The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  Him: Who?

  Her: Them! All of them! They all saw me. I stabbed him. I stabbed him so many times. [Loud sobbing.]

  Him: There was no evidence of any of that, Ruth. I believe that you’re suffering from a delusion.

  Her: No. That’s not true. They did something with his body. They hid it. I know it.

  Johanna saw Grace and Ben coming up the stairs. Ben had the hockey bag in his hands that he used for all their vacations. It was empty now. Grace was carrying a bottle of bleach and several rags.

  Johanna knew that whatever Grace was about to ask her to do, she would do it. No matter what.

  “We have to go back,” Grace said. “Back to where it all began.”

  Johanna knew exactly what she meant. The jungle. The cenote. The desolate pool. And those signs that said Caution. No Swimming. Danger. Crocodile. She could already see his body sinking down, could imagine exactly what would happen. It would take so long to find him that he’d probably be unrecognizable by then.

  “Whatever you want,” she said to Grace. She took the bottle of bleach from her and started pouring it over the blood on the tiles. She wanted to do as much as she could. She didn’t want Grace to be the only one to carry this with her, weighted down for the rest of her life by the heft of secrets—the dead body hidden in a hockey bag, moved from the resort in a grounds crew pickup truck, dragged through a jungle by five people and pushed over a ledge.

  Him: You need to start taking your medications again.

  Her: Please.

  Him: Miles’s death was not your fault. The only person who got hurt unjustly was you, and the other women Miles abused. He is not the victim here. You are. And you need to forget about him and get on with your life.

  Her: What life? Don’t you see? He was my life. I am nothing without him.

  CELEBRITYSCOOP.com

  THE MOST PERFECT COUPLE IN THE WORLD WASN’T SO PERFECT AFTER ALL

  In the wake of Hurricane Christine, celebrity marriage counselor Miles Markell is still missing. But while there is still no sign of him, that hasn’t stopped more and more women from coming forward online to say that he abused them, assaulted them, and drugged them. The most recent accuser was a maid who worked at the Harmony Resort. After she released a statement, Grace Markell released a statement of her own, announcing she was giving up her psychotherapy license, and apologizing on behalf of her husband. “I stood by and I let it happen, and for that I will be forever sorry,” the statement read. You can read the rest of it here.

  Mexican and US police have been searching the resort grounds, and have reported finding evidence of illegal surveillance devices in all of the intact rooms—and in Grace Markell’s office.

  Meanwhile, as the investigation into Miles’s whereabouts continues, his name has been linked to an all-female cult-like group in Texas—the group that had been offering a cash reward if he or his body were found. Two of the women associated with the group have been arrested on fraud charges.

  And just when we think this story can’t get any more strange, the news has just broken that Ruth Abrams, Miles and Grace’s plucky assistant, has been hospitalized due to a “complete mental breakdown.” So much for paradise. It sounds like the Harmony Resort was never anything but pure hell.

  Epilogue

  Two months after the storm

  Red Lake, Ontario

  Shell walked to the window and looked out at the lake and the forest. The last box was finished. She had just rolled the packing tape along it, ripped it off, and put the roller down. Colin came into the room. “Hey,” he said. “You’re done. Thank you. Sorry, I was on the phone with the board—”

  “It’s okay. Really, Colin. What did the board say?”

  He had asked for compassionate leave from the Red Lake mine after they returned from Mexico but then, a month in, he came to Shell with news from a friend about a solar energy business, just outside of Winnipeg. “We could invest in it, if you want, and we could move out there,” he had said to her, hope in his eyes and voice. “I know it’s outside of our comfort zone, but we could learn the industry, I know we could. And we could feel good about what we do.” The sun. It reminded her of Zoey, and she knew it reminded him, too. “A new life,” he said.

  “I don’t want a new life. Our life will never be new. But it will always be ours.” Shell was going to AA meetings every day. She’d have to find a new place, in Winnipeg. There was a time she wouldn’t have been ready to do that. She was ready now.

  “I love you,” he had said then, perhaps knowing what she was thinking.

