“No,” she said, this woman whose property Marianne had inhabited, whose school she’d run for more than a year. Marianne could not be trusted to carry her orchids, but she could follow her and open the doors. So she did that, back and forth from the patio into the carpeted hall and an even nicer dining room, where she set them on a long bare table. Finally they were done, and after counting the plants she looked at Marianne and seemed to realize who she was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just preoccupied.” She waved her hand in the direction of the now cleared-out patio.

“Please,” Marianne said, “sit down.”

She did, and Marianne sat across from her, looking over the still somehow trembling orchids. Marianne told her everything—how the Ranch had spiraled out of her control, into the hands of GWGW and Tad Tucker and Regina Somers. She’d left too many decisions to Mark and Eric. It was no longer the place Frances envisioned, and she was ready to resign. Marianne told her about the new exploitative marketing efforts, and the conversation she’d felt forced to have with Martin Rice, and how there would probably be an exposé in the paper. The enormity of what she’d done suddenly crashed around her in a terrible kind of hangover.

Frances reached across the table, pushing the tremulous orchids aside. Her palms were warm and smooth. Her eyes were the clear blue of the gulf on a sunny day.

“My idea was a bookstore,” Frances said. “I was getting older, and tired of running a hotel, and I thought—I know, a bookstore. With an inspirational bent—a place where people of religious and spiritual feeling could come together to buy books, and maybe have readings and events. But the bank turned me down for financing—they said bookstores were dying—and when I called Mark to help me put together a business plan, he remembered an idea Eric told him about, an idea for a school.”

“So it was Mark’s idea,” Marianne said.

“No,” she said. “It was Eric’s. Eric talked his brother into starting the school. Eric was in love with you.”

“We were engaged,” Marianne said. “That was a long time ago.”

“He was in love when he started the school,” Frances insisted. “I’ve been married six times, and I know what it looks like when a man is in love. He wanted to win you back. This was why he started the school.”

“Oh no,” Marianne said. It felt good—and also terrible—to be told, to have it confirmed, that Eric still loved her. Good because she loved him too, and terrible because she had just ruined everything.

“But he didn’t tell me!” she said. “He lied!”