Chapter Fifteen
Sitting on a stool in the kitchen, Calisa flipped through the cake recipes in the cookbook while Jack pulled out a loaf of bread, two jars of peanut butter, and several jars of jam. On the wall, the clock with the carved birds watched them.
“Crunchy or creamy?” he asked.
“Creamy. Crunchy is just incomplete peanut butter. Like someone forgot halfway through that they were supposed to be mashing it.” She studied the ingredients in a lemon drizzle cake and wondered if there was any cake that a beaver would like.
I said the right thing to Melidor, she reassured herself. She was mostly certain about that. The inn was a refuge for the dryad, just like it was for Calisa. Everyone needed an escape, and this place…It fills a need. An important need.
The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced there was no reason for the inn to only have a handful of guests. Human, dryad, whatever—the need for an occasional escape was universal.
“Raspberry, strawberry, rhubarb-strawberry, or orange,” Jack offered. “Orange-lime? That does not sound like it would go well with peanut butter, but whatever you want, I’ll make.”
On the kitchen counter, Steve stretched, then settled his wings. “Raspberry would be great,” Calisa said. “Maybe Steve wants some?”
Calisa returned to the cookbook while Jack offered the lizard a variety of treats: a bit of bread, a spoonful of orange-lime jam, a grape. He accepted the grape and swallowed it whole, before hopping back outside to lie in the sun on the window ledge.
“Once we’re finished fixing up the inn, we should have a grand reopening,” Calisa said. “Invite back all the prior guests.” There was absolutely no reason that the bed-and-breakfast couldn’t be full for the rest of the season.
As soon as she said it out loud, she felt excitement bubble inside like just-opened soda.
She’d already transformed the sitting room, and she was confident that with a couple more weeks of work, they could have the grounds looking less like an exploded salad and more like someone cared.
Maybe it wouldn’t be fit for royalty, but it could be ready for an influx of guests.
“Do you think we could do it?” Jack asked.
Sure, yes, absolutely. Probably. It just needed—
Entering the kitchen behind her, Auntie Zee said, “Foolishness.” She crossed to the stove and turned on the kettle, which seemed a redundant thing to do with an enchanted teapot in the other room, but Calisa was too distracted by her abrupt dismissal to comment on it.
After a quick glance to make sure Calisa wasn’t watching (which Calisa saw and pretended she didn’t), Auntie Zee grabbed a handful of breadcrumbs and dumped them on the clock.
The carved birds began to peck the crumbs while the minute hand ticked enthusiastically forward.
“We’ve already made a lot of progress,” Jack said stoutly, as if he hadn’t just been questioning whether it was possible two seconds earlier.
“You know nothing about running a bed-and-breakfast,” Auntie Zee said.
A lot of it seemed obvious: keep everything clean, make everyone comfortable, and offer breakfast. For the rest, she could ask Jack.
He’d devoted his entire life to this place.
Or…a novel thought…perhaps Auntie Zee herself could help.
At least she could give them some direction.
Advice. Instructions. She’d been running this place for years; she knew what had to be done.
For example, she knew that the wooden birds on the clock ate bread.
Calisa wouldn’t have guessed that. “Don’t you want this place to succeed? ”
Auntie Zee leaned against the counter and gazed out the window, beyond the sunbathing Steve. Calisa didn’t know if she was seeing the mountains or seeing memories. “This place used to be wonderful.”
“It can be again,” Calisa said.
“Its time has passed. You’ll learn as you get older that endings are inevitable. I have simply been slow to let go, which is my fault.”
“You can’t let go!” Jack yelped.
“If you let go,” Calisa said, “what will happen to the B&B? To your guests?” She thought of Melidor outside, happy amid the forest and the flowers, safe from the pressures of her family. “To you? To Jack?” She thought but didn’t say: To Jack’s father?
Auntie Zee sighed. “The guests will return home, and the B&B will close.” She shuffled to a cabinet and took out a mug that was painted with blackberry bushes.
“This is my home,” Jack said.
“People need this place,” Calisa insisted.
“They’ll find another.”
“There’s no place like this,” Jack said. “Not for me. And not for the guests either. It’s special, and if you just let it close—”
“I don’t want it to close,” Auntie Zee snapped, “but I can’t take care of it the way I used to.” She lifted her hand and studied the wrinkles. She closed her fingers into a clawlike fist, and her knuckles looked like pearls through her thin skin. “I don’t have the energy or the strength.”