  “I love you, too,” she had replied. It was new and old at the same time, this love of theirs. It was precious, and it was hard work and sometimes it made them very sad to look at one another. But they were learning it was also enduring, as great loves always are—loves that have had to withstand tragedy and pain, as many loves do, eventually.

  Sometimes late at night they talked about the storm. They didn’t say his name, but they talked about what had happened—they had to, or it would grow too big inside them. Shell would wake up in a cold sweat and turn to Colin and he would know where she’d gone, and he’d say, “It’s all right, it’s okay, he’s gone. And we did the right thing. We did.” She would do the same for him, when he woke up afraid. It wove them together, the events at the resort and the choices they all made the next morning. For better, for worse, it had bound them. She knew she would never leave him, and that he would stay by her side always. But she also knew it had always been thus. Even in their darkest moments, they had been beside one another. It was just that they had stopped believing in each other. And it had taken descending into hell to make them understand that they could turn back.

  It was enough for Shell. It had to be. Sadness and happiness, sometimes all at once. Life broke your heart—but it didn’t have to end it. You wanted to live. Johanna had taught her that. Just when it looked like all was lost was when you often realized how desperately you wanted to live. And you would do anything, absolutely anything, to save yourself and the people you loved.

  Wherever she was, Shell hoped Johanna was happy. And Grace, too. They deserved it.

  Tepoztlan Village, Mexico

  One year after the storm

  “These are for you,” Johanna said, tapping on Grace’s office door, where she sat in front of her laptop, which was on a desk facing a window that looked out over the mountain range that was now part of their home. “Am I interrupting your writing?”

  Grace turned and smiled. She closed her laptop, hid away the words that were the truth, that were her story, and that she knew she would never share with a soul but still had to get out. She found such comfort in the writing. Some days, she wrote for hours and then deleted it all. It was like therapy, and she knew she needed it, or else she would become wrapped up in the past.

  Now she returned Johanna’s gentle and familiar kiss. “It was today,” she said. “One year ago, exactly.”

  “I didn’t know if you wanted to remember.” Johanna put the flowers down beside the computer.

  The small green vase was packed with dahlias, red and yellow and white. “My favorite,” Grace said, reaching up and touching one. “And it’s okay to remember. It’s our story.”

  “Do you ever wish our story was different?”

  “Yes, I do. I wish it had all been easier. That we’d met long ago. That I’d never made mistakes. That no one ever got hurt. But now, you’re my happy ending. Now, we don’t have to be afraid.”

  Johanna reached for Grace, and pulled her up and into her arms. As she did, Grace thought of all the times they still woke up scared. They still slept with their limbs tangled, holding each other the way they had the night of the storm. She still heard Miles’s voice in her nightmares. Ruth’s, too. Maybe she always would. But they were safe here, they had to be, in this tiny pueblo Grace could never imagine leaving,
a hidden place with steep cobblestone streets and pyramid ruins hidden in the mountains, with villagers who seemed to understand they didn’t want to be known. Miles’s body was never going to be found. And Ruth—no one was ever going to believe her. No one was going to come for them. There was only a very small part of herself that ever doubted those truths.

  Grace reached up and touched her now-short hair for a moment. You’re not hiding, she told herself. It’s not a disguise. One year ago, still at the resort, she had answered all the police’s questions. It had taken days to sift through the debris of the storm. No, I hadn’t seen him after about midnight. Yes, he had seemed to be under the influence of something. Yes, he had been violent with me. Violent with Ruth. Yes, what those women were saying was all true. No, he could not swim. No, he never learned how.

  It had been the police who had found her laptop, hidden in an office, safe in the main villa, and had cracked the encrypted file that hid her Swiss bank account info. It had been frozen for a while, but they had given her access in the end—because while she was no angel, she was no criminal, either, as far as they knew. She told herself that every day.

  “I called Ben,” Johanna said quietly, and Grace chased the thoughts away by looking into Johanna’s ocean-green eyes. “I wanted to see how he is. Today.”

  “And?”

