Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
T here weren’t too many reasons people booked an inn in their part of Maine in the off season, especially a bridal party, unless they planned to get really, really drunk. Georgie always hoped for the best in these scenarios. She offered teas, complete with tiny sandwiches on homemade bread, but almost every time her optimism was wasted as soon as her guests came stumbling home, laughing, slurring, and drunk, so very, very drunk.
Her brother thought this should somehow be in Georgette’s control, but what could she do? Refuse much-needed business on the suspicion that they might be using her inn as a staging area between imbibing sessions? It was an inn, not a Victorian sitting room. She wasn’t their parent, and she couldn’t control their behavior. At the same time it hurt something in her heart terribly to have her beautiful, classy inn turned into the equivalent of an old-timey brothel. She half expected to see Miss Kitty dancing on a stage while a guy in a bowler hat sat on a wooden stool and played Joplin on the piano.
“Georgette. Where’s Georgette? Can we make snores?”
Georgette studied the bride-to-be, wondering if she had misread her lips or if she actually said snores. Given the woman’s level of inebriation, she thought she’d probably read them correctly. Usually she tried to be an accommodating hostess, but her mind flashed to the horror of drunk women plus fire. “Nope, sorry. No s’mores tonight. Enjoy the brownies, though.” She’d set out a batch of them, along with shortbread, hoping to soak up some of the liquor the women had consumed.
“Boo,” the bride called, giving her two thumbs down, as her bridesmaids began echoing their disdain.
“We want floasted marshmammos,” one of them slurred.
Before she could answer, Georgie sensed someone behind her. For a few beats, she thought Burke might have returned early from his assignment, but it was only Brody. Was she disappointed? Not possible.
“ What is going on? ” he mouthed for only her benefit. “I could hear them from the end of the street.”
Georgette shrugged. What could she say? Obviously the women were drunk.
“Ladies,” he began, and eight heads whipped in his direction so quickly that two of the women fell over.
“Georgette hired a stripper,” one of them yelled.
Brody froze. “No,” he stammered, but too late because they had already started to dig in their pockets for spare ones. Two had claimed the couch and sat down, so at least that was something. “I’m a police officer.”
“My favorite,” the bride said, now sounding weepy. “You guys knew. That’s so sweet.”
“I’m an actual police officer,” Brody tried, but their shouts and claps overpowered him.
“Any other good ideas?” Georgie asked. She shouldn’t enjoy his abject panic, but she also thought it was well deserved. Sometimes Brody took big brothering a little too far, like showing up at her place of work and making demands. Would he really show up at someone else’s job and tell them how to do it? Maybe, because he was bossy like that. But still, it was kind of annoying and kneecapped her attempt at being a capable adult.
“ I’m out, ” Brody mouthed, backing toward the door as the women hooted and hollered in his direction. One of them threw something at him that looked suspiciously like lingerie.
“Wait, where is the boy going?” the bride demanded, while the others notched up their boos.
“He had a scheduling conflict,” Georgie said. “But we don’t need him. We have karaoke.” She pointed to the machine she’d assembled while they were wherever they went that put them in this state.
The boos turned to wolf-whistles of approval and Georgie smiled to herself, feeling pleased. This wasn’t her first go round with this particular situation, and she’d found that if the brownies didn’t get them, belting wrong lyrics would. For whatever reason, drunk girls loved karaoke. She hooked up the machine and then turned off her hearing aids, thankful to be able to block out what was about to happen. She eased to the kitchen and withdrew her phone.
What’s happening in your world tonight? Her “boyfriend,” Siggy, wrote. His name wasn’t Siggy and he probably technically wasn’t her boyfriend, but Georgie didn’t know what to call someone she’d been talking to online for months, and she wasn’t ready to reveal her real identity or know his. For now, the anonymity was comforting and safe, if not as fulfilling as she wanted it to be. It felt like being back in high school. The crushes she’d had then, usually on Brody’s friends, had been too fantastical to be anything but safe.
Drunken bridal party at my job. Currently singing Queen on karaoke.
