Chapter 1
The Right Kind of Lost
Savannah Cole had been in Kentucky for three hours when she informed Luke Mercer that if he mentioned the mileage again, she would make him walk the last two blocks.
“We missed the turn,” he said.
“We found a prettier street.”
“The house is behind us.”
“Then it can’t run away.”
Late sunlight moved between the trees in long strips of gold. The houses in Old Louisville stood shoulder to shoulder behind gardens that seemed to have made their own arrangements with autumn. Red leaves gathered on iron fences. Somewhere a person was frying onions with enough confidence to make Savannah regret every cracker she had eaten since Nashville.
Luke glanced at her, one hand resting at the bottom of the steering wheel. He looked tired in the ordinary way, with a crease from his sunglasses beside the scar through his eyebrow. It was a distinction she had learned to value. Six months earlier, being tired had meant the cost of doing everything under observation. Today it meant a long drive, a decent lunch, and her refusal to let him put a gas-station pastry on her lap without a napkin.
“I’m turning around,” he said.
“That’s a strong position for a man who let me read the map.”
“You were looking for a bakery.”
“I contain useful local knowledge.”
He laughed, and took the next permitted turn.
The Lark House stood behind a small front garden and a sign painted dark blue. A porch light had already come on beneath the broad roof. Savannah recognized the bay window from the booking photographs, though the actual house had a pleasantly uneven quality the photographs had managed to conceal. One curtain hung a little lower than its neighbor. A pot of chrysanthemums leaned into the path as if greeting guests had become too much work.
She liked it immediately.
Luke parked in the marked space behind the house and switched off the engine. Neither moved at once. The sudden quiet held all the road noise they had stopped noticing.
“Seven nights,” Savannah said.
“Seven nights.”
“Not one water pump. Not one person asking whether a wedding party can bring its own liquor.”
“I don’t ask you that.”
“You asked whether a truck needed new brake pads during our last dinner.”
“It did.”
“And June asked whether she should charge for the extra ice before dessert.”
He rested his head against the seat. “We could turn the phones off.”
“We could throw them in the river.”
“Dunn would have questions.”
There it was, spoken without embarrassment and without making it the largest thing between them. Casey Dunn had approved Luke’s travel weeks before, after checking the dates, accommodation, and route. Luke had sent the arrival notice at their last stop, with Savannah leaning over to correct the guesthouse’s street number. The monitoring device had been removed earlier through the ordinary review process. His remaining conditions had not vanished with it. They had made arrangements, and the arrangements had allowed this.
She turned toward him. “We can leave them in a drawer during dinner.”
“Reckless.”
“You haven’t seen the dress.”
His eyes moved over her face slowly enough to warm her skin.
“I’ve seen the suitcase.”
“Then you know the dress fought for its place.”
He reached across the console and brushed his thumb along her cheek. She leaned into the touch before he could make a joke of how long she had waited for it. There had been weekends together, evenings that smelled of dish soap, arguments about who had bought coffee last. A trip was different. A trip allowed a whole day to belong to nobody else.
“Glad we came?” he asked.
“Ask after I know whether the shower has pressure.”
He kissed her. His mouth was warm and familiar, and she caught the front of his jacket to keep him there for another moment.
A suitcase handle snapped against the window beside them.
Savannah broke away to find a woman on the path studying a recalcitrant wheel on somebody else’s bag. The woman looked up, registered their position, and smiled with professional restraint.
“Sorry,” she called. “That suitcase has a character defect.”
“Don’t we all,” Savannah answered.
The woman laughed and rolled it toward the back door, accepting Luke’s help when he offered rather than insisting hospitality required a feat of strength. She introduced herself as Opal Ross. Her husband, Aaron, appeared inside with a folded map and a cup of coffee that smelled better than anything Savannah had encountered on the interstate.
“You’re our Mississippi people,” he said.
“That’s us,” Savannah said. “Are there rival Mississippi people?”
