Scarlett picked up her shower basket and stared.

“Why are you talking about towels?” she finally asked.

Lola held up a photo from some high-end catalog. It showed some woman getting out of a tub the size of an SUV and wrapping herself in a massive blanketlike towel.

“Egyptian cotton,” Lola said. “These are pretty expensive, but once you feel them…”

“We have towels.”

“We have terrible towels from some bargain supply place.”

“They’re monogrammed.”

“They scratch! I’ve been trying to explain this to Mom and Dad. People are not going to come back if the towels scratch.”

“There are a lot of reasons people won’t come back,” Scarlett said. “Like, birds in the rooms and nonfunctional toilets. Do you really believe that expensive towels are going to solve our problems?”

“I’m just trying to come up with a few practical solutions,” Lola said.

“A bunch of towels we can’t afford for guests who aren’t here…that’s not really a solution.”

Lola looked genuinely saddened by Scarlett’s lack of support for her towel idea. It wouldn’t work…but Lola was the only one trying to help the hotel. Scarlett would have faked some more enthusiasm, but it wasn’t in her.

“Spencer told me to tell you that he’ll be back around six,” Lola said, carefully refolding her picture. “And it’s family dinner night tonight. Mom and Dad are out getting some pipes or something. There’s a leak in the kitchen. I have to get back down to the desk.”

“Hey,” Scarlett said, as the guilt sank in. “I’ll take the desk for a while. I mean, I’m here.”

The front desk of the Hopewell was not a good place to distract yourself. It was, however, a great place to really let the loneliness and pain sink in. Lola had gone off to try to find the towels of her dreams at a lower price, her parents were still buying pipes, and Marlene was off at her friend’s apartment. Even their three guests were out.

Scarlett was the most alone person in the city of New York—a city that never let you be alone. She tried to distract herself by reading e-mails from her friends, but it only made them seem farther away and their lives so much better than hers. She tried not to replay every single moment of what happened the day before…that didn’t work. Then she really tried to avoid watching Eric’s commercial online.

Seven viewings later, she was openly weeping at the desk. This was probably the only good thing about no one being around.

Unable to take it anymore, she hung the sign and headed out down the street to buy herself an iced coffee. She was just locking the door, when she heard someone speak.

“It’s not Tara,” the voice said. “It’s Lola, right?”

“Scarlett,” Scarlett corrected whoever it was. She gave her eyes a quick rub, just in case they were still dripping, then turned to find herself facing a woman with very short silver hair.