As snow fell, June Hudson and Griff Clemons accompanied State Department liaison Benjamin Pennybacker to a town hall in Constancy, with Lewis B. driving an Avallon Cadillac. Pennybacker, uneasy about his prior run-in with locals, delivered an idealistic speech about diplomacy and civilized rules of warfare. The mountain audience bristled, openly rejecting the idea of serving “enemy aliens,” and his courteous appeals only worsened the crowd’s mood.

Seeing the meeting deteriorate, June chose to intervene theatrically. She climbed onto the town board’s table, seized the room’s attention, and began by affirming, “The Avallon is the best,” immediately personalizing the gathering by celebrating Mayor Gary Foglesong’s newborn grandson, Gene Ray. She moved across tables and chairs as locals upheld her path, transforming the exchange into a shared performance in which she, as “Hoss,” spoke the locals’ language of pride, hardship, and American identity.

June redirected the crowd from Pennybacker’s abstractions to a concrete mission: to overwhelm the incoming diplomats with the Avallon’s excellence—food, drink, music, beds—so the visitors would forever remember an American hotel they would never see again. The room unified around the call-and-response of being “Americans,” and June instructed Griff to remove Pennybacker before he could spoil the fragile consensus.

Afterward, Mayor Foglesong privately cautioned June not to get cocky, invoking the floods of 1922 and 1937 and noting that his wife had heard the water laugh. June denied that this was how the sweetwater worked and asserted she understood it, even as she acknowledged that relations with the locals would require continual balance and could sour for years if mishandled.

Unable to sleep, June turned to her ledger books, creating fresh pages for each member of the diplomatic legations, the three FBI agents, Pennybacker, and two arriving Swiss. She wrestled with the moral calculus of luxury for enemies but reaffirmed the Avallon’s principle: the hotel must be the same for everyone to sustain its illusion.

Drawn to the empty Lily House—the Gilfoyle family dower house—June entered, noting an old oily handprint matching her own, and walked through its rooms like a first-time visitor. She recalled early dinners with the Gilfoyles, her rapport with Francis, Carrie’s prompting questions, Stella’s gentle remove, Sandy’s sweetness and later naval service, and Edgar’s habits as captured in an old staff ledger, including a tucked note that read, “I think about you all the time.”

In the house’s bath, June prepared a tub of mineral sweetwater and, standing naked by the mirror and the dark mountain window, deliberately emptied her mind of dangerous thoughts and desires. Instead, she concentrated on the best of the Avallon—its first sight, its staff’s joy in difficult triumphs, and the gratitude it fostered—asking, “Be gentle,” before immersing herself and letting the water take her offering.