Three
London stamped snow off her dad’s oversized boots and pushed through the swinging double doors. The hardware store on the edge of town was dimly lit but open. Relief. She grabbed a cart and headed straight for the back. How many times had she been in this store? Too many to count.
The aisle with the tarps was picked over, unsurprisingly. Roofs sliced open or blown off were the likely recipients—eight millimeters of plastic between them and the next storm. She grabbed the last of the thick brown tarps and hoped they’d be enough.
“Hey, Mike,” London said as she plopped a stack of brown squares on the checkout counter with a plasticky thud. The grey-haired cashier had worked there so long she remembered when his hair was straw blonde.
“How are ya?” he asked. “How’d you fare?”
“Not great, unfortunately. Maybe a foot of water came in, but in looking around, we did okay.”
“Well, that sucks.” Mike counted the tarps and wrote in a small notepad. “Hope Harper can help you get it rebuilt.”
“Hmm?” London was looking at her phone, hoping she’d missed a call or text from a contractor.
“Harper. Saw ‘er last week. Been a long time.”
Harper. In Leavenworth.
“Sorry, Mike. You saw Harper?”
“Yeah, came in for some clear fir boards. Doing some big project over at Sleepin’ Lady. Figured you knew.”
The heat building on her cheeks wasn’t from the HVAC—it was 50 degrees in there, if that.
“Oh. No. We haven’t—I hadn’t—no.”
Mike punched numbers in his calculator. “Sorry, I’m not so fast at this. Wi-fi’s out so we gotta calculate it all manual. Hang tight.” He pecked at the numbers some more. “That’ll be seventy-eight fifty-six.”
London slid her credit card over the worn laminate counter.
“Happen to have cash?” Mike asked. “I can’t run the card. But I can take down the number and charge it later if you need.”
“Yeah, go ahead and do that.” London looked over his head at a sign advertising recycled deck boards made of plastic bottles. Last she knew, Harper had moved back to California. San Francisco—according to the address on the divorce papers London still hadn’t signed.
“Okay, there you go,” Mike offered the Visa back. “London?”
“Yeah?”
“Here you go. Good luck. I hope you get it cleaned up fast. Be December ‘fore ya know it.”
December was all one local needed to say to another.
“Thanks. See you.” London waved and stepped toward the doors as she put her credit card back in her wallet.
“London?” Mike raised his voice.
She turned.
“Yeah?”
“Don’tcha need these?”
The tarps. The only thing she’d come for.
“Oh, yeah, thanks,” London smiled and grabbed the stack. “Don’t know where my mind is.”
Her car was ten steps away. She'd grabbed the stack too quickly, and the slippery plastic wrap gave way just outside the front doors. They hit the ground before she could stop them, and London sighed as she knelt to scoop them up.
When she stood, there was a dark green Tacoma waiting at the stoplight on the corner.
She always noticed dark green Tacomas. It was a habit.
But this one wasn’t just another copycat.
Not a maybe. Not a could be. It had the same rolled black metal lumber rack as Harper’s—custom made, welded in place by Harper herself.
That rack was impossible to miss. In a blink, the truck turned the corner.
A right on red. Harper wasn’t in California.
# # #
“I’m back!” London yelled as she stepped through the front door into the sitting room. Like its twin in the back, it groaned as she pushed through.
Laurie had already ripped the wainscoting to shreds, stacking a neat pile of oak 1x4s in front of the fireplace and leaning mostly whole sheets of paneling against the window. All the furniture was against one wall, the only wall with paneling still intact. Laurie was a one-woman demolition crew.
“Hey!” Laurie said as she emerged from the dining room. “You’re just in time. I’m ready to move this furniture so we can get this last bit down. It’s coming off fast. And it’s very satisfying. You ought try it. When you get a big piece—ooh, I love it.”
“It feels like you’re taking joy in my crisis.” London dropped the tarps on a club chair that had been turned toward a wall.
“Not joy. But I do love demo. You know that. My truest self loves to rip shit apart. Maybe that’s why I can’t keep a relationship.”
“Maybe,” London said. “And I never knew how much I appreciated that about you until now. Here’s the tarps. Should we get this stuff outside?”
“Yep, and Cheryl just texted they’re 30 minutes out. Want ‘em to stop for anything?” Laurie leaned against the framed opening that separated the sitting room and dining room, pulling her phone out of a back pocket.
“Coffee, please. Black and strong. Breakfast burritos if they can find them—the taco truck outside of town should be open."
“Got it. Done.” Laurie put her phone back in her pocket. “Now help me lift this stuff outta here.”
In only an hour, London had gone from “boss” to worker, and she was fine with that. The fewer decisions the better. Her brain was still at the hardware store. The Sleeping Lady. That green Tacoma.
London bent into a full squat, both hands under the edge of a couch. “Ready?”
They repeated the squat-and-lift, pivot-and-turn required to muscle three couches through the back door, along with a large coffee table and four club chairs.
Chainsaws hummed outside while they debated how to Jenga everything under the tarps—the furniture was damp but likely salvageable.
The tarps were up, secured with a coil of climbing rope London found in the shed.
Good thing, too. She’d neglected to think about the securing aspect of the tarps and the last thing she wanted to do was go back to the hardware store.
Laurie tugged once more on the rope. It was secure. “Ready to pull down that last panel? I think you should do the honors.”
Silence.
“London?”
Nothing.
“Lon!”
“Huh?” London shook her head as if she were loosening the knots in her neck.
