Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lennon
The sandwiches are a hit.
I know they are because the first plate I sent out came back empty within four minutes, and the second one followed seven minutes later.
The kitchen swing doors bump open, and Sydney steps inside. “Table 6 wants to know if there’s a third plate.”
“There’s a third plate,” I confirm, already building it. “Tell them there’s also a fourth if they want it.”
She grins, and it transforms her whole face. “You know they’re going to sit there all afternoon waiting for more.”
“I already have muffins going for the afternoon coffee and tea.”
“If you’re not planning on doing this every day, you’re spoiling them and setting me up to be the villain tomorrow.”
I snort. “That’s not spoiling them, it’s called hospitality.”
“That’s called a problem,” she says, but she takes the plate, and I catch her stealing a triangle of the turkey Brie from the edge before she disappears back through the doors.
I can see what Nevan likes about her, beyond the obvious, the fact that she’s tall and pretty with a mouth that quirks sideways when she’s trying not to smile.
She has the quality of people who’ve had to be capable for a long time.
You can tell by the way she moves through a room as if she already knows where everything is.
A small, stupid jolt moves through me at the thought of Nevan, which is becoming inconveniently familiar.
I glance at the clock above the kitchen door.
After one.
He still hasn’t shown up.
I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or worried about him, and mostly it’s landing somewhere between the two.
His alarm went off at four-fifteen. It nearly scared me out of my skin—an aggressive buzzing from somewhere in the region of his crotch. I fumbled for his phone in the soft light of a streetlamp outside, already half-panicked, until I got the screen lit up and saw the label.
brekfast sarvic alarm :)
Something about that almost did me in right there.
I silenced it, then I lay still and listened to him breathing, his face slack in a way it never quite is when he’s awake and running himself at that constant low-grade sprint he does.
He was holding Mr. Muffin. Not like he’d grabbed him on purpose, more like my plushie had migrated toward the warmest thing available and Nevan had just accommodated it in his sleep, one arm loose around him.
He looked young. That was the thing I kept thinking.
Too young for how tired he always looks.
He looked like somebody’s kid brother, not a man who’d been holding an inn together with both hands and sheer stubbornness since he was probably too young to be doing it.
And he looked as if he needed a few more hours of sleep.
So I left. Quietly, quickly, with my shoes in one hand and my jacket tucked under my arm, easing the door shut behind me with both hands until the latch caught without a sound. I walked to the inn in the cold morning air with my hair still damp from the world’s fastest shower.
Breakfast service wasn’t complicated. Eggs, toast, fruit, yogurt, dressed up with honey and walnuts, because I can’t do anything simply. The guests were happy.
Fed people tend to be, which is one of the more reliable truths in the world.
Nevan’s name came up twice, once from the couple in Room 3 asking after him, and once from the woman at the corner table, who said he always remembered how she took her coffee and hoped he wasn’t ill.
But honestly, I’m not surprised.
He’s the first face people see here.
He’s the reason people come back.
Nevan doesn’t give himself enough credit. Yes, his cooking skills are lacking, but he makes up for it in every other aspect of this place. But he needs to remember himself. He’s only one person, and to carry the weight he does, I don’t know how he does it.
He’s the kind of person who fills a room without trying, remembers how people take their coffee, and has probably been doing it since long before he was old enough to be responsible for anyone.
I know what that looks like from the inside.
I’m always the one who shows up, remembers details, and holds things together so everyone else can fall apart in an orderly fashion.
I know how exhausting it is. Not the tired from working, but the tired from being needed, which is different, and doesn’t go away with sleep.
It doesn’t show on your face until it suddenly does.
It showed on his face last night. Before the crying, before Spencer’s call, before any of that, really. I saw it the second he’d walked into the kitchen and found me wiping down a counter that was already clean. He looked at me and knew, the same way I looked at him and knew.
He deserves to wake up slowly and lie there for a few minutes just being a person, not a load-bearing wall. Just himself, in a room, with nowhere to be.
I hope he’s still asleep. I genuinely, earnestly hope that when he wakes up, it’s without an alarm, and that he stays there long enough to remember what that feels like.
I think he’s forgotten.
Until last night, I think I had too.
