Chapter Five #2
She wasn’t sure what he meant. Did Mulligan usually go for other kinds of drinks during his nighttime appearances? She hadn’t noticed any alcohol in the kitchen. “It was good hot chocolate.”
“I’m sure it was,” Jack said. “Mulligan uses the best ingredients.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but instead he shoved a forkful of pancake into his mouth. She wondered if she’d said something that alienated him again—they’d been doing so well for a few minutes there.
“Has he been a guest here long?” The way he talked about Mulligan made him sound like a permanent resident.
She wondered if the current guests were long-term visitors.
If so, how long did they usually stay? She’d assumed people came to a bed-and-breakfast for a weekend getaway.
She didn’t know what one did in the middle of nowhere for longer than that.
It was miles and miles to the nearest town, and what was there to do in town, anyway?
A few restaurants at best. An antiques shop or maple syrup store or something equally Vermont-y?
Did the guests like to hike? There were certainly enough mountains to hike in.
She tried to picture Mulligan in his all-black outfit, hiking up a mountain.
It didn’t seem like his style. What drew guests here, especially long-term ones?
“These are awesome pancakes,” Jack said. A spot of syrup was on his cheek. She resisted the urge to wipe it away as he shoveled more pancake into his mouth. Even with his cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s, he was still cute.
Don’t notice that, she told herself firmly.
“Thanks.” Eating another bite, she made herself look out the window at the apple tree instead of at Jack.
Hadn’t there been a statue beneath the tree last night?
She was certain there had been. She must have been looking out from a different angle before.
It was most likely just out of sight. “So, is this the inn’s offseason? Are there more guests in winter?”
He shifted uncomfortably on his stool, as if she’d asked a touchy question. “Well, it used to be our busiest season. We’re just going through a slow patch…. Not all the usual summer season guests have returned, but they might still book. It’s just the start of the summer.”
That didn’t sound great.
Only three rooms filled? And this was supposed to be the busy season?
Exactly how much trouble was Auntie Zee’s B&B in?
She and Jack cleaned up from breakfast after they finished.
He wrapped the leftover pancakes lovingly in plastic wrap and displayed the syrups on one whole shelf in the refrigerator.
She spotted at least a dozen flavors, from vanilla to peach caramel.
“I’ll be on the roof if you need me,” he said.
“Gotta fix the leaks before it rains again.”
“Do you need help?” she offered.
“Wow, no one ever asks that.” Jack smiled sunnily at her. “But it’s kind of a one-person thing. Not sure the porch roof can support two people on it.”
Fair enough. “Got it. Don’t want to repair another Calisa-size hole.”
His eyes widened. “It’s absolutely not personal!”
Calisa wasn’t offended. She had crashed through the porch, and she had zero interest in repeating that performance on a roof.
“It’s fine. I’ll find something else useful to do.
” It would have been nice to keep talking to him.
She hadn’t asked him anything about himself, about his life here, about why he thought the inn was so vacant, about whether he’d ever had his heart broken, about whether he thought hot chocolate and pancakes would be enough to heal that.
Stay focused. The last thing she needed was to attach herself to another boy.
I’ll admire from a distance. And not on a roof.
“How do you know what Auntie Zee wants you to do next?”
“I just try to spot what needs doing and do it.”
“But how do you know if she really wants you to do that?” If this were an ordinary job, she’d be given assignments. She wasn’t convinced there was anything ordinary about this place.
Jack shrugged. “Guess I don’t? But when I fix stuff, she seems happy. Or at least she grunts in a kind of friendly way?”
Okay, at least she knew her goal: make Auntie Zee grunt happily.
As Jack headed outside, Calisa surveyed the kitchen. She’d made pancakes, but she had no clue whether Auntie Zee or any of the guests had liked them.
If she wanted to impress her great-aunt, she had to do more. A lot more.
She’d already boasted to Auntie Zee that she knew how to clean, and she did. Her moms believed in cleanliness, as well as the importance of chores. She’d been cleaning stuff since she was five or six. Granted, that was a tiny apartment, not an inn, but other than scale, it should be the same.
Plus she could pretend she was scrubbing Ethan out of her brain.
That sounded like an excellent plan.
Calisa located cleaning spray and dustrags in a closet next to the refrigerator. She hesitated when she realized she’d opened a door without permission and then shook her head at herself. Surely, Auntie Zee hadn’t meant closets…except the door from the other night had been a broom closet.
She closed and reopened the closet. Just Lysol, sponges, and soap.
“Stop being ridiculous,” Calisa told herself out loud. She’d start with the worst room, she decided, to make the greatest impact: the sitting room, where the majority of the furniture was hidden beneath sheets as if this were an abandoned Victorian house populated by ghosts and overdramatic widows.
The elderly white cat was curled on the red velvet chair again. As Calisa entered, the cat opened an eye to look disapprovingly at her.
“I promise I won’t disturb you,” Calisa told the cat. “I’m just going to clean.”
Yawning to show all its teeth, the cat stretched and then lowered itself from the chair. It sauntered past Calisa, its tail flicking her ankles, and out of the room.