“You still here?”
“Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Let’s go—”
“Pull down that last panel?” Laurie prompted. “Come on. You need this.”
The paneling was dated, London had to admit.
Oak veneer sheets with solid oak 1x4s spaced every twelve inches.
She remembered when they’d installed it.
Harper wanted something more modern. Painted MDF, maybe.
Clear fir or hemlock would do. But London insisted.
Her grandfather had built with oak. The inn deserved oak.
They fought so much about this wainscoting that they didn’t speak for two weeks before Harper caved.
Oak was expensive and dated, she’d argued.
London wouldn’t budge. Frederick had passed the reins and stayed out of it.
London argued it was her family's inn, and she wanted oak.
When had they hung that paneling? 2012? 2013?
She remembered pulling down the floor-to-ceiling dark wood paneling that her grandfather had installed in the ‘70s and driving it to the dump in Dryden.
And now, she was ripping out that godforsaken oak.
“Okay, here goes,” London said, jamming the crowbar behind a 1x4 and pressuring it, the top part of the board popping off with a ssshhtttt.
Easy. The lower portion was even easier since it was wet.
She made quick work of the top rail that held the panel down, and wedged the bar behind it, immediately digging a hole into the drywall.
“Oops. Not like it matters, I guess,” London said, and tried again, this time finding a stud for leverage.
A few more pries and she had the entire top of the panel exposed, then let gravity do the work.
She eased her bodyweight onto the top of the panel and it fluttered to the floor.
Thankfully Harper hadn’t used glue, or it would be a different story.
London remembered how hard it was to get the paneling her grandfather had glued on down—it had taken them a full day.
This wainscoting popped off clean and easy.
Had Harper been so annoyed she cut corners?
Or had she known it would need to come out?
With the final panel down, London noticed writing on the drywall. It was faint, so she stepped closer, squatting to read it better.
68 3/8”
OAK WINS
H.M.
5.12.2013
London sank back into her heels and kept staring.
“You okay?” Laurie yelled as she stacked the last of the 1x4s.
“I’m—not sure.” London replied, a beat too late. Laurie was behind her now, crouching to read the inscription.
“Sixty-eight and three-eighths. The length of the wall, I guess. Oak wins. What does that mean?”
The words sounded different in Laurie’s voice.
“We fought about this paneling.” She looked at the inscription one more time. “It means I got my way. Let’s take a break. I need a drink.”
“Babe, it’s like 10 a.m.,” Laurie said, holding up her crowbar.
“I need a drink,” London repeated and left the room.
# # #
She opened the kitchen cabinet where it should have been—upper left, just beside the range hood—but nothing. London pulled out boxes of Wheaties and Cheerios. No vodka. Had it been so long that Frederick’s stash was all gone?
One cabinet over, spices. Another, a wild assortment of flavored microwave popcorn.
She opened cabinets. Slammed them. Open.
Slam. And then, when she was about to give up, victory.
Not vodka. Not gin. An old bottle of Boone’s Strawberry Hill tucked in with the olive oil. Did they even still make that stuff?
London grabbed a juice glass—she now knew where everything was in the kitchen again—and poured a generous amount. The little glass had a blonde boy in Lederhosen stenciled on it. Always selling the Bavarian theme.
“Hey.” Laurie appeared in the doorway. “I heard the commotion. You okay?”
“Truthfully?” London grabbed another glass and tilted her head toward the bottle, an unasked but understood question.
Laurie nodded. “Always. I get that this is hard, but what’s up?”
“Here,” London said, holding out a glass of whatever Boone’s technically was. “Let’s go sit.”
The inn’s front porch swing was a defining feature—she didn’t think there was another like it in town.
Frederick had made it out of an old lift chair from Stevens Pass when they upgraded a lift in the ‘80s. He’d painted it black and mounted the two-person swing to the house.
The pole right up the middle wasn’t cozy. But it was unique.
London gently rocked as they sat in silence. Eventually, she took a sip, her face involuntarily tightening as the syrupy sweetness coated her mouth. “I saw Harper’s truck. And I knew immediately—which feels annoying.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Unless she sold it to someone in town, but she loved that truck. I don’t see it happening.” London tossed the liquid from the glass over her shoulder without looking back. The smell of 1994 and bad decisions lingered.
“You think she knows about the inn?”
“Hell if I know,” London kept rocking. Forward. Back. Metronome steady.
“Gonna call her?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not curious why she’s here?” Laurie followed London’s lead and tossed the sugary drink over her shoulder, with less efficient aim. Some of it landed on the porch with a smack.
“Nice job,” London said. “That shit’s horrible. How did we ever drink it?”
“We were young and broke. That’s how. But that wasn’t my question. You saw Harper today and you’re not a little curious why?”
Chainsaws hummed and a white City of Leavenworth truck drove by slowly.
“I was curious once.” London rocked. Behind them, a hunk of snow slid off the roof. “The hardware store guy told me she’s doing a project at Sleeping Lady.”
“Well. That changes things,” Laurie said.
“Does it?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Not if we don’t see each other.”
“In Leavenworth?” Laurie turned to look at her. “In December?”
Just then, a gurgling diesel truck pulling a trailer parked on the street behind London’s Subaru.
“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re ready to clear!” Cindy yelled as she hopped down from the driver’s side of the truck.
“Hey,” London whispered. “Let’s talk about this later. I don’t want—”
Before she could finish her sentence, sandalwood, wool, and hurricane Cindy swallowed the rest.