Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Vivian hummed quietly to herself as she shuffled through a box of old papers. She was in the office at The Lighthouse Grill, looking for old photographs and magazine clippings.
Alexis had said that she wanted to decorate the walls of the dining room with framed newspaper articles about the pub and old pictures of Vivian and Frank working there when it first opened. Vivian loved the idea, and she was having a wonderful time meandering down memory lane. It made her miss Frank terribly, but it also brought many smiles to her face.
Occasionally, she wiped away a tear, but for the most part, she was laughing more than she was crying. She found a picture of Frank dancing and singing in the middle of the dining room—it had been late at night after they’d closed up the pub for the evening and everyone had been goofy with fatigue—and she chuckled and shook her head fondly.
Once she’d set aside a stack of pictures and articles for Alexis to frame, she began to tidy up the office. Julia generally kept things neat and organized, but she wasn’t the only one who used the office, and sometimes things got misplaced or left on the desk in a hurry, since the pub often called people away from the office to take care of some surprise issue.
As she worked, she thought about all of the things they would need to do in order to create a successful community Christmas celebration. She smiled, thinking that it was very sweet of her children to want to throw a party at the pub like that. She knew they were doing it for her, for the pub, and for the people of Rosewood Beach, and she wanted to help make their ideas a reality.
At first, she’d been a little taken aback by the idea, especially when Julia had told her that it would involve enacting Alexis’s redecorating ideas. The more they’d talked to her about it, however, the more she’d realized that it really was a splendid plan. When Alexis had shown her the illustrations of the design plan that she’d drawn up, she’d felt tears spring to her eyes. It was such a perfect blending of her and Frank’s original vision for the pub and new and fashionable design choices. She felt excited that her daughter was the one to change the way the pub looked, and she knew that Frank would have loved what Alexis had come up with just as much as she did.
She was deep in thought about the redecorating and the Christmas party, beginning to feel more and more excited about all of it, when she heard a knock on the office door.
She looked up, surprised, and saw a man standing in the doorway.
“Can I help you?” she stammered. She racked her brain, but she couldn’t remember ever having seen him before.
“I’m Terrence Rawlins,” he said, and then paused as though he expected her to realize who he was based on his name.
She frowned a little in confusion. “I’m Vivian Owens. What brings you to The Lighthouse Grill?”
Behind the scenes , I might add, she thought. Guests aren’t supposed to be allowed back here. I wonder who let him walk through the kitchen?
He frowned, and she thought to herself that he seemed a bit stiff. He was an older man, around her own age, and he was handsome and looked distinguished in an almost intimidating way. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt and a dark blue bowtie that went very well with the shade of his dark brown suit coat. His graying hair was slicked back, and he had a well-kept mustache which made his frown appear even deeper than it really was.
“Can I help you?” she repeated, doing her best to smile, even though she felt unusually flustered all of a sudden.
Terrence cleared his throat. “I’m the health inspector, Mrs. Owens. I’m here to complete my inspection of the pub.”
“Oh! Oh my. I’m sorry, it’s—well, I mean, everything should be perfectly in order. I mean, in health. Everything should be healthy.” She paused and took a breath. “I’m sure you’ll find our establishment perfectly up to standards, but it’s just that we weren’t expecting you.”
“You should have been. I sent you an email a week ago.”
“Ah.” Vivian felt as though she might be blushing a little, and then she scolded herself for caring what a stranger thought of her. Just because he looked all professional and serious didn’t mean she needed to be embarrassed about how hectic her schedule was! “I’m afraid I must have missed it. You see, I’ve been very busy. Christmas is a very busy time of the year for us. We bake a lot of seasonal pies and sell them—well, you’ll see that no doubt when you do your inspection. And on top of that we’re getting ready for a Christmas party event. It’s been a lot, so in the middle of everything, I guess your email must have slipped past me.”
Terrence pressed his lips together doubtfully. “I would think that as a responsible restaurant owner, things like successfully passing a health inspection would be at the forefront of your mind. I would go so far as to say that those sorts of things should definitely be at the forefront of your mind.”
