After Nessie requested everyone take another journey around the world, Kate found herself in Seoul when she realized Miles was missing.
“Is your fella intimidated by your dance skills?” Mr. Drew garbled, eliciting polite laughter as he approached their table. “I saw him heading”—he hiccupped—“toward the kitchen to hide.” Reeking of soju, Nessie’s father announced to the group that they’d converted the Wharf’s private dining room into a cheese room. He puffed up like a blowfish as he listed the hard cheeses he’d had shipped directly from Italy, soft cheeses from France. “How many weddings have you been to where there is a whole fromage room?” he asked Kate, clinking her shot glass and nearly tipping over from the exertion.
Watching Mr. Drew toddle off in search of a new audience, Georgina linked her arm with Kate’s. “Don’t you wonder if weddings were always such competitions?” she asked. “Like, do you think the real reason why Queen Elizabeth imprisoned Mary Stuart was because she heard her cousin had a fromage room at her wedding?”
“I’m gonna go check it out,” Kate announced. “Wanna come?”
“If I start eating cheese, I’ll stop drinking,” Georgina said, and Liza nodded in agreement.
What Mr. Drew hadn’t explained was that a fromage room was so extravagant in part because the space had to be temperature controlled. Goosebumps rose on Kate’s skin as she entered. The room was empty except for a large man standing in the corner, his broad back to Kate as she watched him pour a silver bowl full of blackberries onto his plate. His black blazer was working overtime, every fiber gasping as it continued to stretch from shoulder to shoulder.
“Oh my God,” Kate said, stepping fully into the room.
“Something else, isn’t it,” the man clucked with shared admiration. “Nice moves out there, by the way—ever do private dances?” The man laughed and Kate felt a slight wave of recognition. He must be a local, but she couldn’t place his face.
“Try that one with some of the fig spread,” the man said, chewing loudly as he pointed to a soft cheese.
“If you insist.” Kate grabbed a small plate and then, upon further consideration, swapped it for a full dinner plate.
“You look familiar,” he said, cramming a cracker into his mouth. “Are you from here?”
Kate nodded. “I’m Kate Campbell—I grew up with Nessie.”
The man expressed his approval by licking cheese from his fingers, and Kate noticed a gold class ring on his pinky that looked a little tight. “I met the Drews a few years ago,” he offered. “Tremendous people.” After wiping his hands on the white tablecloth, the man gave her a flirty wink and took two steps toward her before introducing himself: “Harry Leeper.”
The temperature in the room, controlled as it might be, felt like it dropped twenty degrees.
“You’re Harry Leeper?” Kate asked. Before she could stop herself, the impact of having traveled around the world gurgled up her throat to the tip of her tongue. “You ruin everything.” It sounded dumb, melodramatic, even as the words charged past her lips, but she was thinking of Ziggy’s tree, the white oak that was now just a stump, and the Bluebell Hotel, and all the bulldozed bungalows. She was thinking about the library and how he’d planned to level it for fourteen condos.
“Jeez, tell me how you really feel,” Leeper quipped, eyeing Kate up and down. “Actually, don’t, because this is a wedding, and we shouldn’t talk business at a wedding.”
“It isn’t business. You exploit people.”
“Some would call that progress,” he said, shrugging. “There are perks to a free market—no doubt I’ve given your parents’ property value a nice little bump.”
“It’s short-sighted greed.” Hearing herself speak, Kate realized she was trembling with anger.
“Is that right?” Leeper’s eyes narrowed as if ready to pounce. “I think there’s a supply-and-demand argument to be made,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “I never force anyone to sell me their outdated, mold-ridden clapboard house.” Kate watched him, frozen in her tracks, as he put down his cheese plate and blew his nose into a napkin. Leeper smiled at Kate as if this exchange were all in good fun. “People are grateful,” he added.
“People are desperate.”
“And what about this place?” Leeper said, lifting both hands to marvel at the Wharf. With unsparing theatrics, he gawped at the high-arched ceiling, the views of the water. “Hard to believe, but the Wharf as it stands didn’t always exist. And those lodges on the other side of the parking lot, which, by the way, wasn’t always a parking lot—those lodges were built on ground that city council was considering protecting.”
“The Wharf employs half the town, especially in the winter.”
“I employ my fair share.”
“Undocumented workers you pay less than minimum wage under the table.”
“And? I’m giving the man a fish and teaching him how to fish at the same time. My guys have families to feed.”
Kate rolled her eyes, less frustrated with Leeper than she was with herself. She didn’t have an answer to that.
“I pay my men enough,” Leeper said. His eyes rested on the low neckline of Kate’s dress. “Campbell. You’re the girl behind the library petition.”
Kate was pretty sure she only said, That’s right, motherfucker, in her head.
“Here’s the thing, Katie—I can’t do anything on my own. Hate me all you want, but you’re giving me too much credit. I can’t ruin anything without a whole lot of cooperation. Same with Jo Hoffman. Same with anyone trying to do anything. And at least I’m not like everyone else around here who only offer jobs to college-educated white girls with a BA in self-righteousness.”
Kate gawked at the words as they hung in the air between them. Pleased with her expression, Leeper smiled and took a small bow. “See you on the dance floor, sweetheart.”
Kate stood there, enraged and shaking as she spun on her heels to face him. “The library is only the beginning,” she called out, hoping he didn’t hear the quiver in her voice. “People are going to stop selling their houses to you.”
“Ignorance is not your color,” Leeper grinned, turning around and meeting her eye. “Not too long ago I got a very nice email from Beverly Miller.”
Kate’s stomach dropped. Her heart clawed at her chest like a caged animal trying to escape. Bev would never do that. Ziggy would never do that. They wouldn’t be the Millers if they could be so duplicitous.
“Anyway, I should get going—Donna has some friends she wants me to meet from the planning committee.” Leeper winked again and turned to exit. “Enjoy the cheese,” he called over his shoulder.
Kate stood in the fromage room for an unclear amount of time, paralyzed by the shock of so many conflicting realities. Her throat begged for air as she shivered in the cold, but she remained until a couple appeared and began rapidly undressing each other, oblivious to Kate, the cheese, the fact that this was not their hotel room. Kate slid past them undetected, annoyed that she had forgotten the most obvious fact about weddings: They were expensive excuses for fancy dresses and bad behavior.