Thank goodness for the Japanese, he replied. Seriously, though, I hope they’re not giving you too much trouble.
Georgie glanced up. The energy in the room had already started to wane. The one who currently held the karaoke mic leaned heavily against a chair and another was in danger of falling asleep or passing out while standing and swaying, her phone held aloft like a lighter.
I think they’re within thirty minutes of passing out, as long as no one snuck more booze in their luggage.
They could always go back out and buy more, Siggy suggested and Georgie chuckled to herself.
Clearly you don’t know our town. Everything has been closed for hours. Everything is tucked up and put away. She glanced out the window, seeing only darkness. Even all of the lights are off.
Sounds scary, Siggy offered.
Sometimes, Georgie agreed.
I wish I could be there to protect you, Siggy offered.
Georgie winced. His subtle hints had become a lot less subtle lately, but what could she say? It was hard to explain the reasons she was so averse to meeting in person, but mostly they revolved around fear. What they had now was so pleasant, a nice diversion from real life. What if the reality didn’t measure up to that? What if she didn’t measure up to that? She had told him about her hearing challenges, of course. It would have been a lie not to. She got it out of the way in the beginning, so it wouldn’t hang over them. Hey, just so you know, I have a profound hearing loss. I’ve had it since birth and learned to adapt. I use hearing aids and read lips and get by quite well.
Siggy’s response? Cool.
She’d wondered if it had been a brush off, because no one else in her life had ever called her hearing aids “cool” before, but then he kept texting, kept pursuing her, as much as he could over text. And always prodding, prodding toward a meeting.
Would Georgie be more open to a meeting, if Burke weren’t in the picture?
Maybe. It wasn’t as if she had a romantic interest in Burke, or he had one in her, but it felt odd to bring another man into the space somehow. That thought gave her pause and made her frown. Should she really be putting her life on hold for the stranger in her attic? And was she only using Burke as an excuse because she was too scared to grab life by the horns and latch on? Meeting new people was scary. Meeting a man in real life she only knew through text was nothing short of terrifying. But she couldn’t put him off forever, could she? Eventually he would tire of the rejection. When she thought about it, she was surprised he hadn’t cooled on her already. How many times had she told him no? Too many to count.
That would be nice, she offered now and bit her lip. Was that too forward? No, she was only responding to what he said first. He’d offered his protection, she’d agreed it sounded nice.
Georgie waited, staring at her phone until her eyes blurred, but then a crash sounded, jerking her head up. It must have been a loud crash, if she heard it, and it was, if the chaos in the room was any indication. One of the women had tripped over the karaoke cord, yanking it off the stand where it sat, causing feedback to resound throughout the room when the mic landed on the speaker. Women were now screaming and wandering around, drunkenly stumbling into each other and furniture, hands over their ears as they loudly complained about the sound.
Georgette righted the karaoke machine, turned it off, checked on the woman who had tripped, and then began herding the others toward their rooms, gently suggesting they might feel better if they got into their pajamas. She assumed, and rightly so, that by the time they reached their rooms and began readying for bed, they would fall asleep.
She tidied the great room and fought back a grimace, hoping against hope that none of them got sick in their beds or, worse, on any of her rugs. It would be miraculous if they didn’t, given the state of them. Statistically speaking she’d be cleaning up a whole lot of sick in the morning, but that was why she always kept mentholated rub on her cleaning cart. That stuff could cover the smell of almost anything, a trick she learned from a detective show she enjoyed.
By the time she had everything tidied and tucked away in the great room and breakfast prepped for the next morning in the kitchen, she forgot about her phone completely. It would take a while to realize that Siggy never responded to her gentle prodding and even longer to figure out if his lack of reply counted as a rejection. Was she relieved about that, if so? She couldn’t decide, and her brain was too tired to try.