Vivian immediately thought of Judd McCormick’s remarks in the magazine article, and the way he’d implied that the pub wasn’t a truly professional business. She felt a little stung and she found herself speaking a little more crisply than she usually did. “It is certainly at the forefront of my mind,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t see your email and I didn’t know that you’d be here today. You’re perfectly welcome to do your inspection now.”
“Great.” He took a clipboard and a pen out of a messenger bag that he had slung around his shoulders. He clicked the end of the pen a few times rapidly, and the sound of it seemed to intensify Vivian’s jitters.
“If you need anything from me, such as a set of keys, just let me know, please.” She smiled at him politely, waiting for him to turn around and leave.
“I will, thanks.”
For a moment, they stood there staring at each other. Vivian felt as though she was beginning to blush.
“I thought I’d start in here,” Terrence said finally.
“Oh! Certainly. I’ll just—” Vivian hesitated. She didn’t want to seem as though she was hovering behind him, watching him as if she was worried he was going to find something wrong with her restaurant. She felt confident that they were going to pass the health inspection with flying colors, they always had in the past. “I’ll go work in the front of the restaurant. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.” Terrence nodded at her, still moving a bit stiffly.
Vivian left the office and made her way to the dining room of the pub. She felt flustered, and she wished she’d caught his email before he’d arrived. She knew that she shouldn’t blame herself for missing it, since she had been unusually busy, but the whole thing made her feel slightly unprofessional. That was the last thing she wanted to feel after reading Judd’s interview.
She greeted a family who had just stepped inside the pub, leading them to a booth in front of one of the windows. She found herself looking around the pub more closely than she usually did, wondering if things were in more disrepair than she thought they were. She knew how one could simply not notice things in an environment they were familiar with, and she found herself worrying that Terrence might find something wrong with the pub after all.
To occupy herself, she went from table to table, refilling coffee cups and glasses of iced tea. She kept glancing at her watch, wondering how long it would take Terrence to do his inspection. After a while he appeared in the dining room, walking around slowly with his clipboard. She did her best not to stare at him, but she kept finding herself looking at him, wondering what he was thinking. He was frowning slightly, and that made her nervous.
Finally, he caught her eye and gestured for her to come over to him. She hurried over, doing her best to put on a polite, relaxed smile.
“Why don’t we go back to the office to chat?” she said breezily. She could see in his eyes that he had something not great to tell her, and she didn’t want any of the customers to overhear what he said.
“Certainly.”
He followed her through the kitchen back to the office, where she turned to him with another forced smile. “What do you have to report?”
“Your air vents need to be replaced,” he said, wasting no time on ceremony.
“The air—oh, all right.” She felt surprised. They kept the pub clean and tidy, and from the outside, all of the air vents appeared to be in fine working condition. Whatever she thought about Terrence’s stiffness, however, she didn’t think he was dishonest. She trusted that he was telling her the truth.
“Well, we’ll get those replaced, then. As early as the beginning of next year, probably right after New Year’s.” To her, that seemed like a perfectly reasonable length of time.
Terrence shook his head. “That’s not soon enough.”
Vivian frowned. “Well, I don’t know how we could possibly get it done sooner. We’re planning a Christmas community event and redecorating the dining room. It just doesn’t make sense for us to do any renovations now. Perhaps just after Christmas? We should be able to manage that if we hurry.”
Terrence shook his head again. “No, ma’am, you’ll need to get the air vents replaced right away. ASAP. Otherwise, you won’t be in compliance with code.”
Vivian held back a sigh of frustration. She felt that the timing of Terrence’s arrival was very unfortunate. She was sure the air vents weren’t actually any kind of a health hazard, and she wished that he’d arrived to inspect the pub after Christmas, which would have prevented this stressful situation.
“It seems a little silly to worry about air vents that have been causing no problems in such a hurry. I hardly think it’s necessary to prioritize them over preparing for an event that represents the spirit and community-oriented atmosphere of our restaurant.”