  “He’s moving on. He’s back to work. He visits Ruth. He says she still wants to stay there, at that institution. That she’s very unstable, some days. That it’s hard.”

  “I can pay more money for her care,” Grace said quickly. “Whatever it costs for however long it takes. Tell Ben, the next time you speak.”

  “Okay,” Johanna whispered. A pause. Then: “Grace, it’s not your fault. You’re helping her.”

  “I try to believe that.”

  “We need to try to forget.”

  One day, maybe they would. Maybe, they’d stop reliving that moment when they, all five of them, had colluded in dragging Miles’s body over the edge of the cenote. Maybe, they’d forget the way the debris-strewn water had begun to turn red with the blood from his wounds.

  And maybe one day, Grace would forget that in that moment she had started to pray—and not for forgiveness, not anymore. Not even to be saved. What she had wanted was very simple. And it had come. In the light of the sunrise through the trees, she had seen what nobody else had because they weren’t looking anymore: the lithe body of the crocodile, attracted by the blood and moving toward the corpse with purpose. She had stopped praying then because she had her answer. They had walked back through the jungle.

  But no matter what she wanted to forget, she would always remember how silent they had all been, traveling back to the resort. Creeping across the property and back into the main villa. How Ben and Colin had gone out to the beach and lit a bonfire. Then the bag was gone, and Ruth’s coat, and all the rags and cloths they had used to clean up the blood. Then there was no more evidence. They had made promises to one another with all that silence. They would probably never see each other again, but they were tied together for life.

  Grace held Johanna tighter. She buried her face in her hair and succeeded in pushing those memories away. “Do you want to go out? Let’s.”

  Johanna smiled. “I was hoping,” she said. “I need air. I need sun. I need to walk. And I know I could go without you—but I want to be near you. Today.”

  “Always,” Grace said, and she felt so safe. She clung to it, reveled in it, breathed it in.

  Later, they packed a lunch—papaya and cheese and the coarse bread they both loved—and went out into the back courtyard of the house they had bought at the edge of the town, with some of Grace’s money. It had a swimming pool that overlooked the mountains. Grace was getting used to rocky vistas instead of water. “I have something to tell you,” Grace said, when they were outside by the pool, intending to swim before they walked out to the ruins with their picnic. “I got a letter from my brother Garrett’s son. He replied. Maybe I’ll write again and ask him to come. If that’s all right with you. I’ll talk to him first, I’ll see how it feels. But I wanted to tell you.”

  “I know how much you’ve wanted this.”

  Grace nodded. She hoped so much that she would see Garrett in his son. That with him, she would feel she still had family. One person could not be your everything. You had to work hard to make your world bigger. She wanted to do that for Johanna.

  Johanna stood and walked to the edge of the pool, which took up most of the yard. It was deep, aqua-bottomed. Grace watched Johanna dive in, watched her body slice through the crystal clear water. She stood and stripped off her dress, in one fast movement. She dove in and felt perfect and clean. They swam back and forth. Their voices rose and fell.

  They didn’t talk as they dried off and dressed again and locked the house. They didn’t have to. They walked out toward the ruins, carrying their picnic. The sun shone down and dried their hair. Johanna’s hand in hers, Grace climbed the ruins, wondering, as she always did, which one of them had reached out first or if they had simply always been holding each other.

  There was that same silence between them as they climbed the crumbling pyramid, a silence that hid nothing as, hands still linked, they looked out at their world together and saw more than just ruins.

  * * *

  If you loved this book, be sure to check out Things to Do When It’s Raining, also by Marissa Stapley.

  Read an excerpt here!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my agent, Samantha Haywood, the brightest star in my sky. And her excellent team at Transatlantic Agency, including Stephanie Sinclair, Léonicka Valcius, Ana Balmazovic, Megan Philipp and Barbara Miller.

  Simon & Schuster Canada, for being my north star—and especially my queen of an editor, Nita Pronovost; my publicists, Rita Silva and Jillian Levick; and Siobhan Doody, Rebecca Snowdon, Alexandra Boelsterli, Felicia Quon, Adria Iwasutiak, Sherry Lee, Shara Alexa, David Millar and Kevin Hanson.