I realize I’ve been plating the same sandwich for about thirty seconds too long, so I make myself finish the fourth plate, cover it, and step back to look at my workspace.
Lunch service is winding down, the dining room noise mellowing out from its earlier peak, and the kitchen is in reasonable shape.
Sydney comes back through for a coffee order and pauses at the pass. “Those sandwiches,” she says, eyes wide.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been working here for two years.” She sets her tray down and looks me directly in the eye. “Nobody’s ever been excited about a sandwich before. But damn, that was exciting.”
“It’s the fig jam,” I tell her. “People don’t expect sweetness with savory. It surprises them.”
She considers this, then she picks up her tray again and says, “You should stay,” and is gone before I can work out exactly what she means.
The muffins come out golden and perfect. I set the tray on the cooling rack and try not to eat one immediately, which is always difficult.
I give myself exactly thirty seconds of standing over them before I turn away, wrap a few of the best sandwiches in cling film, and untie my apron.
Jasper is probably done with school around now, or close enough. And he has a terrible track record of eating, based on the fact that I’ve watched him live on coffee and ambient energy. His mom might be hungry too.
I pause at the thought of Seraphine, and my stomach does a little lurch.
She scared the hell out of me. That’s still true.
“Your time is up,” delivered with a smile, while holding the Death card is not an experience I’m going to forget in a hurry.
if I’m being fully honest, she’s part of why I’m still a little jumpy around Jasper’s cards.
But also, if she hadn’t rattled me so thoroughly that morning, I would not have jerked back in time to make it a clip instead of something much worse. So, a thank-you sandwich seems like the least I can do, even if I’m still a little afraid of her.
I balance the plate on my palm and head through the inn. The back garden is quiet in the midday light. The big tree at the center still has its fairy lights wound up into the branches, and the cottage beyond it has its door propped open with what appears to be a ceramic frog.
Seraphine is kneeling in the garden bed along the front of the house, her long, gray hair loose over her shoulders, layers of fabric pooling around her in the dirt.
Between her hands is a small gathering of herbs, and beside her, on the low stone step in front of the door, sits a woman I’ve never seen before.
She’s older. Gray locs pulled back in a bright yellow scarf, and she’s watching Seraphine with the settled quiet of someone who has done this exact watching for a very long time. It’s comfortable.
She looks up when she hears my approach.
“Hi,” I say, stopping at the edge of the garden and holding up the plate a little. “Sorry to interrupt. I had leftover sandwiches from lunch, and I thought, maybe you hadn’t eaten yet and wanted some?”
The woman on the step stands. She’s shorter than her presence suggested, but there’s a solidity to her that makes up for it. She looks at the plate, then at me, and her mouth pulls into a smile that manages to be both warm and a little bit sharp at the same time.
“So,” she says. “You’re the new cook everyone’s been talking about.”
I feel myself blush a little. “I don’t know about everyone.”
“I had a guest at my front desk this morning who used the word transcendent.”
I open my mouth. “About a sandwich?”
“About whatever you put in the yogurt at breakfast.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Mabel.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Lennon.” I shake her hand, properly thrown off. “Lennon Maes.” I manage a smile. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve only heard good things about you.”
A pleased look moves across her face as she takes the plate from me.
“Come inside.” It’s not quite an invitation or an instruction. It just is. “Seraphine, there’s food.”
Seraphine sits back on her heels. Her hands are still loosely full of the herbs she’s been picking. Her eyes are clearer today. Not the way they went right before she scared me into a near-death experience, but present, the fog turned down low instead of all the way up.
“The new girl,” she says.
“That’s me.” I smile. “Lennon.”
Inside, the house smells the same as last time, with incense, dried herbs, and old wood.
Mabel leads us into the kitchen, sets the plate in the center of the table, and lifts the cling film with no ceremony. Seraphine comes in last, setting a small bundle of herbs on the table before washing her hands at the sink with careful, thorough attention.
Mabel catches me watching and gives me a small nod that seems to say, “Yes, today is a good day,” without making anything of it.
They eat, and Mabel asks me questions about breakfast service. I answer them, feeling as if I’m being assessed, not unkindly, but thoroughly. She doesn’t miss anything. I don’t think she’s missed anything in about forty years.