Chapter 14
Genevieve had just fallen asleep when Sam burst through the door. He was frantic, his eyes bloodshot, waving around a folder. Amanda pressed her finger to her lips to remind him to stay quiet. He couldn’t wake the baby.
“I need your help,” Sam rasped.
Amanda carried Genevieve upstairs to her crib, pulled the curtains, and took the baby monitor back down. Her thoughts hummed like a speedboat. She hadn’t seen Sam look like that in ages—maybe not since the car accident they’d been in together nearly two years ago. She focused on her breathing so as not to start shaking. She had to stay calm.
Sam sat at the kitchen table with a stack of papers in front of him and his head bowed. He looked defeated. Amanda sat beside him, and Sam slid the stack over to her so she could read it. Her heart dropped into her stomach.
They were closing the Sunrise Cove Inn. Effective immediately.
“They can’t do this, can they?” Sam demanded. “Tell me they can’t do this.”
“Let me read,” Amanda said, trying to keep her voice normal. “Why don’t you make yourself a cup of tea? Relax a little?”
Sam was on his feet. He cut across the kitchen and retrieved a beer from the fridge. After he popped the tab, he drained half of it, his Adam’s apple bouncing. Amanda tried to focus on the words in front of her to make sense of the legal terminology that had come second nature before she’d begun to doubt herself. She knew Sam wanted her to find a reason this wasn’t legal so he could throw it back in the State of Massachusetts’s face.
But Amanda was struck with how airtight the paperwork was. Due to the potential weight of history in the basement, they wanted to preserve the Sunrise Cove Inn as best as they could. They didn’t want to put it at the mercy of any guests eager to pry or destroy it, either on accident or on purpose.
“I don’t like the look on your face,” Sam said from the fridge.
Amanda raised her eyes. She didn’t smile. “I don’t think you can fight this. Not yet anyway.”
Sam’s hand clenched in a fist. He staggered to the counter and stared at his shoes for a long time. The beer hung sadly in his other hand.
Amanda had a strange thought. All this had happened so quickly. It was just one day after they’d learned of the potential of that downstairs room. It twisted her up inside. Was it possible that the Arnouts had had a hand in this, too? That they’d decided to go after her husband’s career rather than just her own? They had ties with the governor that surely allowed them wonderful relations with the Historical Society of Massachusetts. All the governor had to do was make a call.
If the Arnouts were really behind this, they were craftier than she’d thought. There was an entire legal arena that involved protecting historical sites. They were using everything they could.
Amanda had poked the bear. And now he was hungry for blood.
Amanda shook her head of her suspicions. Regardless of whether this was the fault of the Arnouts or not, she had to help Sam.
“We need to get everyone out of the Sunrise Cove immediately,” Amanda said firmly. “If we don’t, they could fine us thousands of dollars.”
They couldn’t afford that. Not after the desolate winter they’d had. Not if tourist season wasn’t a given. Amanda shivered at the implications of this closure.
Sam tugged his hair. “I don’t know what to do. Where can we put them?”
Amanda’s head thudded. “How many guests do you have right now?”
“We’re more than half full,” Sam said. “Six rooms. One of them is a family, so they’ll need two beds and a cot.” He groaned. “I could call around the island. See if anyone has rooms. But we can’t afford to put everyone up for the remainder of their vacations.”
Amanda shot toward her cell and grabbed it without telling Sam what was on her mind. The phone rang out across the island before the answer.
“Amanda! This is a surprise.”
“Hi, Aunt Kelli,” Amanda said with a smile. Kelli wasn’t officially her “aunt,” but she grouped all the Montgomery siblings as second-tier aunts and uncles rather than second cousins. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well. I just spoke to my mom on the phone about all that madness at the Sunrise Cove. She’s beside herself. She wants to get in the basement.”
Amanda shivered with fake laughter. Sam watched her from the kitchen and nodded along. He’d caught on.
“That’s sort of why I’m calling,” Amanda said. “The State of Massachusetts is shutting us down for the time being. It’s so sudden, and we don’t know what to do with our guests.”
Kelli balked. “They are not! I can’t believe this. That soon?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Kelli sputtered. “Let me talk to Piper.” Piper was the manager of the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel, whom Kelli had put mostly in charge after she’d worked herself to the bone last summer. Kelli now enjoyed the fruits of owning a gorgeous hotel without the stress of managing the details.
Amanda and Sam waited in stunned silence. Three minutes went by before Kelli returned.
“Piper says we have five rooms available here at the hotel,” Kelli said.
Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. “Five rooms? That’s incredible.”
“They’re available for the next five days,” Kelli said. “Lucky for you, it’s not quite tourist season yet.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Kelli,” Amanda said. “I’ll call you when we’re on our way.”
