Welcome, friends! Barring any unforeseen circumstances, you should all have arrived by 4:00 p.m., and we’ll meet on the Oceanside Terrace shortly after Opening Night. We understand you may be tired from a day of travel, but the inaugural exercise isn’t optional (none of the scheduled activities are). Don’t worry—you’ll have plenty of time to relax tomorrow.
The Harmony Resort, La Hacienda, promises hope for struggling marriages. Run by celebrity couple Drs. Miles and Grace Markell—authors of the bestseller Revering Your Marriage and Renewing Your Love—the “last resort” offers the chance for couples to repair their relationships in a luxurious setting on the gorgeous Mayan Riviera.
Johanna and Ben have a marriage that looks great on the surface, but in reality, they’re deeply alienated from one another. Shell and Colin fight constantly; after all, Colin is a workaholic, and Shell always comes second to his job as an executive at a powerful mining company. As both couples begin Harmony’s intensive therapy program, it becomes clear that Harmony is not all it seems—and neither are Miles and Grace themselves. What are they hiding, and what price will these couples pay for finding out?
As a powerful hurricane descends on the coast, trapping both the hosts and the guests on the resort, secrets are revealed, loyalties are tested and not one single person—or their marriage—will remain unchanged by what follows.
Praise for The Last Resort
“The Last Resort has all the ingredients for an impossible-to-put-down thrill ride of a read.... It will fascinate you, enlighten you, break your heart and mend it again. Read this book!”
—Jennifer Robson, internationally bestselling author of The Gown
“Stapley pulls off a tale that’s both spine-chilling and heartwarming. How she does it is as intricate a mystery as The Last Resort’s plot. You won’t be needing a bookmark.”
—Christina Dalcher, author of Vox
“The Last Resort is…like literary fiction and killer suspense were left on an island together and the outcome was an incredible book.”
—Laurie Petrou, author of Sister of Mine
“Fans of Agatha Christie will surely love this modern whodunit from the first to the very last page. One to add to your ‘to read’ list now.”
—Hannah McKinnon, author of The Neighbors and Her Secret Son
“Atmospheric and evocative, Marissa Stapley’s The Last Resort brings together a cast of characters with secrets as destructive as the hurricane threatening the island, and explores how far we’ll go to keep the truth buried. Fast-paced, expertly plotted and highly entertaining, this novel is perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty!”
—Karma Brown, bestselling author of The Life Lucy Knew
“This novel is an exciting addition to the psych thriller world—with an emotionally complex twist.”
—Roz Nay, bestselling author of Our Little Secret
“The secrets, lies, and psychoses revealed will keep readers rapt as they hurtle toward a climax of biblical proportions. A rollicking thrill ride!”
—Robyn Harding, internationally bestselling author of The Party and Her Pretty Face
“Deeply addictive and simmering with tension, The Last Resort had me breathlessly turning the pages all the way through to its explosive conclusion.”
—Lucy Clarke, author of You Let Me In
Also by Marissa Stapley
Mating for Life
Things to Do When It’s Raining
The Last Resort
Marissa Stapley
This book is for my children.
May the world become a place that is worthy of you.
How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?
Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
—1 Corinthians 7:16
Marissa Stapley is a journalist and the author of the acclaimed novel Things to Do When It’s Raining. She writes page-turning, deeply emotional fiction about families, friends and women’s lives. Visit her at marissastapley.com or follow her on Twitter, @marissastapley.
Contents
Story Begins
Website Articles
Emails 1
Day One
Email-Transcripts
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Day Two
Newspaper Articles
Emails 3
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Day Three
Emails 4
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Day Four
Emails 5
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Day Five
Emails 6
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Day Six
Emails 7
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Day Seven Morning
Letter
Website Articles 2
Emails 8
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Day Seven Afternoon
Emails 9
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Emails 10
Day Seven Night
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Day Eight Dawn
Emails 11
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Emails 12
Chapter 49
Emails 13
Chapter 50
Emails 14
Chapter 51
Emails 15
Website Articles 3
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Things to Do When It’s Raining by Marissa Stapley
He struggles to breathe. There’s blood trickling into one of his eyes. His glasses are gone. He can hear the ocean rising to meet him. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Jezebel,” he says through broken teeth, through the wheezing battle for air, through the anger that has cracked open inside him. He crawls across the rocky surface, struggles with his aching hands to find purchase. “Come here, you Jezebel.” A wave hits him in the mouth. But he reaches the stone staircase, finally, and drags himself upward. He’ll find her. And when he does, she’ll be sorry.