“Not this week. You get the whole title.”
The hall smelled of beeswax, coffee, and a little old wood warmed by afternoon sun. A narrow table held a bowl of wrapped chocolates and a notice about quiet hours. Opal explained breakfast, the back-door code, and the distinction between a radiator that hissed and a radiator that needed help.
“The one in your room hisses,” she said. “If it starts singing, call Aaron.”
“He sings back?” Luke asked.
“Usually threatens it with an invoice.”
Their room was upstairs at the back, with a broad bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs beside a window looking into the garden. Savannah set her bag down and went straight to the window. A squirrel occupied the fence with the confidence of a creature who had never checked out at eleven.
Luke placed her suitcase on the stand.
“You first,” he said.
“The shower?”
“I know what happens when your standards aren’t met.”
“You benefit from my standards.”
He stepped behind her. She could see their reflection faintly in the glass: her road-worn sweater, his dark hair, his hands settling lightly at her waist. The little silver crescent at her throat caught the window light. She had worn it through anger and separation, then through the much less picturesque work of deciding what she believed. Now it lay warm against her skin while he kissed the side of her neck.
“You’re making a persuasive case for missing dinner.”
“We booked the tasting.”
“We booked a lot of things.”
“Savannah.”
She turned in his arms. He was smiling, but beneath it lay a quiet question. They had learned to ask those questions before desire could answer on somebody’s behalf.
“I want to go,” she said. “I also want you to understand how generously I’m treating the local economy.”
“I’ll write a thank-you note.”
She kissed him once, hard enough to make the promise clear, and went to inspect the shower.
The pressure was excellent. She told him through the door.
“Then we’re staying?”
“Until they make us leave.”
After their showers, they had an hour before they needed to dress. Savannah suggested a walk, and Luke looked at her feet with exaggerated concern.
“You packed walking shoes?”
“I own a business. I understand infrastructure.”
They went out with the neighborhood map Aaron had marked, taking only the short route he recommended. The air had a dry edge beneath the warmth. Savannah slowed at a garden full of late flowers, then again at a house with a porch broad enough to accommodate every family argument she had ever known.
“Imagine cleaning that,” she said.
“I was imagining sitting on it.”
“We approach property differently.”
They found a little public patch of green and sat where they could watch a man encourage his elderly dog to acknowledge a squirrel. The dog declined. Luke tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
Savannah studied him without having to disguise it. The six months since that first dinner had been made of small proofs. He called when he said he would. When work ran late, he told her before she asked. Once he had arrived tired and irritable, admitted it, and asked for ten minutes instead of inventing a problem she could solve. She had begun to trust the man who came through the door on a bad Tuesday as much as the man who kissed her on a good night.
“Do I have something on my face?” he asked, eyes still closed.
“Yes. A suspicious amount of peace.”
“I can look worried if it helps.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He opened one eye. “Mack told me not to call the shop unless the truck actually stopped moving.”
“June told me she would stop answering after my third unnecessary question.”
“How many have you used?”
“Two.”
“Saving the last one?”
“For a medical emergency involving the garnish tray.”
His laugh loosened something in her. She took out her phone, sent June a photograph of the leaves with the words We made it, and put it away without adding an instruction. June answered with a photograph of a freshly polished counter and a single word: Leave.
Savannah showed Luke.
“Strong management style,” he said.
“I trained her.”
He reached across the bench and took her hand. She knew he had noticed the effort it cost her not to ask about the delivery due Tuesday. He let the effort remain hers, without praising her as though she were a child passing a test.
A little girl hurried past carrying a leaf almost as big as her face. Her father followed with three more, evidently appointed to the position of assistant collector. Savannah watched them disappear along the path.
“What?” Luke asked.
“Nothing I need to turn into a plan today.”
He nodded. They had talked about the future in pieces, sometimes carelessly, sometimes with more courage than fluency. She did not need every pleasant sight to become a question about what they owed one another.