Sam and Amanda were blurry with confusion and gratefulness. Amanda hurried upstairs to put Genevieve in the baby carrier and grab her supplies before meeting Sam in the car and speeding back to the Sunrise Cove. They found Grandpa Wes at the front desk. He was gray and nervous, answering the guests’ questions as best he could. He looked on the brink of tears.
He’d never had to close the Sunrise Cove Inn. He hadn’t even closed it when Anna Sheridan died.
Amanda hugged her grandfather and reminded him that this was only temporary. “As soon as they get organized at the Historical Society, I’m sure they’ll let us re-open. I’ll badger them about it this week.”
“That’s my lawyer,” Grandpa Wes said. “You’re a fighter, Amanda. I’m so glad you’re on our side.”
Amanda’s chest heaved with the truth. She wasn’t necessarily a lawyer right now. Everything felt volatile and out of her control.
It was five thirty, which meant many guests were returning from exploring the island to get ready for dinner. Sam stood in the foyer to greet guests coming back and explain the situation. Amanda didn’t wait around to hear them groan and ask questions. She darted down the hall to the bistro to find Zach and Christine in the kitchen. Christine pulled out a tray of cookies as she entered, blasting her with a scrumptious, chocolatey smell.
“Amanda! So glad you’re here. You have to taste my cookies,” Christine said.
Amanda would have done anything to sit down, gossip with her aunt Christine, and eat a load of cookies. But she was blurry and on the move.
She explained everything as quickly as she could. They had to close down the Sunrise Cove and the bistro. They couldn’t serve food here at all. Nobody could be on the premises save for the historians and their appointed crew.
Christine’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Zach looked especially panicked. “Do they know how slim our profit margins are? Do they know that all restaurants are always on the brink of collapse?” He hit the counter with a spatula. “Haven’t they even seen The Bear?”
Christine touched Zach’s shoulder and whispered, “Let’s get everything out of the fridge and freeze what we can. Maybe we can take some stuff to the food kitchen.”
Christine flinched as Amanda prepared to leave. “What time do you need us out?”
“By tonight,” Amanda said before she disappeared through the swiveling kitchen door.
Amanda found Sam in a heated discussion with three couples in the foyer. Two of them she recognized as birdwatchers she’d seen on the shoreline near the harbor.
“Trust me,” Sam said, “you’ll love the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook. It’s a truly remarkable hotel. Far more expensive than this one. And incredibly historical!” He tried to laugh, then bit his lip. His charm was fading with all this panic.
“If it’s historical, why wasn’t it closed down, too?” one of the guests asked.
“There’s a lot I don’t understand about this either,” Sam said. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants. But I hope you’ll bear with me as we get through this. You can stay at the Aquinnah free of charge for the remainder of your vacation. And I hope you’ll contact me personally if you need anything in particular.”
The couples exchanged glances and shrugged.
“When do you need us out?” a man asked.
“As soon as possible,” Sam said. “If you could be out of your rooms and headed to the Aquinnah Cliffside in the next two hours, that would be fantastic. If you stay beyond tonight, there’s a high probability that we’ll face a fine.”
“It doesn’t seem legal,” one of the women said.
Sam’s face was flushed. Amanda looked down at the baby sleeping in her carrier near the greeting counter. She looked so blissful, so immune to the chaos around her.
With the three couples up in their rooms to pack, Amanda and Sam had to hunt down the others. Because the Aquinnah couldn’t accommodate the family of four, Sam and Amanda had agreed to offer up their private home while they stayed at the Sheridan House with Audrey, Noah, and Max. Audrey was over the moon despite the circumstances. She saw it as a sleepover with her best friend.
Before the family of four arrived, Amanda hurried home to clean up and change all the sheets in the house. She considered it insanity that her baby was fifteen days old and required to sleep elsewhere. Everyone knew that these were precious days; everything came down to your comfort and your baby”s comfort. But these were difficult and very strange times. Maybe she and Sam would look back on them fondly one day. “Remember when we almost lost the Sunrise Cove?” They would get through by the skin of their teeth.
The couple and their three children arrived around seven thirty. Amanda was there to greet them and show them to their rooms: the married couple in Amanda and Sam’s bed; two of the children in the guest bedroom; another on the pull-out couch. The family was from Ohio and very far from home.
“We would have just gone home if it was closer,” the wife said apologetically.
Amanda got the sense that they’d scrimped and saved for this vacation, so going home early would have broken their hearts. She was grateful to be able to open her home to these people. But before she left them behind, she made sure to put all the valuables in a safe and twist it locked.
These days, she couldn’t trust anyone except her family.