  The team at Graydon House, for giving me a home away from home. And, in particular, my editor, Brittany Lavery, who is very smart and very kind (and very into hearing about my cat); my publicist, Gloria Bairos; Kathleen Oudit, for the beautiful cover; and Lisa Wray, Amy Jones, Pamela Osti, Diane Moggy and Susan Swinwood.

  My wicked (in a good way) coven of author friends make the hard days bearable and the good days better: Karma Brown, Kerry Clare, Channie Bobannie (Chantel Guertin), Kate Hilton, Elizabeth Renzetti, Jennifer Robson and Kathleen Tucker.

  My writing retreat team: Sophie Chouinard, Alison Gadsby, Kate Henderson and Sherri Vanderveen. Long may we run. Hopefully not on a patch of ice.

  The kind authors who read this book first and offered endorsements: Karen Brown, Lucy Clarke, Christina Dalcher, Joanna Goodman, Robyn Harding, Karen Katchur, Hannah Mary McKinnon, Roz Nay and Laurie Petrou.

  My friends. If we’ve made it this far, you’re stuck with me now, even if you secretly think you should be on this list of special mentions and I forgot you. For encouragement and communion every step of the way, thank you to: Pauline Bacevicius, Leigh Fenwick, Asha Frost, Jessie Morgan, Michelle Schlag, Amanda Watson and Nance Williams.

  To my readers, as always. When you write or approach to tell me my words mean something to you, it means the world to me.

  My wonderful, supportive family: Bruce Stapley, Valerie Clubine, James Clubine (especially for the sermon illustration about secrets!), Shane Stapley, Drew Stapley, Griffin Stapley, Joe and Joyce Ponikowski, Lauren and Mark Matusiak, and Marnie and Greg Webb.

  My children, Joseph and Maia. You keep me grounded and give me a reason to write beyond the fact that it’s my (dream) job. You remind me that words matter and have the power to change the world. Change the world, you two. It’s not perfect yet—but you are, to me.

  And to my husband, Joe Ponikowski, who read multiple versions of this book while I sat in a chair o
pposite him saying, “So, what do you think? What do you think now?” I could not ask for a better, more caring partner in this life.

  Things to Do When It’s Raining

  by Marissa Stapley

  On the morning Mae woke and Peter was missing, she had been dreaming she was chasing her childhood friend Gabe through the farmer’s field with the steep slope where they used to go tobogganing. It was night and the moon was full, and the river was in the distance, invisible but ever present, and every time she almost reached him, she stumbled on a root, she fell, and he just kept running ahead. He would never have done that when they were kids, though; he would have turned back and reached for her hand, pulled her up—wouldn’t he have? “Why do I still believe you’re good?” she had shouted at his retreating form before waking and reaching for Peter.

  But she was on the couch, not in their bed.

  She sat up, listened, found only the silence that cloaks a space when the person being waited for hasn’t come home. (Sometimes, people go out and don’t come back. Sometimes, bad things happen. Mae has known this since she was six.)

  Peter. Her partner. Where was he? She searched the apartment, but there was no sign of him. All thoughts and memories of Gabe vanished, all warmth from sleep was replaced with fear. She pictured a black gypsy cab running Peter down. A mugging, maybe even a heart attack. She tried his phone: no answer. She walked through the apartment again, slowly, and found herself cataloging the items that were hers. It was somehow calming, this evidence of her presence in his home, in his life: the painting of the Saint Lawrence River on one wall; a vase near the door in a fox-hunt pattern that she used as an umbrella stand, just like the one her grandmother kept at the door of the inn where Mae was raised; the artist’s rendering of Summers’ Inn itself, hanging in the hallway; and the photocopied list, tucked into her dresser drawer, a replica of the one that still hung on a corkboard in the lobby of the inn, an artifact from when Mae’s mother, Virginia, was alive. What would my mother say to me if she were here now? She would tell me to get out of here and go figure out where Peter is.