Chapter 3 Natalie #2
A chill runs up my arm. “What was that?”
Hannah’s head turns slowly toward mine. “They say twins will have their own language, and that no one can break into their special relationship.”
“But ours never do,” Clara says. “They just fight.”
“Except for whatever weird Twilight Zone crap that was,” Hannah says.
Amelia and Blaine are now laughing in an almost unhinged way.
“What’s going on?” I bump Blaine’s shoulder, since she’s closest to me, standing near the table.
“Nothing.” Blaine looks at Amelia and they start giggling all over again.
Finally, I roll my eyes and start ushering people toward the door.
As usual, Hannah’s gathering dishes up from wherever people abandoned them and setting them in the sink.
Her biggest family chore is loading the dishes and hand washing anything that needs it.
She takes it seriously, and she gets annoyed when people don’t at least rinse their stuff.
“Always leaving the gross food to just crust on there,” she’s muttering as she rinses the end of Paul’s granola down the drain.
Our sink didn’t have a garbage disposal when we got here, but that’s the first thing I had Samantha help me install.
Luckily, she’s decent with plumbing, because my kids put everything down the sink drain, except for eggshells and potato peels.
I think I’ve adequately drilled it into their heads that they can’t shove those down and expect it not to clog.
“Alright,” I say. “Everyone in the cars.” I wish it could be one car, but that would basically shaft Vanessa. It hardly seemed the kind thing to do.
Clara got her license to drive here, which they call a Category B for cars, but she could do it because she was seventeen.
Trace won’t be seventeen until almost Christmas, so he just has a provisional license to drive a car.
He’s old enough to drive a scooter, but neither Vanessa nor I thought that was a great plan.
That means Clara can drive the older kids—I bought a little Volkswagen Golf for her—and Vanessa and I trade off taking Paul, Amelia, Blaine, and Trina.
Their school’s close, but the drop-off is annoying.
Plus, I didn’t want to buy a car that seated eight just so that Clara could drive all the kids around for two months.
Vanessa’s already looking at cars for Trace, so I assume he’ll get something soon, and then those two can trade off dropping the little kids at school in the morning. That’ll be super nice.
“Let’s go, guys. I can’t make Trina late again.”
Not that they really care in her grade, but still.
The mornings are hectic, but I like them.
We wake up super early and help with barn tasks, then the girls usually go back to sleep for half an hour while I make something for breakfast. I don’t do it every single day, but I kind of enjoy putting meals together.
I know I only have a year or so before Clara leaves, and I’m mourning her departure in advance.
I like eating together.
Plus, since I evicted their dad, I feel like eating together helps us feel like a family. Every Wednesday morning, Vanessa and her kids and Samantha join us too. Those are fun—we alternate between Vanessa’s place and mine. We call it Waffle Wednesday, and we all get kind of excited about it.
But today’s a Monday, and once I get back, I have to clean up the remaining breakfast mess.
I toss the leftover yogurt and the end of the uneaten fruit to the chickens, who fall upon it with great delight.
I’ve really enjoyed having chickens—much more than I expected.
I finally walk down to the main house and duck into my office.
It’s time for me to run through projections for the next few months.
Our final summer numbers were much better than anyone expected.
Even with the deductible for the barn repair, and after the extra things that came up with the covered arena we’re nearly done adding, the hemorrhage wasn’t as painful as I anticipated.
I’m actually smiling as I look at the balance.
Even with our employees, and even with opening late in the season, we’re revenue positive for the summer.
I mean, I’m not including our capitalized start-up costs, like linens, signage, new software purchases, computers, etc. But just the normal operations of the hotel, including paying the three of us modest salaries, that was in the black.
Plus, Vanessa and her mother-in-law both made capital contributions, so going into the fall, we’re sitting pretty.
I’m optimistic as I open the bookings calendar for the fall.
That’s when my stomach drops. The software we use has a little ‘occupancy over a fixed period’ calculation that’s always showing at the bottom right, and ours for the months of September, October, November, and December is twenty-one percent.
Twenty-one percent.
We’re doomed.
I knew that Ireland had a pretty pronounced high season. Most places that aren’t a string of islands in the tropical part of the world do.
I guess I just didn’t realize it would be quite this stark.
It’s probably because we’re new, so we have zero established visitors.
From what I’ve read, the off-season is usually propped up by people who take a month or sometimes even a season and spend time in places they know will be less busy.
Many of those people become like migratory birds, returning time and again for a similar experience.
By the time Vanessa and Trish, her mother-in-law, show up, I’ve processed the depressingly low bookings, and I’ve come up with the beginnings of a plan.
“What’s all this?” Vanessa’s eyes are darting around at my many sheets of paper, all covered with writing, scattered across our small conference table.
“Um.” I stand abruptly, scattering the papers further. I’m not sure why I’m standing, except it’s a nervous response. I feel better prepared to handle things when I’m standing. “Maybe we should see if Samantha can come too.” I wince.
“What’s going on?” Trish’s eyebrow arches. “Why do you look like you got caught with no underpants on?”
I splutter. “My underpants are fine.”
“What’s wrong?” Vanessa’s eyes, always kind, look like they could belong to Bambi’s mother right now. It’s like she’s trying to love me into being calm.
It makes me smile. “It’s fine.” I sigh, and then I sit, trying to smooth the papers back into rows.
“When I got in today, I was planning to run numbers for the fall. You know, make some plans. See where there were holes in the bookings, and find ways to try and prop them up with either ads or. . .” I swallow.
“What’s wrong?” Vanessa sits, still staring at me.
But Trish is rifling through the papers. “A New Year’s Eve Ball?” When she looks up, her eyes are bright. “A Thanksgiving Day dinner?” She’s beaming. “What is all this?”
“Our fall bookings are abysmal.” I’m horrified to hear that I draw in a ragged breath and then I hiccup, like I’m drunk or something. “I—we’re at twenty percent occupancy between now and Christmas.”
“It’s early, still,” Vanessa says. “It’s, what? September twenty-third?”
“Twenty-fifth,” I say. “But our bookings this month have been quite bad.” I cough. “I thought it was school starting and it would pick up some, but. . .” My shoulders fall, and I drop into my seat.
“Well, I love all these ideas.” Trish is still rummaging through the papers.
“Oooh, a Halloween costume party? We should do this.” Her head snaps up.
“Did you know that Halloween came from the Celtic festival of Samhain?” I can always see the top of her dentures when she smiles really big like that.
“They will love a Halloween party here, I bet.”
“Look, I was just brainstorming so when you guys got here, I could mention some ways we might increase interest over the off-season.”
“These sound like a lot of work.” Vanessa’s frowning in counterpoint to Trish’s delight, apparently. “And I wonder how much we’ll spend on them. Do people travel for this sort of thing? A Halloween party?”
“I think they would,” Trish says. “Or at least if they already are traveling, they could come here for the Thanksgiving dinner, surely.”
“But then we’ll spend our Thanksgiving working.” Vanessa’s frowning even more. “I thought we had a reserve built up just for this, because we were getting started in the off-season.” She looks up at me.
“We do have a reserve,” I say.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that our reserve is basically all our savings. And if we spend it over the next year trying to get this business off the ground and then we fail, we’re all dead in the water.
And it’ll be all my fault.