Chapter Two
“I can fix it,” Calisa said immediately, thinking of the porch.
“Unlikely.” Auntie Zee let out a mirthless laugh. “You’re your mother’s daughter.”
Ouch. She meant Mom-Kate, who was Auntie Zee’s biological niece and Calisa’s bio mom and was not what one might call handy.
She’d once infamously confused a wrench for a screwdriver.
But Calisa thought she could figure it out, if she had an afternoon and access to a few YouTube videos.
Also wood, a hammer, and nails. Plus a saw? “I can try.”
“She couldn’t help me, and she tried for years when she was your age. No, I have enough on my plate as it is. It’s better if you leave now before you muck up anything for my guests.”
She isn’t talking about the porch, Calisa realized. This was broader than that. It was possible that Auntie Zee didn’t even know about the hole. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she said, “I thought my moms talked to you.”
Auntie Zee grunted. “They talked.”
So why didn’t she—
“They didn’t listen.”
“But…I need to stay!” It was supposed to be her summer to recover and heal—to do self-reflection and find inner strength and practice self-care and all of her best friend Crystal’s favorite phrases—before she had to face senior year, college applications, and the utter lack of regret in her ex-boyfriend’s beautiful eyes.
She needed this! And she’d come all this way.
She couldn’t slink back to Brooklyn jobless after one day and say her aunt didn’t want her.
Auntie Zee shuffled to the kitchen window and made shooing motions, as if scattering a flock of pigeons. She then humphed and turned back to Calisa. “So melodramatic. You don’t need to stay. You want to stay.”
Glancing out the window, Calisa didn’t see what Auntie Zee had shooed away.
It looked the same as before: an apple tree in an untamed yard, the forest and mountains beyond, the darkening sky.
“Please, Auntie Zee, I know I can be helpful. I like to cook. Or at least bake. Pretty good at it, I think. Or I could clean. Dust. Vacuum. Whatever.”
Auntie Zee was shaking her head.
“How about dishes? I can do dishes! We don’t have a dishwasher in our apartment, so I’m expert-level at dish washing, even vases that have had flowers in them so long that leaves and petals are practically glued to the inner glass—”
“I don’t need your help.”
Calisa gestured at the stack of unused pots, the desiccated herbs, and the horrifically overgrown garden out the window. “You clearly need someone’s help.”
“Says a girl who knows nothing about running a bed-and-breakfast.”
“Says a girl who has eyes and can see—” She cut herself off.
She wasn’t going to convince her great-aunt by insulting the state of her inn, even though it was blatantly obvious that the place was one strong sneeze away from collapsing into a pile of dust. Auntie Zee was looking at her like she was a clump of muck on her shoe.
Calisa added in a smaller voice, “I want to help.”
Studying her for a moment more, Auntie Zee snorted. “Why?”
“Because…” What reason would the old innkeeper like to hear?
Should she say she thought it was important to help family (except she hadn’t seen Auntie Zee in years)?
Or that she thought it would add a necessary line of work experience to her college applications (except she’d barely begun to think about them)?
Or that she had no other way to spend her summer that wouldn’t involve her feeling as if she had been shoved through a vegetable slicer every time she saw Ethan with another one of his apparently multiple girlfriends that everyone had known about except her?
“The truth,” Auntie Zee demanded.
“Because I walked in on my boyfriend with his hand up the shirt of Jocelyn Pullman,” she burst out, “and I need to be as far from anything that makes me think about him as possible.”
Auntie Zee stared at her again, and then she laughed.
Calisa felt herself blush. She wished she’d chosen a different answer, ideally one that sounded less pathetic.
She glanced up at the rafters, down at the scuffed wood floor, then over at the cabinets with their faded paint.
You could just barely make out the remnants of delicately painted roses and ivy that decorated the wood.
She focused on the little roses while her eyes grew hot.
The laughter stopped. “I appreciate your honesty. A far better answer than claiming you want to help out a grouchy old lady who never even sent you birthday presents.”
She looked back at her great-aunt, wondering if she had, against all odds, said the right thing.
I can’t just turn around and go home. What would she tell her moms?
