on my stool, buzzing with excitement, just as Sheri bumped the kitchen door open with one hip and marched out with my basket of fried fish tacos. "I see that Captain's Bowl got you grinning," she said.
"It's great," I told her with another big, appreciative slurp. Probably one of the last few I'd be able to handle, honestly, unless I planned on being hospitalized or arrested later.
"Glad to hear it," she said. "You're not driving, are you?"
"No, I'm over at the Grande Lucia, so I'm on foot tonight," I told her.
"Aw, my husband, Robbie, and I honeymooned there," she told me.
Sheri didn't look quite old enough to be married, but I guessed that was going by Los Angeles standards. Most of the girls I went to high school with were 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 asked, one hand on her hip.
"Actually," I said, "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 wandered 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 asked, pointing down toward my bowl.
"Aside from the freshly cleaned toilets, no," she said, "but I can throw in some candied hibiscus to spice things up if that helps."
"That," I said, "would be perfect."