“It’s a massive resort with its own beach and waterpark. Going there was my childhood dream. I kept asking my parents to take me for my birthday.”
“Did they?”
She snorts again. “Um, no. They were broke public school teachers. They were like ‘yeah right, here’s a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Books-A-Million and an ice cream cake.’”
Fell into that one, didn’t I.
“Lauren and I used to joke about going there for spring break and having affairs with teenage staff members while searching for smuggled antiquities like the Olsens,” she says.
“Is that the plot of the movie?”
“Yep.”
“Do they find the antiquities?”
“Just in time.”
Our taxi pulls onto a palm-lined drive and stops in front of a gracious pink house lined with French windows and surrounded by lush green gardens. As soon as the valets open our doors, I can hear the tinkle of piano music and conversation trickling out from inside.
It’s the sound of people having fun on an upscale holiday. The sound of theRomance of the Sea.
A triggering noise if ever there was one.
“Something wrong?” Hope asks, like she’s eager to hear the answer is yes.
“Not at all. Let’s go in.”
I give my name to the host—an old school maître d’ in a white dinner jacket.
“Mr. Segrave, welcome,” he says. “Your table is almost ready. Let me invite you into the lounge for a cocktail while you wait.”
He takes Hope’s arm and leads us into what looks like a wealthy family’s living room—overstuffed chairs and sofas and a white grand piano under a dramatically vaulted wood ceiling.
“This is so beautiful,” Hope says to the host.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Segrave,” he says. “Can I bring you a drink while you wait?”
“Oh, I’m not Mrs. Segrave, thank goodness,” she says conspiratorially. “And yes, I’d love a gin and tonic.”
“Same for you, sir?” he asks.
“Club soda, please. With a lime.”
I settle onto a sofa to look at a menu but Hope doesn’t join me. Instead, she swans over to the piano, where a tall and incandescently handsome Black man is playing some jazzy standard I don’t know. She starts chatting with him. A waitress with a silver tray stops by and hands Hope her drink. She takes a sip as the pianist winds down the song he’s playing, and then starts “Summertime.”
He nods at Hope, and she sings the opening line.
As we know, Hope has an incredible voice. So of course, this stops the room in its tracks. The piano player jumps in at the chorus and they harmonize, prompting enthusiastic applause that lifts the tone in the room from pleasantly relaxed to festive. An older couple gets up to dance, and after a minute, a younger one joins them. Hope finishes the song—to more applause—and is making her way over to me when the piano player starts “Fly Me to the Moon.” I half expect her to race back and start covering Frank Sinatra but she’s waylaid by a handsome white guy old enough to be her father.
“Would you like to dance?” he asks her.
She smiles at him and says loudly, “I’d love to! My date doesn’t know how.”
He offers her his arm and they turn away, swaying to the music.
I ignore them.
A pair of women in their forties carrying flutes of champagne—a freckly redhead in a white pantsuit and an Asian brunette in a gold cocktail dress—approach me.
