She had the taxi take her there.
Once they arrived, she paid him, added a tip, walked briskly into the hotel lobby, waited a minute or two, and just as briskly walked out again. Her suitcase made her feel conspicuous, but it wasn’t very big and half the women in L.A., actresses and models, lugged around bags almost as big, so she decided not to worry about it, especially since there wasn’t anything she could do to hide it.
There was a chain pharmacy across the street. She went inside, bought a ball cap and a pair of big wraparound sunglasses.
Nobody paid her any attention, not even the bored gum-chewing cashier. She paid for her purchases, stepped into a corner of the store, tore the tags off, put the glasses on and tucked her hair up under the cap.
Much better.
Once outside, she took a taxi to Rodeo Drive, got out in front of Ralph Lauren’s, peered in the windows like any other shopper, did the same in front of half a dozen other shops before setting off on foot for the elegant hotel where her sisters were staying.
An elevator whisked her to their floor; a right turn took her to the door of their suite. She knocked.
“It’s me,” she said, knowing that one of them would be peering at her through the peephole. The door began opening. “And I’m just warning you both that I’m not staying.”
She said it firmly. But once the door was fully open and she was looking at the faces of her sisters, at the love and worry in their eyes, Lissa lost the composure she’d fought so hard to maintain.
Her suitcase dropped to the floor.
“Oh, Liss,” Emily said.
“Liss, sweetie,” Jaimie said.
Lissa sobbed and went straight into their arms.
* * *
Emily called room service and ordered scrambled eggs and bacon, toast and three pots of herbal tea.
“I know it’s way after breakfast time, but Mom used to make scrambled eggs and herbal tea whenever one of us wasn’t feeling so good, remember?”
“Are you talking about me? Because I’m feeling good,” Lissa said. Jaimie and Emily looked at her. “OK. Maybe not so good. But, really, I’m not very hungry.”
Her sisters said well, they were, so she could just watch them eat.
Mostly, they watched her.
The truth was, she was starved—she hadn’t had anything since those cups of tea the night before, and that felt as if it had been a century ago. So she tucked into the eggs and the bacon, spread strawberry jam on the toast, drank two cups of tea.
“Done?” Emily said.
“Yes. Thank you. That was—”
Jaimie whisked the room service tray aside.
“How did you end up in Montana?” she said.
“What went wrong between you and that actor, Raoul Something-or-Other?”
“The man’s an idiot!”
“No worse an idiot than Nick Gentry! What was he doing in the middle of nowhere?”
“Were you actually a ranch cook?”
“And if you were, why? What happened? What went wrong?”
Emily and Jaimie fell silent. Lissa looked from one of the to the other.