3. Jacinthe
Jacinthe
“ C hriste alors , do I have a story for you,” I announce.
I grunt as I step up onto the porch of Balsam Inn, the giant pack of toilet paper I’m balancing in my arms almost slipping out of my grip.
Our big order of hospitality supplies arrived today, and the company dumped all the boxes in the middle of the driveway. Natalie and Maddie, my best friends and soon-to-be co-workers at this fine establishment of ours, were already busy hauling things into the house when I arrived.
My back is screaming at me to stop, but I can’t slack off today, not when we’re so close to the grand opening.
My tailbone is so covered in bruises it looks like someone came at me with a two-by-four, and even the Super Mega Extra Strength Tylenol that’s harder to get down your throat than a golf ball hasn’t been enough to make the ache in my muscles go away.
I really did a number on myself chasing after that donkey yesterday. Leading two group trail rides all by myself this morning didn’t help either.
Still, we’ve got an inn to open, and I’m not about to skip out on my best friends over something a cold beer and my trusty heating pack won’t fix tonight.
“Ah, ouais ?” Maddie says, teetering in front of me with her own stack of toilet rolls. “Can your story wait until I’m not about to fall over?”
Natalie rushes out the front door and grabs the edge of the package before Maddie has a chance to join the bruised tailbone club.
“Let’s just put them down here for now,” she says, walking backwards until we’re all huffing and puffing inside the lobby.
Maddie and I dump our packages on the hardwood floor, both of us sighing with relief.
I wipe a trickle of sweat off my forehead and glance around what used to be a dim and cramped entryway into a spooky old house that was definitely haunted by the ghost of Natalie’s great aunt.
There are no ghosts hanging around today.
I hope it’s because we’ve done Natalie’s Tante Manon proud with the renovations.
The whole place is bright and airy, filled with the smell of fresh paint and lavender cleaning spray.
The dark oak floors are gleaming with new polish, and a couple of the old walls have been knocked down to turn the entryway into a fancy little lobby with a brass chandelier, an upholstered bench, and a vintage oak reception desk that perfectly matches the floors.
I can’t even blame Natalie for boning our interior designer and falling head over heels in love with her; Brooke has done a very good job on the place.
She’s also turned out to be a very good girlfriend for Nat.
“You okay?” Natalie asks, narrowing her eyes when she spots me rubbing my lower back.
“ ?a va ,” I say, waving off her concern. “It’s nothing. Just part of the story I have to tell you guys.”
She keeps squinting at me. “Well, now I’m intrigued.”
“You should be,” I tell her. “It’s very exciting. I almost died.”
Maddie snorts while she finishes tightening up her ponytail. Her glasses have slipped down her nose, and she shoves them back up when she’s done fixing her hair. The lenses make her already huge eyes look like something out of a Pixar cartoon.
We might both have the whole dark hair and dark eyes thing going on, with the signature upturned Gauthier nose, but my little cousin is definitely one of the more delicate-looking members of our family.
Everybody is always telling me they can hear me coming from a mile away, whereas we’ve been calling Maddie petit fant?me —little ghost—since she learned to crawl.
“You’re always almost dying, you drama queen,” she says with a shake of her head.
I gasp and clap my hand to my chest. “ Moi ? A drama queen?”
I pretend to swoon and keel over onto the reception desk.
“Watch the oak,” Natalie warns, but she’s chuckling.
She’s usually down to give me at least a chuckle, even for my stupidest jokes, which is just one of the million reasons she’s my best friend.
She’s practically as much of a family member to me as Maddie, even if her own family is a product of the Anglophone invasion, when a bunch of hippies from out of the province swooped in a few decades back to turn La Cloche into the artsy tourist haven it is today.
The three of us grew up together, sharing the typical La Cloche childhood of building tree forts in the summer, making snow forts in the winter, and coming up with a whole sideshow’s worth of dumb songs and secret handshakes during the long bus rides to school in Saint-Jovite.
Maddie is four years younger than me and Nat, but once we all grew into teenagers, we turned into a little trio of besties, and we only got closer after realizing we’re all super fucking gay.
Nothing like being young lesbians in a small town to bond you forever, even in a town as accepting as La Cloche.
Natalie looks like she’s been working on the inn all day, her poofy ponytail gone all frizzy and the golden brown of her hair coated with construction dust from the last-minute renovations still happening in the kitchen.
