Chapter 5 #5
Worse, it looked as if every one of their guests had shown up at the breakfast bar.
Then Granddad caught sight of Caleb. He wheeled his chair around and stared Caleb full in the face.
“Look at all those burned-out bulbs,” he shouted as if Caleb still sat on the porch step. “We don’t just wait around for them to go bad. Last week, I told you to change them all.” The wavering voice boomed, echoing off the walls.
At least Caleb had gotten to play a little music before the fun started.
He strode around the middle of the room, checking for spent bulbs, then back to Granddad. “I see five. Out of sixty. Nobody will notice, but I’ll change them tonight.”
His grandfather’s face turned an even deeper red. “You’ll change them right now. Before the guests see how inept you are at innkeeping.”
“Fine.” On the off chance that the guests hadn’t seen Caleb’s incompetence before, they sure heard it now. The hush of seventy people in the room proved it.
He turned to Sarah, lowered his voice. “Rufus is probably in the maintenance room already, so call him and tell him to bring me the rolling ladder. I’ll get some light bulbs before Granddad has another stroke.”
As the older man blustered on, Caleb drew a huge breath and let it out slowly. The one thing he would not do was to argue with his grandfather, especially in the hotel lobby with dozens of guests hanging around.
He started toward the maintenance room and met tall, lanky Rufus Helming coming his way, making a racket while rolling the giant ladder down the hall’s wooden floor.
“This contraption’s gonna wake up anybody who’s still asleep.” Rufus’s long white beard and shoulder-length white hair made him look like a Duck Dynasty stand-in. But the man loved the island, and he loved Island House Inn. He knew everything about the old hotel and could fix anything in it.
However, Caleb refused to let the seventy-year-old man climb a fifteen-foot ladder to change light bulbs unnecessarily. He grabbed a package of bulbs, caught up to Rufus in the lobby, and climbed the ladder.
“From now on, change the bulbs after eleven o’clock at night or before five in the morning,” Granddad bellowed. “That’s to keep you from monkeying around up there in front of the guests during business hours.”
“Well, Granddad,” Caleb called from his perch, digging deep for patience and compassion, “at least this morning you’re not accusing me of monkeying around with music.”
“Not yet. Hang on to those bulbs so you don’t drop one.”
“You know, they make telescopic light bulb changers.”
“You’re screwing them in too tight.”
“I’m doing it just like you always did.”
The older man glared up at him, face red and nostrils flaring, and pointed a finger. Raised his voice even more. “Don’t make me get out of this wheelchair—”
Caleb inhaled deeply and let his breath out slow, his frustration wanting to build into anger. Lord, help me. I said I wouldn’t argue, and I do not want to disrespect my grandfather, but right now I’m about this far from telling him what I think of his attitude.
He pulled a verse from his memory. Charity suffereth long, and is kind…
While Caleb couldn’t exactly say he’d suffered, or that it had gone on a long time, he still needed a dose of charity and kindness in his—
“Mr. Kennedy!”
He looked down from the ladder, and there stood Ariel, in a long, pale-yellow dress with little yellow flowers, her dark-blonde hair flowing over her shoulders.
Whether she knew it or not, she was now accomplishing the one feat he’d never seen anyone do, even his grandmother: silencing crusty, touchy, grouchy Jacob Kennedy.
Calling out to his grandfather again in a calm and patient way, she headed toward them from the vicinity of the breakfast bar, carrying her guitar case in one hand and a piece of toast on a white plate in the other. “Would you help me, please?”
What was she doing?
Granddad swiveled his head toward her so fast, he must have felt dizzy. “What? What do you need, Miss Sullivan?”
Caleb let out a huff. When had he ever seen his grandfather make such a lightning-fast change of mood? When had he ever heard him speak in that gentle tone?
“Call me Ariel.” She caught Caleb’s gaze, and he rolled his eyes.
Her smile turned into a playful grin as she set her guitar case on the floor. “My aunt is still resting, but sometime today, I need to try out the new songs our writers gave me last night. Someplace quiet where I won’t bother anyone.”
“How about the restaurant?” Granddad pointed in that direction, his pitch lowering and the frown slowly melting from his brow.
“I knew you’d have a solution. Have you had coffee this morning?”
Granddad shot a scowl up at Caleb. “Had to come down here and supervise first.”
“My aunt can’t function without her morning coffee, and I imagine it’s worse for a man. I’ll bet you take yours black.”
“That’s right.”
She hurried to the breakfast bar, poured a hot cup, and handed it to Granddad.
He grunted a gravelly thanks and downed half the cup. Then he looked over the mug, his gaze fixed on Sarah, who wore a red Island House Inn Henley and tan pants as she all but ran down the wooden circular staircase. “Sarah, why are you back so early after working late last night?”
“It wasn’t that late.” Sarah cast a split-second glance at Caleb before hurrying off toward the breakfast bar. “I’ll see if anything over here needs refilled.”
Granddad shot his gaze back to Caleb. “Employees aren’t allowed to double back with only eight hours between shifts.
What kind of staffing trouble do we have?
By the time Sarah took the ferry to the mainland then drove home, came back to the ferry this morning and rode it here, she probably didn’t get four hours of sleep. Which is why we can’t keep our help.”
Or maybe they had a high turnover rate because Granddad spent his time bellowing orders and insults in the lobby…
Caleb climbed down the ladder, carrying five burned-out bulbs. “We had a hole in the schedule, and Sarah volunteered to fill it.”
“Whole place is falling apart. I’ve spent too much time away from the office.” He started wheeling himself across the lobby a couple inches at a time. “I’ll be at my desk—with the door open. The staff needs to know someone’s in charge.”
With Granddad’s back to them now, Ariel whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Caleb ran his fingers through his now-short hair. “Not your fault. I just wish I could be what he needs.”
“The innkeeper gig isn’t working out for you, is it?”
“Not remotely. Sometimes I don’t know why I try.”
His guests wandered off, replacing Granddad’s harsh speech with laughter and pleasant conversation. So did Uncle Augo, freshly shaven and looking sharp in khakis, a lightweight brown sweater, and matching deck shoes and flat hat as he crossed the lobby, his little dog, Lucy, following.
Finally, a return to normal.
“I’m leaving now to meet my cousin Dani at Good Day Coffee,” Ariel said. “She has a breakfast meeting with her uncle, the mayor. So we’re getting together for just a few minutes. Why don’t you come along, and after she leaves, we can get something to eat and talk?”
Rufus ambled down the long hallway from the maintenance room, presumably to get the ladder and burned-out bulbs.
Sarah could handle any new reservations.
And Granddad had holed up in the office, doing who-knew-what.
“They don’t need me here. Might as well go now, before something worse happens.
If I’m gone, Granddad won’t have anybody to yell at, so it should be quiet for a while. ”
He reached for Ariel’s guitar case, and she let him take it.
The least he could do for the only woman he’d ever seen who could tame his crotchety grandfather—just when he needed her.