Georgie flicked off the lights, pausing to check that none of the nightlights had burned out. The stairs remained lit, albeit dimly, as did the hallways, but other than a single light in the window, the inn was dark. Maintaining the correct amount of light was a skill Georgie had learned after a few months of running the inn. In the beginning she’d kept everything fully lit, like a hotel. Unlike a hotel, she had no corporate budget to pay her electric bill. And she began to notice that some of the reviews said it lacked coziness and felt difficult to sleep. So she gradually began turning off lights and dimming some others. Adding low level runner lights to the hallways had been the final piece of the puzzle. They remained on all night, but they were tiny LED bulbs that didn’t use much electricity, light enough so no one would trip and dim enough so they wouldn’t keep anyone awake or make it feel like false daytime.
Little things like lighting were the unexpected portions of inn ownership no one told her about. She’d been prepared for the big things—cleaning, cooking, bookkeeping—but all the tiny day to day decisions and details she had to track exhausted her. No one wanted to spend hours thinking about lighting, least of all Georgie who merely wanted to cook and host people. If I had someone to see to the practicalities, I’d be free to focus on the creative side of things, she thought with a tiny pang of longing. Her brother was excellent at those sorts of practicalities. Even though she’d desperately wanted her independence when she first started, she had also secretly hoped Brody would take more of a proprietary interest in the inn. She had no right to ask him, of course. He had his own life and his own job. But she’d also been secretly disappointed when he didn’t volunteer to step up and help shoulder some of the heavy burden she carried. Was that unfair in the extreme? Absolutely, which was why she had never and would never voice those feelings. But she couldn’t help feeling them, as well as a tiny sting of disappointment that he seemed so oblivious to any of her needs. Even though she would never have encouraged it, it had been a teensy bit cathartic to hear Burke ream him for failing to notice how far below water Georgie had sunk.
She shook her head, trying to physically push away the heavy thoughts. Brody owed her nothing. He was her brother, not her keeper, and he had done more than enough for her in their lives. Her overt dependence on him said more about her inability to function than it did his unwillingness to provide. If she asked, he would say yes. She knew that, believed it completely. Wanting him to intuit her needs and volunteer to help with them was unfair and ridiculous, the last holdover of a little girl in search of a rescue. Ever since her parents died, it was as if Georgie had split into two parts, one part insecure little girl who needed to be held and one part independent woman who wanted to do it herself. Those two parts were forever at war with each other, with the insecure part of her channeling her emotions and the capable part of her holding on to her logic. Most of the time logic won, but sometimes, like now when she was tired and it had been a long day, she really wanted someone to come along, pick up the slack, hold her close, and tell her everything was going to be okay.
A prickling sensation stopped her in her tracks. People often said that losing one sense made the others sharper, but Georgie had never found that to be true. She certainly couldn’t see or taste better because she was nearly deaf. And she’d never had much of a sixth sense about things, either, which made it all the more odd when she felt sure someone was in the inn.
Her head had been down, checking the floor for stray objects as she headed toward bed, always on the lookout for a gum wrapper or some other piece of trash hastily discarded by a guest. So she couldn’t say that movement caught her eye and made her feel like she wasn’t alone. There was no reason for the feeling, but she also couldn’t talk herself out of it, which was why she put her head up and then eased against the wall, pressing her palms to the fuzzy velveteen wallpaper flowers behind her. It was vintage and delicate and she usually didn’t touch it, but today she made an exception because she needed the tactile grounding effect of those flowers as she took stock of the situation and tried to figure out what to do.
What are the facts? she asked herself, but that wasn’t much help because the facts were slim to none. Fact: I have an unsubstantiated feeling that something is wrong.
How did she substantiate that feeling? She had never longed for working ears more than she did at that moment. Not only did she want to be able to hear if someone was in her space, she wanted to make certain she wasn’t making noise. Was she breathing loudly? She had no idea. She hoped she stood perfectly still and silent, but she couldn’t be certain she wasn’t puffing like a perturbed dragon, especially with the inexplicable panic now fueling her. Was she losing her mind, reacting this way?
Just when she was about to give in and deem herself an overreactive lunatic, she saw it, barely a wisp of movement in the hallway to her left. Slowly, slowly, slowly she turned in that direction and had to stifle a scream of terror when a white hockey mask stared back at her.