Her plaid shirt is buttoned on crooked, the sleeves shoved up past her elbows and what looks like a coffee stain splashed across the front.
Still, she’s smiling, her eyes lit up with a mixture of caffeine, adrenaline, and pure excitement for the next phase of Balsam Inn. I’m running on the same cocktail of brain chemicals, and I’m pretty sure Maddie is too.
It’s been months of bank meetings, grant applications, supplier phone calls, renovation setbacks, contract negotiations, shopping trips, and good old manual labor, but the light at the end of the tunnel is now so bright we’re about to shoot out into the sun.
Of course, there’s a chance all our hopes and dreams will be burnt to a crisp once we get there, but I’m trying not to think about that.
I want to believe the teenage girls who used to dream about running a business together while getting overworked at underpaid tourism jobs every summer have grown into the kind of badass women who can open the best damn inn the Laurentians have ever seen.
I have to believe that. We’ve got too much riding on this for it not to work.
We spend the next twenty minutes piling the lobby up with soaps, shampoos, and enough toilet paper to host a whole battalion of the Canadian army. There are only six guest rooms at the inn, but all our research told us to double whatever we thought was a reasonable amount of supplies.
“Is the sink working yet?” I ask once we’re done. The evening air is cooling off, but I’m still sweating through my t-shirt. “I need some water.”
“Yeah, the plumbing is all good to go.” Natalie leads the way down the hall into the kitchen. “They’re just finishing up the cupboards.”
The renovation crew is long gone for the day, but the kitchen is still littered with paint cans, plastic tarps, and power tools.
We had to get a wall knocked down to make a kitchen big enough to serve up six rooms’ worth of breakfasts every day.
The cost of the new fridge alone made me feel like I was going to pass out, but Natalie’s inheritance money from her aunt has covered a big chunk of the start-up costs, and we scraped enough together from business loans and a Québec tourism grant to get almost everything else taken care of.
“Here.” Natalie shoves a water glass into my hands. “You sure you’re okay?”
I smack my lips together after taking a gulp. “I’m always okay, chérie .”
Maddie scoffs where she’s filling up her own glass in the sparkling new double sink. “You were just telling us you almost died yesterday.”
“Right!” I snap my fingers and then set my water down on the kitchen island still wrapped in plastic. “Let me tell you about that.”
There are no stools, so I try to heave my ass up onto the island to take a seat. I’m way too short, and I end up screeching with pain when the edge of the island digs into my bruises.
“Shit, Jass!” Natalie rushes over and grabs my shoulders like I’m about to faint. “What the hell is up with you?”
“It’s nothing,” I hiss, even as I have to press both my hands to my tailbone to try and dull the ache.
I yelp again when I feel a second pair of hands tugging my shirt up.
“ Tabarnak , Maddie, how did you get over here?”
The petit fant?me somehow snuck right up behind me.
“Hey, personal space!” I shout when she yanks my own hands out of her way and reaches for the edges of my shirt again. “I do not consent! Stranger danger!”
“I’m not a stranger. I’m your cousin, and you—oh.” Maddie’s know-it-all tone disappears, her hands going still as her breath catches. “ Calice , Jacinthe. What happened to you?”
Natalie swerves around me to catch a glimpse of my back just as I’m escaping Maddie’s clutches.
“Oh my god, you’re, like, blue . Are those bruises?”
“They’re not that bad,” I grumble while I flick my t-shirt back down over my jeans.
I walk to the other side of the island so they don’t get any ideas about exposing me against my will again.
“Did you get attacked?” Maddie demands, her eyes somehow even wider than normal behind her glasses.
I cross my arms and plant my elbows on top of the island. The plastic wrap crinkles.
“Yes,” I say. “I did. By Joaquin.”
I watch both their expressions shift from confusion to horror and back to confusion again.
“The…donkey?” Natalie says, after what feels like a full minute of silence. “The donkey did that to you?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, the donkey. Do you know any other Joaquins?”
Maddie cranes her neck like she’s trying to get a look at my back again. “Did he step on you or something?”
“No, he launched us into an avalanche of literal shit and then embarrassed me on purpose in front of my new farrier, who is, like, the most butch butch to ever butch, and then she had the audacity to laugh in my face and overcharge me.”
Maddie blinks and then looks at Natalie, who blinks back at her, and then they both look at me and blink some more.
“I think we should go sit down for this one,” Natalie announces.