“That’s why I’m here—” Calisa began.
“For a summer,” she interrupted Calisa. And to Jack, “And you, for how much longer? You’re going to move on, and that’s as it should be. You’ve your own life to live, and you’ve been stuck here long enough, waiting on someone who can’t return.”
Jack looked as if he’d been punched in the gut.
How could she say that? Calisa imagined how she’d feel if one of her moms had been gone without word, without hope, for three years. “Auntie Zee…”
“Don’t get old, kids.” She poured water into her mug and added a tea bag.
“Alternative is worse, they say, but still.” She shuffled toward the door to the garden.
“I’ll try to keep the inn open for the rest of the season, if I can, but don’t get any grandiose ideas.
Just keep these guests happy, and then it will end on a good note.
That’s all I want at this point. One good note. ”
Calisa tried again. “Auntie Zee, you can’t—”
“I’ll make another supply run this afternoon so you can keep baking your cakes,” Auntie Zee said. “But don’t think grander than cakes.” After sipping her tea, she stepped outside. “I’ll be back by dinnertime.”
The door swung shut behind her.
Jack slumped against the counter. “She’s given up. Dad…” His voice cracked, and he pressed his lips together hard.
Calisa didn’t know what to say. He was right—it did sound like Auntie Zee had given up, both on his father and on the inn, despite all the progress they’d made in such a short time. She sagged onto a stool.
What’s the point of fixing up the bed-and-breakfast if Auntie Zee has already decided to close it? No, she couldn’t think like that. “She could be having an off day.”
“She doesn’t think he’s coming back,” Jack said. He had picked up a slice of bread and was squeezing it in his hands. “If she did, she’d never let this place close down. He—I don’t…” His voice rose with each sentence.
Crossing to him, Calisa took the slice of bread out of his hands and then put her arms around him. She held him, not saying anything, trying to think of what to say that would help.
Jack breathed into her hair, a shuddering breath, and then she felt him begin to relax minutely.
She felt the warmth of his chest pressed against her.
Ethan would have never let her comfort him like this—he would’ve never let her see any kind of vulnerability—but Jack didn’t hide how much he cared and how deeply he felt.
She thought that made him a stronger person.
She tried not to notice how nice he smelled, how solid and strong and gentle his arms were.
“Just because she’s giving up,” Calisa said, “doesn’t mean you need to.
The inn isn’t closed yet. The portals are still open. He could come home.”
“It’s been too long,” Jack said. “If he was going to make it—”
She pulled back but didn’t let go—just far enough so she could look into his eyes and so he could see hers.
Their faces were only a few inches apart.
His eyes were fixed on her. “You don’t know that,” Calisa said.
She put as much conviction into her voice and eyes as she could.
“He could walk into this inn tomorrow. You don’t know. ”
He looked lost, and it made her want to hold him tighter. “Isn’t that Auntie Zee’s point? I don’t know if he’ll ever come back. What if I’m holding on too long?”
Maybe he was. Maybe his dad wasn’t going to return.
Maybe his dad couldn’t. It could be that something terrible had happened to him, out there in another realm.
Or there were no other open portals in whatever place he was.
By now, his dad could have resigned himself to a new life, to never returning.
Like Auntie Zee, he could have given up.
Or maybe he hadn’t.
“Give it the summer,” Calisa said. “We keep fixing this place up. Make it as nice as we can and see if we can make Auntie Zee change her mind.”
He nodded. “Sorry for, um, kind of falling apart.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. You’re allowed.
” Their arms were still wrapped around one another, and Calisa didn’t want to step away.
Her eyes drifted to his lips. He had kissable lips.
She made herself step back. Not the time.
He’s in pain. He needed a friend right now, not a complication or a distraction.
She felt cold without his arms around her. He glanced away, toward the window and the mountains, and she doubted he was thinking about her and her lips. He was most likely and understandably thinking about his father and the future.
“She’ll change her mind about the inn,” Calisa said as firmly as she could. “The same way she changed her mind about me.” She crossed to the cookbook. “Now, I think I found a chocolate cake I want to make after lunch, without the mirror glaze. Come tell me what you think.”
She was going to keep moving forward, even if Auntie Zee didn’t want to.
—
The inn was saturated with the scent of chocolate.