CELEBRITYSCOOP.com
CELEBRITY MARRIAGE COUNSELOR MILES MARKELL MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD, AFTER HURRICANE CHRISTINE PUMMELS MAYAN RIVIERA—and foul play suspected!
Hurricane Christine charged ashore late Sunday night, delivering a surprise direct hit to coastal communities in Mexico’s Mayan Riviera—but as the local authorities sift through the debris, mostly concentrated around Zihua, they’re also focusing on finding clues pertaining to the whereabouts of Dr. Miles Markell, who was already embroiled in a cont
roversy (click here for details on the current accusations against Markell; two more were added today).
Miles, 52, and his wife, Grace, 35, were running one of their famed two-week intensive couples’ therapy retreats at the luxurious Harmony Resort, La Hacienda, near Zihua—basically a tropical summer camp for rich unhappy people—when the storm hit. Little information is available, but it has been confirmed that while damage to the property was extensive, Miles is the only one not accounted for and there have been no injuries—likely because the guests barricaded themselves in the immense main villa of the resort, which has survived decades of hurricanes and tropical storms and could have sheltered hundreds of the local people unable to evacuate the area.
It gets worse. News broke this morning that an anonymous Texas-based group—who will only say that they are “friends” of the celebrity therapist and some are suggesting are members of a local cult—have offered up a 500,000 USD reward for his recovery. This may be leading local divers to execute dangerous dives in an ocean still in turmoil from the storm. And social media has erupted, with many asking why that money couldn’t instead be donated to rescue efforts directed at assisting Zihua residents (the ones the Markells didn’t bother to help) whose homes have been destroyed and who are still searching for missing family members.
Here’s one thing we know for sure. The #MilesMarkell hashtag is a very strange place right now. Stay tuned for updates.
Her: Did you ever hear of that clinical study about secrets?
Him: It sounds familiar.
Her: I read about it in a psychology journal. We talked about it at the resort, in a strategy meeting once. Because it wasn’t always like that—like everyone says now. There were some good, calm times. There were moments I was sure we were making a difference. Moments I thought my life was perfect. [Extended pause.]
Him: Do you need a tissue?
Her: I’m not crying. I just need a minute. I miss it a lot, you know. I loved what I did. And I loved that place. Then they came. Those women, and their husbands—I just need a minute.
Him: Take all the time you need.
Her: You sound impatient.
Him: I just said, “take all the time you need.”
Her: Yes, but this has been going on for a while. We’ve been meeting in this same room for how long now?
Him: Just about a year.
Her: You must be getting bored.
Him: Not at all. On the contrary. You’re a former psychologist and we share that. It deepens our conversations. And you’re my patient. I’m here to help you, not—
Her: Not extract my secrets, right? But we both know that’s not true. We both know it’s all about the secrets. Except I haven’t really told you anything. I haven’t told you what really happened.
Him: [A shuffling sound.] You mean about Miles? Who killed him? You want to talk about that today?
Her: [Long pause.] That study I mentioned, it concluded that the average person has thirteen secrets that they live with—five of which they’ve never told a soul. That was our focus, at the resort: secrets. Pulling secrets into the light. Helping people unearth them. But thirteen? I still think about that.
Him: Yes, that is the point of therapy. We’ve talked about this before, the idea of digging deep and finding the issue the patient is avoiding, the thing that they’re hoping will escape notice. It’s often hiding in plain sight. And yet—
Her: Thirteen secrets. Only five that we’ve never told another soul. Does that seem like a lot to you?
Him: Thirteen secrets, or the idea that five remain buried?
Her: Both.
Him: I’d have to give it some thought.
Her: I’ve given it a lot of thought. I’ve had the time. And I think that number seems high. I think about them, about the people at the resort during those final weeks. I’ve used them as my test subjects—and while, yes, Doctor, I can admit this is an informal and unreliable mode of study and testing, I still think that study is wrong. All those people, they only had one secret. One secret each. Me, too. I only had the one. But it was a big one. And I have to tell it. It’s time. I can’t live with it anymore. Miles Markell was not what he seemed. But neither was I.
Day One
From: Miles and Grace Markell
To: Undisclosed recipients
CC:
Subject: Welcome email!
Welcome, friends! Barring any unforeseen circumstances, you should all have arrived by 4:00 p.m. and we’ll meet on the Oceanside Terrace shortly afterward for Opening Night. We understand you may be tired from a day of travel, but the inaugural exercise isn’t optional (in fact, none of the scheduled activities are). Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to relax and settle in tomorrow. But please do use some of the time in your “settle in” day to catch up on your reading. The books you’ll need are on your bedside tables.
