Virtue Falls Read Free Page B

rocks, do you?”
    “That is not true. I also understand alluvial deposits and am studying the recently mapped ocean floor off the coast of Virtue Falls for an understanding of why tsunamis are so massive in this area.” Elizabeth thought it an intelligent answer.
    Rainbow stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Right. You’re like your father. I’ll get your dinner. I had the cook put an extra order of fries on the plate.”
    Elizabeth wanted to ask what she meant about her father. Had Rainbow known him when they lived here?
    But Elizabeth had learned, the hard way, never to talk about Charles, so instead she asked, “I asked for mashed potatoes. Didn’t I?”
    “They’re coming, too. You need fattening up.”
    Elizabeth knew for a fact she didn’t need fattening up. She was curvy. Very curvy. For a girl growing up in California, land of the svelte, being built like her was a disadvantage, not to mention it was hard to find clothes. If pants fit her hips, they were loose around her waist, and she hadn’t worn a button-up shirt since she was eleven and developed a C-cup. Her aunt said she was built like her mom. Her uncle said she was built like an exotic dancer. But he didn’t realize she’d heard him, so she would acquit him of malice. Her uncle wasn’t mean; he was overworked and didn’t have time for his own kids, much less a niece who never talked much even after she recovered her power of speech.
    Elizabeth realized she had a bit of a disconnect from the rest of the world caused by the knowledge that humanity could turn on her in an instant. She recognized the fact she sabotaged her own relationships, and sometimes she really tried to join in with the general populace and talk about the weather. She just never got it right. Not even with Garik.
    Especially not with Garik.
    Best not to think of Garik.
    She bent her head to her reports again, and didn’t notice when one of the town’s elderly inhabitants held court in the corner, pointed her out to the tourists, and regaled them with the tale of how Elizabeth Banner had seen her father kill her mother with a pair of scissors.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    “Virtue Falls Resort has already celebrated its hundredth birthday.”
    The tourists said, “Ooh.”
    “Built in nineteen-thirteen by John Smith Sr., this elegant four-story boutique hotel and spa perches on a rocky precipice over the Pacific Ocean, and was a profitable addition to the immense Smith fortune, which consisted of a thousand wooded acres, a sawmill, and the mountaintop mansion in which the family lived.” Margaret leaned on her cane and listened as the dozen newly arrived guests now said, “Ahh.”
    They stood in the great room of the resort, on the next to the last stop of the tour. Margaret had probably told this tale to resort guests at least five thousand times—and she loved it. It was her Irish blood that made her a storyteller, and her own self that made her love dealing with people.
    She didn’t mind that the guests craned their necks to look up at the massive rustic Douglas fir beams supporting the high knotty pine ceiling, or ran their hands over the restored early-twentieth-century furniture. She wanted them to admire the great room. More than that, she wanted to give them the feeling that they were part of the Smith family.
    When that happened, they would return. Even now, she recognized one couple; Mr. and Mrs. Turner had first come as honeymooners. Now they brought their teenage son.
    That was the kind of connection Margaret liked to see. She continued, “Unfortunately, World War One took the oldest Smith son into battle and he died in the fields of France. Grief killed John, Senior. Mrs. Ida Smith and her son Johnny had not been trained to manage properties, and surviving the Great Depression required more skill than the two of them could provide. By the time Mrs. Ida Smith visited Ireland in nineteen thirty-eight, the Smith fortunes were well on their way