Page 111 of Our Last Resort

Gabriel sighs.

Did you love her?

Have you been…grieving for her?

Or did something else happen—something darker?

This story you’re about to tell me—how does it end, exactly?

Gabriel opens his mouth, then shakes his head.

I put my hand on his. It’s a gamble. He’s nervous, embarrassed for reasons I haven’t figured out yet. But he doesn’t pull away.

“Tell me,” I say.

He nods. He opens his mouth again. This time, he speaks.

37Escalante, Utah

The First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Seventh Days

Here’s how it unfolds, in Gabriel’s telling.

On the first day, on his way from the swimming pool to our suite, Gabriel bumps into this woman. He’s noticed her. Everyone has. He doesn’t expect her to notice him in return—or if she does, it will be for the wrong reasons. Because he’s tall, shy, and awkward. Because his eyes don’t match. I’ve always suspected that Gabriel might be beautiful, but I’ve never known for sure. His face has been a part of my world for so long. It justis,for me.

Obviously, people also notice him because he’s Gabriel Miller, whose wife died in circumstances just a little too strange for comfort. It happens. It has happened too often.

But Sabrina Brenner notices him in a way that feels good. He swears she does. Her hand lingers on his arm. Above the lenses of her sunglasses, her eyes—her beautiful green eyes—search his. She smiles at him in a way that lights up her whole face.

“I’m not some sicko,” Gabriel tells me under our rock canopy. “I don’t start imagining things the moment a woman looks at me. So I didn’t think it was anything, at first.”

But then. That night, the first night, Gabriel and I go for onelast drink after dinner. Espresso martini for me, a pineapple-based mocktail for him. I leave our spot at the bar for a few minutes, to go to the bathroom. In that time, he sees her, by herself, on a stool at the opposite end of the counter. She spots him, raises her hand in a little wave, and—looking left, then right, maybe checking for her husband—approaches him.

Under the canopy, Gabriel’s voice takes on a hypnotic quality. It’s not hard, hearing him talk, to imagine a scene as though I’m living it through him. I know how he speaks, how he breathes. I know how he reacts to most things.

Or at least I think I know.

Maybe there’s a whole other Gabriel lurking under the surface.

But it’s my version of him I picture chatting with Sabrina at the bar.

They talk for a few minutes. She’s at the Ara with her husband, but he’s been working a lot. He always works a lot.

Here, she looks a bit sad.

“This trip,” she said. “We were supposed to spend time dealing with our—”

She catches herself. A pink flush creeps up her delicate cheekbones.

Maybe she doesn’t want to bore him. Maybe she realizes it would be unbecoming to tell a stranger—this young stranger—what she was supposed to do with her old husband. Maybe she feels disloyal toward William.

“Where are you visiting from?” Gabriel asks, to change the subject.

“New York,” she says.

Here, I imagine Gabriel’s jaw tightens.

“I used to live in New York,” he says.

---