Mom-Elise would tell her she needed to learn to stand up for herself and understand her own value, while Mom-Kate would want to march up to Vermont to yell at Auntie Zee.
Neither reaction would help with the core problem of what Calisa was going to do to make it through July and August without turning into a blithering mess of self-pity.
“My B&B has always been a place for people who needed to escape.”
Yes. Escape. That was exactly what she wanted. She needed trees and mountains and so much work to do that she wasn’t able to think. Hope rose into her throat. “So you’ll let me stay for the summer?”
“Absolutely not.”
The hope dissolved.
“No, that’s a terrible idea. But…a few days, I think. You can stay three days, finish whatever moping you need to do to make yourself feel better, and then you go home.” And with that, Auntie Zee waddled out of the kitchen.
Whatever moping she needed to do…
The entire point was not to “mope”!
Shaking it off, Calisa followed after her great-aunt.
Auntie Zee shuffled down the hallway into the lobby. She waved at the smoky mirror. “Ignore the mirror. It’s a pessimist.” And then she sidled behind the reception desk.
Calisa studied the mirror. That was a strange way to say a mirror was unflattering, especially when what it really needed was a wipe with Windex, which just seemed to be more evidence that she did know more about running a bed-and-breakfast than Auntie Zee thought she did.
Not that she was going to say that out loud.
Thump.
She turned around to see that Auntie Zee had plopped a leather-bound book on the reception desk. Scowling, she flipped open the pages. Calisa drifted closer to see—
“Gah. Private.” Auntie Zee shooed her backward.
Calisa took a step away but still tried to peer at the book.
It was full of handwritten notes neatly spaced in columns, like a guest register.
Or was it more than that? On one side of the page, she spotted a list of expenses, as well as supplies.
It looked like Auntie Zee kept all the inn’s records in this book, instead of, like, a spreadsheet.
Given the state of the inn, Calisa supposed it wasn’t a surprise to see that Auntie Zee hadn’t upgraded to computers.
At least she’d progressed from ink and quills.
“Guests at the Faraway Inn are all afforded privacy,” Auntie Zee said. “You will respect that for the three days you are here.”
At least three days was better than “leave in the morning,” which was where the conversation had started. She thought of the line from her moms’ favorite movie: Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
Maybe after three days she’d be able to convince Auntie Zee to let her stay another three, and after that another three, until all of a sudden, boom, it was September and Calisa was fully healed from her heartbreak, emotionally stable, and ready to return.
“That’s important: you must respect the guests’ privacy. Do you understand?”
“Of course.” She’d follow whatever rules Auntie Zee wanted, so long as she was allowed to stay.
Clasping her hands behind her back, Calisa hoped she looked responsible and respectful.
She wasn’t certain that was possible after just pathetically pleading for mercy, but her goal now was to convince Auntie Zee that she’d be an excellent addition to the summer staff.
Auntie Zee added a notation to the guest book. “You can stay in room two.”
“Great!” Before she could ask a follow-up question—such as “Where’s room two?
” or “Can I have the key?”—she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye.
She turned her head, but all she saw was the blurry streak of her reflection in the grimy mirror—hair matted from rain, shirt still damp, face a hazy smudge.
I look like a half-drowned mouse. Pessimistic mirror indeed.
Calisa turned back toward the reception desk. The logbook was gone, squirreled away wherever Auntie Zee kept it, and, more significantly, so was Auntie Zee.
How had the old innkeeper scooted out of the room so fast? She hadn’t seemed that speedy. Also…well, it was kind of rude. Calisa had just arrived. Granted, Auntie Zee didn’t want her here, so she could hardly expect a tour or any kind of grand welcome, but still…
None of this is what I expected.
She stood for a moment, unsure what to do. Fix the hole she’d made? Change out of her soggy socks? Chase after Auntie Zee? Call home and tell her parents…what? She’d tell them she was fine, of course. She’d made it here safely. I’ll be fine. Probably. Maybe.
Coming down the stairs, Jack said, “Ah, you’re not in a hole!”
She glanced up at his cheerful face as he took the steps two at a time. “And you’re not inexplicably carrying a gargoyle. How things change.”
“He doesn’t like rain.”