“Unfortunately, waiting is not an option. It has to be done right away.”
“All right. If it has to be done right away, we’ll get it done somehow. We’re a professional establishment, we wouldn’t want to operate without being in compliance with code.”
“You couldn’t operate without being in compliance with code,” Terrence said blankly. “You’d get shut down.”
Vivian pressed her lips together, feeling annoyed with his attitude. She felt that he could afford to be a little more gracious under the circumstances. “Well, that won’t happen. We’ll get the vents replaced. Is that all? Did you find anything else wrong?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing else. The rest of the restaurant is in perfect order.” He offered a small smile, which she was surprised at, unsure of why he was suddenly being friendly.
“Good.” She wanted to add, I’m not at all surprised , but she decided it might come off as too irritated. She felt irritated, and she wanted to hide that. After all, the man was just doing his job. Even if she hadn’t liked his attitude, it wasn’t his fault that the vents needed to be replaced in order for the pub to be up to code.
“I can’t stress enough that the vents need to be replaced as soon as possible.” Terrence clicked his pen a few more times. “That means before your Christmas party. It won’t be acceptable to simply pretend you’re doing your best to get them done and go ahead and have the Christmas party before they’re replaced.”
Vivian’s jaw dropped in indignation. She swallowed the salty retort that immediately came to her mind and forced herself to take a deep breath. “I can assure you, Mr. Rawlins,” she said crisply, “we would never do anything of the kind. I might argue with you to your face, but I would never try to bend the law behind your back.”
He nodded, and there was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read.
“I believe you, Mrs. Owens. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, I will be coming back to check on the vents to make sure they’re replaced before your Christmas event.” With a kind of flourish, he tucked his pen inside his messenger bag. “Do you have any questions for me?”
“Yes. When are you coming back to check on the vents? I’m assuming that’s essentially my deadline.”
“Sometime before your party. I know it takes some time to get vents replaced, so it’s not as though I’ll be showing up on your doorstep tomorrow. Tell you what—” He paused, and again smiled at her in a friendly way that she found surprising. “I’ll send you an email.”
Vivian held back a huff of frustration. “Sounds wonderful,” she said, a bit dryly.
“Any more questions for me?”
“No, thank you, I think that will be all. Have a nice day.”
“You as well. Goodbye, Mrs. Owens.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Rawlins.”
In the past, she would have walked the health inspector to the front door, as a way of being gracious. Today, however, she was happy to let him leave the office without her. As soon as he’d disappeared, she sat down in the desk chair and put her head in her hands.
I feel so flustered , she thought. It’s not really the air vents—we can get that done, although it will be stressful. It’s that all this is making me feel as unprofessional as Judd McCormick accused me of being.
She thought about the email from Terrence Rawlins that she’d missed and wrinkled her nose. Then she thought about the almost teasing way in which he’d told her that he would send her another email about his second visit. She made a mental note that she would have to start checking her email religiously. She wondered if one of her children could help her set up notifications for her on her smart phone, so that every time she got a new email she was notified right away.
For a while, she sat quietly at the desk, thinking about all kinds of things. She thought about all the steps they would need to take in order to repair the vents, and she thought about what Julia might have said if she’d been there. Julia might have tried to resist Terrence more firmly than Vivian had, but Vivian didn’t regret giving in to Terrence’s demands. She wanted to be well within the law. She didn’t want to be unprofessional in any way.
Her eyes landed on a photograph of herself and Frank, resting on the top of the stack of articles and photos that she’d made earlier. She looked at Frank’s huge grin, and the way he’d held his arm around her protectively. She could just imagine what he’d say under these new circumstances—that whatever they did, they should have fun doing it.
She smiled. It might not have been the most professional philosophy in the world, and she felt sure that Judd McCormick would have scorned it, but she’d had a great deal of fun running the pub with her husband. In the end, she thought, community really was more important than money.