Chapter Three
Calisa plucked the room key from the board and then dragged her suitcase down the hall behind the stairs.
The hallway featured a faded blue carpet, a broken sconce, and a bathroom at the end.
She could see the corner of a sink through the partly open door.
It all smelled faintly of lavender. And dust.
Only two guest rooms budded off the first-floor hallway. She halted in front of the second door. Above the number two was an X painted in red.
She wondered what that meant. In need of cleaning? Not suitable for guests? Condemned for health reasons? Scene of a crime?
She unlocked the door and peeked inside warily.
It was adorable.
Or it had once been adorable, which was close enough.
She smiled as she walked in and dropped her luggage.
Looking around, she saw a queen bed with a canopy, a window seat with a view of the mountains, and a fireplace with a stone mantel.
Yes, the quilt on the bed was frayed, the paint on the window seat was peeling, and the hearth of the fireplace was stained with years of soot, but it was all quaint as hell.
The wood floor was covered by a faded rug with pictures of flowers, and the curtains were slightly tattered lace.
A few leather-bound books were lined up on top of the dresser in between bookends shaped like cats.
Everything was a little bit old, a little worn, but it was cleaner than the common rooms, and it smelled like the sprigs of lavender that were in little vases in various places around the room: on the bedside table, on the mantel, on top of the dresser.
I can live here, she thought. If I’m allowed to.
She liked that it was nothing at all like her room at home, where the walls were covered in photos of Ethan and her friends, the bed was rumpled and half buried in not-yet-put-away laundry, and her desk was stacked with stuff from school that she planned to ignore until September.
And it was nothing like his room either.
This would be a fine place to spend the summer, with mountain views and lots of tasks to keep her busy and distracted.
Now, if she could only find a way to convince Auntie Zee to let her stay for longer than three days…
I can start by fixing the porch. At least Jack was going to let her help with that, even if he did seem less than thrilled she was here.
He’d been perfectly friendly while they were talking about cheese. It was only when he’d realized she wasn’t one hundred percent invited that he’d gotten skittish. She supposed it made sense—he wouldn’t want to piss off his boss by being overly welcoming to someone who wasn’t actually welcome.
Calisa lifted her suitcase onto the window seat and changed out of her damp T-shirt and soggy socks. After she’d draped them over the back of a chair by the fireplace to dry, she checked her phone. No signal. And no Wi-Fi to log in to.
She’d said she wanted distance from Brooklyn, with zero updates from anyone about Ethan, so this wasn’t tragic.
She knew her friends would forgive her for a few weeks of silence.
Before she’d left, her best friend Crystal had tried to convince her to drop off the grid entirely for the summer, and now it looked like she’d be doing that.
Of course, she still had to call home, but luckily there was an old-fashioned phone by the bedside table, complete with a curly cord.
She reported in, reassuring Mom-Elise that the train was fine, the Uber was fine, and everything was fine and telling Mom-Kate that she’d met Auntie Zee, her room was very nice, and she’d packed dental floss, even though she had no intention of using it until, like, the day before her next appointment—who did?
She did not mention that the B he held the other with one hand and one knee as he sheared through the board.
“What’s Auntie Zee like?” Calisa asked.
He paused and glanced at her in wary surprise. “She’s your aunt.”
“Great-aunt. And I haven’t been here since I was a kid. Besides, the last time, I was entirely too distracted by the fact that there was a tower of chocolate-covered strawberries to think about what she’d be like to work for.”
His expression warred with itself for a minute, as if he wanted to stay disapproving but couldn’t help grinning again. He resumed sawing. “A tower of chocolate-covered strawberries?”
“I’m not going to tell you how many I ate.”
“I hope it was a lot,” he said. Even though she was holding it, the end of the board still thumped down on the steps when he sawed through the last bit. “Can’t waste an opportunity like that.”
“It was absolutely a lot.”
Jack nodded approvingly. “Excellent.”