“I don’t know whether that’s permission or disapproval,” she said to the retreating cat. She made a mental note to ask Jack its name and if it ever allowed anyone to pet it. It did not seem approachable.
Calisa turned back to the sitting room.
“I can do this,” she said to the dust and the covered furniture.
She dove in, dusting and spraying and scrubbing every surface she could reach, from the floorboards to the doorframe to the windowsill.
She thought of Ethan and the promises he’d made her.
Forever, he’d said. We’re soulmates.
Liar, she thought.
Playing music on her phone, not so loud that it bothered the guests but loud enough that it chased away the silence of the mountains outside, she danced as she cleaned. With each bit of the room she attacked, she imagined herself scouring away another memory. Another lie.
I’d never lie to you, he’d said. You are my one and only.
Traitor, she thought. Cheater.
She yanked the sheets off the furniture, sending up plumes of dust. The motes caught sunlight and created a hazy glitter in the air.
I only have eyes for you, he’d said.
Gaslighter, she thought. Asshole.
Underneath the sheets were couches and chairs and tables, but not just ordinary couches and chairs and tables—they looked like works of art.
One couch was carved to look like a shell, with wood shaped like the spiral of a conch.
Its cushions were blue-green, and the soft knit blanket on top reminded her of sea-foam.
Another chair was shaped like the stump of a tree and carved with flowers and acorns.
A thick moss-green cushion was sunk into the center of it.
The top of a coffee table was a mosaic of pebbles, polished as if by a stream.
She wondered if he’d ever loved her. Had it always been lies?
As she made her way around the edges of the room, dusting sconces and shelves and the mantel over the fireplace, she pictured his face and sprayed it with Lysol, then imagined she was wiping him away, word by lying word.
We’re meant to be, he’d said. It’s destiny.
He’d actually said those words with a straight face.
Worse, she’d believed him.
Working steadily clockwise, she reached the tea set in the corner that she’d spotted when she’d first arrived.
Unlike the majority of the furniture, it hadn’t been hidden beneath a sheet and was coated in a thick layer of dust, with cobwebs draped between the teapot handle and the stack of cups and saucers.
She was erasing their forever destiny with each cobweb she cleared. He was the past. She was leaving him behind and rediscovering her future, whatever it was. He had no place in it anymore. His promises were lies. His kisses were lies. His lips, liars. His eyes, liars.
Past. Over. Done.
She wiped down the tray table, kneeling to clean around the wheels, and then stood and began wiping the grime off the teacups.
She wondered what her moms would say if they knew she was cleaning without being asked.
They’d be proud, she thought. And a little snarky. If only her room weren’t so messy.
When she finished with the tea set, Calisa scooped up all the sheets that had been covering the furniture.
She had spotted a laundry machine at the end of the hallway of closets, beyond the kitchen.
As she carried the sheets through the foyer toward the kitchen, she heard Auntie Zee say, “Welcome back, Kendra. Your room is ready for you.”
She poked her head into the kitchen to see the new guest.
And then she blinked.
Auntie Zee was closing the closet door next to the refrigerator, and if Calisa didn’t know better, she would have said it looked as if the guest had just stepped out of the cleaning supplies.
Aside from the logistical implausibility of this, the new guest, Kendra, did not look like the kind of woman who ever touched a dustrag, much less emerged from a closet full of them.
She was intimidatingly elegant, with white hair, dark skin, and fierce angular features.
Zero wrinkles despite the white hair. She wore a tailored suit with a snow-white turtleneck under it.
This must be the third guest, the one that Jack had said was due to arrive soon.
How, though, had she arrived without Calisa noticing? She hadn’t heard a car. Or a plane or a helicopter or whatever this elegant, terrifying woman arrived in. I was listening to music. And my own thoughts.
“I trust the amenities will live up to my standards,” Kendra said.
“Probably not,” Auntie Zee said. “But the view is still the same.”
“It’ll do.” She then fixed her eyes on Calisa, and Calisa froze as if she’d been caught mid-crime. Kendra’s eyes narrowed. “I detest being watched.”
As Auntie Zee turned, Calisa unfroze and bolted out of the kitchen.
She told herself there was absolutely no rational reason for her heart to be pounding.
Of course the new guest hadn’t appeared out of thin air, and Calisa shouldn’t have fled when the guest looked at her.
Sure, the woman looked intimidating, but New York City was full of intimidating women and she’d never fled from them.
I don’t know why I panicked. Running from guests was not going to impress Auntie Zee.
Obviously, I’m stressed and not thinking clearly.
She took a deep breath and inhaled the smell of tea. In the corner, the teapot rattled. Calisa turned and stared at it. Steam curled from its spout.
She’d just finished cleaning it. How was it suddenly full of hot tea?
In the fireplace, a nice warm fire crackled. She stared at that too. She’d just left this room less than a minute ago. Who had come in, lit a fire, and made tea?
Jack, she thought. Of course, it had to be. But…why?
Either he was trying to be nice, or it was the coziest prank she’d ever heard of.