After Opening Night, you are invited to retire to your luxury bungalow, where a personalized multicourse room service meal will be delivered. Our staff is at your service with just the press of a button; use them when and as needed. You won’t need an orientation. Everything about Harmony at La Hacienda is intuitive. We promise.
We can’t wait to meet you!
In solidarity,
Drs. Miles and Grace Markell
PS: No cellphones/laptops/devices! The lockboxes are in the lobby. Ruth Abrams, our clinician, will help you schedule approved check-ins with your families. From now on, all communication will happen on resort property only. There is also a strict no-alcohol policy, so ditch the duty-free. See you soon!
The plane circled the coast of an ocean the color of a bowl of blueberries or the heart of a turquoise ring, depending on where you looked. For a moment, the frothy white waves shone with an otherworldly aura and everything she looked at rose to meet her. She thought the plane was crashing. But it wasn’t. It was just her.
Once they landed, the passengers were funneled into a van, where everyone avoided eye contact. Johanna’s head felt heavy against the headrest. The vehicle glided smoothly out of the airport parking lot, but when it hit a pitted highway she raised a hand to her temple. She tried to focus on a flock of birds diving and swooping in unison, tried not to picture her finger as a drill that could relieve pressure. “How do they do that, do you think?” she asked.
“How does who do what?”
“The birds. Fly together like that. How do they know?”
Her husband’s phone pinged. Ignoring her, he reached into his pocket and looked at it. He chuckled and held it up to her. “Look at this,” he said, but she didn’t want to look at it. She wanted to talk to someone about how birds communicate with one another using a method older than radio frequency. She squinted at the screen of his phone and saw the words in solidarity and a lot of bold underlines. She looked away from the amplified glare.
The van was slowing down and moving through a town that crowded against the side of the road. Shop fronts painted teal, yellow, pink and blue; taco stands; thatch-roofed stores; colorful dresses and hats hanging on poles; dogs and goats and people. Johanna locked eyes with a girl in a magenta top waiting at a bus stop and wondered who the girl was and where she lived and if she was happy or sad. She wouldn’t find out. Once, she and Ben had agreed that it was wrong to hide away from a country on a resort that had sanitized the truth out of the land it stood on, the way they were about to for the next two weeks. But the things they had once agreed upon were as foreign now as Johanna’s own face must have been to that girl, appearing in the bus window to stare, mute, at a village she would never know.
Her ears popped as the van ascended a cliff-side road. Wheels dipped into a pothole. The van rattled out and Ben reached over and squeezed her hand as if they’d narrowly escaped something—and maybe they had. The drop to the ocean was dizzying. His hand was cool and dry, but there was a nervous pulse beneath his skin, an
unbalanced cadence to his breathing, like an orchestra out of sync. Her own hand was sweaty. “The bold and the underlines are a bit much,” she said. He laughed.
“It’s going to be intense.” He squeezed her hand again as she clenched her body against a wave of nausea. “But we can do this.” She looked left, breaching the unspoken code of conduct in the vehicle. The woman on the other side of the aisle who looked away, fast, had a curtain of seal-brown hair as shiny as glass. How did you get such gleaming hair? Was it something you were born with or something you paid for? The husband had silver hair that glinted, too. He was tapping the screen of a smartphone. “Next time,” Ben said, “we’ll do something you like. That bike trip in Vietnam? Something different. I promise. Not like this.”
It wasn’t long before a structure came into view: a garnet at the top of a hill lit by a sun that had without warning begun to descend and deepen above the ocean, orange-highlighted paper gliding down.
“There it is,” said Ben, and for a moment she thought he meant the sun.
Johanna saw the high windows of the villa lit up. It was as if the structure, which scalloped down a cliffside and was ringed at midlevel by steaming mineral pools, was a giant sundial now signaling the end of the day or the lack of time they had, to be themselves, to remain unobserved. The driveway wove in and out of trees so that the villa, cliffs and beach popped in and out of view, tantalizing, disappearing, teasing, gone. One moment, Johanna could see it all: whitewashed walls, waves pounding rock faces, white sand nestled against boulders, jagged mineral jutting into ocean; the next, she couldn’t see anything except trees and vines and playful birds.
“Wow,” Ben said.
“Yeah, I know. Gorgeous.”
But he wasn’t looking out the window. He was inclining his head sideways, toward the woman with the burnished hair and her husband with his premature silvers. “The entire ride.”
Johanna pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. “What are you talking about?”
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