Prologue
Rich
He never slept past seven.
That was a fact about Richard Augustus Rose the same way bourbon country and early mornings and the specific smell of the east field at dawn were facts about him -- inherited, bone-deep, non-negotiable. He had been waking before the sun since he was six years old and had never once in his adult life found a reason compelling enough to stop.
Last night had been a compelling reason.
He was aware of this in the slow, underwater way of a man surfacing from sleep that had been thorough and well-earned, aware of the blackout curtains doing their job and the particular quality of a room that had contained a significant amount of activity and had earned its own rest. He was comfortable. He was not moving. He had made a decision about not moving and he was standing by it.
Something shook his shoulder.
He pulled the covers up.
The something shook harder.
He registered, dimly, that the something had been trying to shake him for a moment before he’d surfaced enough to notice, and that it had encountered an obstacle, and that the obstacle had apparently woken up first, and that there was now a sound coming from somewhere to his left that was a woman’s voice saying who are you.
Rich opened one eye.
Isabella was standing at the side of the bed with the expression of a woman who had come in expecting one thing and encountered something significantly more complex. Her eyes moved across the room with the specific controlled quality of a person taking inventory and deciding how to feel about the inventory.
He opened the other eye.
“Mornin’ darlin.” Rich smiled.
“Since when,” Isabella said, very carefully, “do you sleep in?”
“Last night was wild,” he said.
She crossed to the window.
He knew what was coming. He had approximately one second to prepare for it and he used that second unwisely, choosing optimism over action, which was a character flaw he had been aware of his entire life.
She pulled the blackout curtains open.
Kentucky morning light entered the room with the cheerful indifference of something that had not been consulted about the situation and did not care. Rich put his forearm over his eyes. Around him, in the specific sequential way of people being woken up by light they had not requested, the room came to life.
There was a sound from the left side of the bed.
There was a sound from the right side of the bed.
There was a sound from the chaise in the corner.
Isabella stood at the window and looked at the room and said nothing for a moment that felt approximately three years long.
The door opened.
Trey filled the frame with his jacket on and his keys in his hand and the expression of a man who had arrived ready for breakfast and was now somewhere completely different.
“You ready--” he started.
He stopped.
He took in the room with one slow sweep. His jaw moved. He turned around with the deliberate precision of a man removing himself from a situation, faced the hallway, and said to the wall:
“Meet you downstairs for breakfast.”
Rich sat up.
“What?” he said. “So, you’re the only one who gets sleepovers, little sis?”
Isabella turned from the window with the expression she had been perfecting since they were children, the one that communicated volumes without requiring her to raise her voice.
“Trey and I are getting married,” she said. “That is different.”
“Sure, it is.”
“Mom and Dad,” she said, “are going to kill you.”
He considered this.
“You’re right,” he said. He looked at the room. “Ladies -- out the window. Now.”
A chorus of sounds -- protest, movement, the specific rustling of people locating clothing in a hurry.
“Rich--” one of them started.
“Window,” he said. “I’ll call you. I promise. Window.”
He was a man of his word about some things.
They moved. He assisted the process with the specific appreciative encouragement that the moment called for, an open-palmed send-off for each, a whoop that was genuine and heartfelt, and then the window was closed and the room contained only him and his sister and the Kentucky morning and a situation that was going to require some navigation.
Isabella was looking at him.
“Cover your--” Isabella started.
“Done,” he said.
He was not wearing anything. He reached for the nightstand. His hand closed on the brim of his cowboy hat. He placed it at the relevant location with the dignity of a man who had solutions.
“Rich.”
“Isabella.”
She shook her head with the slow, complete, bone-deep patience of a woman who had been doing this her entire life and had made peace with the fact that it was never going to stop. She walked to the door. Paused.
“Breakfast,” she said. “Twenty minutes. Trey’s here.”
“Twenty minutes,” he agreed.
She left.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the Kentucky morning light with his hat in his lap and let the room settle around him. Thought about coffee. Thought about whether coffee came before or after a shower and how long he could reasonably delay both. Thought about the specific luxury of a morning with no agenda and no committee meetings and no production schedules requiring his immediate attention.
He had approximately ninety seconds of that before his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
He looked at the screen.
Sloane.
He picked it up on the second ring.
“Hey sugar,” he said. “Little early for you, isn’t it?”
A pause. Not the playful kind. The other kind -- the specific quality of silence that happened when someone had been holding something and had finally decided to put it down somewhere.
“Rich.” Her voice was even. Too even. The register of a woman who had been practicing calm the same way he’d watched Isabella practice calm, with the focused discipline of someone who could not afford the alternative.
He went still.
The cowboy hat stayed where it was. The morning stayed where it was. He did not move.
“Talk to me,” he said.
She talked.
All of it -- Ian Sageton, the shows, the way it had started and the way it had continued and the fourteen months of a man who occupied her life on his own schedule and never once asked what she needed. The morning, she had started feeling sick. The way she had told herself it was the tour schedule, the late nights, the catering. The way she had kept telling herself that until she couldn’t anymore.
He listened.
He was very good at listening when it mattered. Most people did not know this about him.
“And then this morning,” she said. “Rehearsal. We were in the middle of the second act and she just -- she walked in. His wife, Rich. He has a wife. Three years, two kids, house in Westchester. She walked into my rehearsal, and she looked at me and she--”
She stopped.
Rich’s jaw tightened.
“She slapped me,” Sloane said. Flat. The flatness of a woman stating a fact she was still processing the reality of. “In front of my whole cast. In my rehearsal space. And then she left and Ian’s been calling ever since and I just -- I can’t.” A breath. “I can’t be here right now. I don’t know where to go and I can’t go home and I just needed to call someone who wasn’t--”
“Come back to River Valley,” he said.
Silence.
“Rich--”
“I’m serious. Come here. Get out of the city, get some air, let it settle.” He paused. “River Valley’s good for that. You know it is.”
She was quiet for a moment.
He waited. He had learned, in the years of knowing Sloane Whitfield at the edges of his actual life, that her silences were worth waiting for.
“It would be weird,” she said. “With Trey and Isabella and everything. I don’t want to walk into the middle of--”
“It’s not weird,” he said. “It’s River Valley. There’s room.”
“Rich.”
“Sloane.” He said it the way he said things when he was not performing anything, when he had put the grin down and was just himself underneath it. “We’ve known each other before you and Trey. Tell you what, let me buy your ticket. I’ll send the details after breakfast. Just say yes.”
Another silence.
Shorter this time.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Good,” he said. “Go pack your bags. Don’t think about it too much.”
She made a sound that was almost a laugh.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’ll text you the flight,” he said. “Get some sleep if you can.”
He hung up.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment in the Kentucky morning light with his phone in his hand and the room quiet around him and thought about a woman in a New York rehearsal space and a wife who had walked in and the specific flatness of Sloane’s voice saying she slapped me like she was still deciding whether she was allowed to be as undone by it as she was.
He thought about the island.
He thought about a waterfall bar and a woman in a white dress and a kiss he had not planned and had never once stopped thinking about.
He thought she is coming here.
He thought be careful, Rose.
He put the cowboy hat on his head, stood up, and went to find some coffee.
Yeah, butt ass naked.