After a while he stood and offered his hand.
“Come on. We have to go be glamorous.”
“I was glamorous on this bench.”
“I nearly couldn’t cope.”
She let him pull her up and kept his hand for the walk back. At the corner she turned the map upside down deliberately. He looked at it, looked at her, and said nothing until she laughed.
It was a small thing, to be lost on purpose with somebody who would tell her where he was going. She meant to enjoy it. By the time they came downstairs, the light outside had thinned to blue. Savannah wore the dress that had survived the suitcase argument, dark red with sleeves she could push up if necessary. Luke had changed into a clean shirt and a jacket that made her want to reconsider the evening’s order of events.
Opal looked up from the front desk.
“Oh, good. You’re going to the Meridian Room.”
“Assuming he’ll stop looking at the radiator and leave,” Savannah said.
“It makes an interesting noise,” Luke told her.
Aaron raised his coffee. “A fellow professional.”
The tasting was part of an ordinary visitor package Savannah had booked in a brief fit of optimism during inventory. Two evenings out, a guided neighborhood walk later in the week, and a Wednesday trip they planned to make to Lexington on their own. June had insisted she buy something with an actual reservation, on the grounds that otherwise she would spend seven days researching other bars’ ice machines.
Outside, the evening was cool enough for coats. Luke held hers while she slid her arms into it, then offered his elbow with exaggerated ceremony.
“Sir, I have seen you eat standing over the sink.”
“A man can grow.”
They had time before their ride, and walked to the corner together. Leaves clicked along the pavement. A couple on a porch argued amicably about whether their dog needed a sweater. Savannah felt a small loosening behind her ribs. There was a whole city where nobody expected her to solve a staffing problem or tell them how Eli was doing.
Eli had called that morning to complain that she had given June a more detailed emergency plan than him.
“You’re not an emergency plan,” she had told him. “You’re my brother.”
“I’m also capable of finding the fuse box.”
“Last time you called it the electric cupboard.”
“And you knew what I meant.”
He was going to dinner with friends. That ordinary sentence had stayed with her all day. Her brother was alive, making plans that did not include being looked after. She could leave town and let him have his life.
Luke squeezed her hand as their ride pulled up.
The Meridian Room occupied the ground floor of an old commercial building a short drive away, all amber windows and dark painted trim. Inside, low music met the clink of glasses. Coats disappeared onto a rack watched by a young employee who looked determined not to lose anything entrusted to him. The room beyond held small tables, a long counter, and a display of bottles lit with the seriousness usually reserved for jewels.
Savannah stopped at the entrance.
“Oh, we’re absolutely claiming this on the emotional budget.”
Luke bent close. “Does the emotional budget cover dessert?”
“It encourages dessert.”
A woman in a charcoal jacket greeted them with tasting cards and introduced herself as Della Maddox. She had a quick, thoughtful face and the kind of still hands Savannah associated with people who handled expensive things without needing everyone to notice.
“First visit?” Della asked.
“To Louisville,” Savannah said. “Not to a room with liquor and opinions.”
“My favorite kind of guest.”
“I own a bar. I may be professionally insufferable.”
“Then sit where I can see you.”
Della pointed out their table. Savannah was taking in the small plates, the warm light, the relief of not having to count anybody’s pour, when Luke’s hand paused against her back.
She looked at him.
He was watching a man across the room, beside a stack of delivery cases. The man wore a work jacket and held a clipboard loosely against his thigh. Recognition passed between them without pleasure.
“Who is it?” Savannah asked.
“Miles Keene. Drove for Bellwether sometimes.”
Luke turned to her before she had to ask anything else.
“I knew him by work. We weren’t close. I haven’t seen him since before the case.”
She took in the plainness of it, the absence of a delay in which he might have tried to make the past more convenient.
“Does he know we’re on vacation?”
“He’s about to.”
Across the room, Miles set down the clipboard.
