Chapter 8 #3
It used to be nothing more than an oversized garden shed, back when Mom, Jasper, and I were still crashing in a rusted trailer over at the logging yard, pretending it was temporary.
When Mabel decided “temporary” had gone on long enough, she dragged us out of there and told us we could turn the cottage of her inn into something livable.
Now it’s home. It’s not big or pretty, but it’s sturdy, and sometimes it’s enough.
Jasper pushes the door open with a familiar creak, and the smell hits me immediately—incense, old wood, dried herbs, that faint sweetness of stale tea, and something smoky. I hate it, but I also, begrudgingly, think home when it hits my lungs, and that annoys me even more.
“Mom! We’re back!” Jasper calls out.
He disappears into the living room, but I detour to the kitchen instead, open the refrigerator to grab another bottle of lemonade.
Maybe one right after another is excessive, but a soda-induced sugar rush before facing Mabel and my mother seems like a valid life choice.
I take a long pull, let the cold sting the back of my throat, then duck under the low doorway into the living room.
And sure enough, there they are. Mom and Mabel sit together on the sagging couch, the television murmuring some daytime show I’m sure they’re not really watching. Jasper crouches on the floor in front of Mom and puts his tarot deck between his hands.
“Mom, look.” He carefully offers her the top card. “I practiced some more today, and I pulled The Star. It means hope, healing, like good things coming, right?”
Mom smiles, her blue eyes cloudier than they were before she got sick. “That’s nice, Nevan.”
Fuck.
Jasper’s shoulders droop a little. “I’m Jasper, Mom.”
“Jasper… I always loved that name. It sounds like someone who walks between worlds. You have a very special aura.”
I used to do that too. Show her my drawings. I stayed up late making them because I thought if they were good enough, she’d actually see me.
She’d smile, call me “my earth-born,” and drift right back to her crystals.
After a while, I stopped drawing things for her.
I started drawing on walls instead. At least the walls notice.
They don’t love you, but they notice.
The graffiti started small. A tag here, a tag there, just to see if anyone looked. They didn’t, so I made them bigger and brighter. I started going out at night to the abandoned mill on the edge of town, where the walls were blank, and nobody cared what I did to them. I filled them up.
Still do.
What I can’t write, because writing was always the hard part, I can draw.
I can say it in colors instead of sentences.
Words feel like a test I never studied for.
It’s like there’s a right way to line them up, a right way to sound, and I never quite get there.
They slip, come out wrong, or not at all, but paint doesn’t care if you’re smart.
Lines don’t judge. A wall doesn’t ask you to explain yourself.
You just put something down, and it’s there.
With a spray can in my hand, I don’t have to be understood. I just am.
Jasper hasn’t learned yet that his efforts are fruitless, and he may never. Maybe her Alzheimer’s diagnosis makes it easier, somehow, because he can tell himself she’d see him if she could, instead of facing the truth that she never would have.
My heart squeezes every time I watch him try, anyway.
Mabel catches my eye over their heads and gives me a small, knowing smile.
Her locs, now mostly gray, are pulled back in a scarf.
She and Mom have been best friends since childhood, and while she’s technically my boss and not my family, she’s the reason we’re still standing.
If there’s anyone I owe my spine to, it’s her.
“What do you think, Sera?” She pats Mom’s arm gently. “Want to have another tea?”
“Tea would be great, thank you.” Mom is now staring at Jasper’s cards as if they are windows instead of cardboard.
Jasper lights up again, launching into a ramble about spreads and meanings while Mabel and I slip into the kitchen.
She reaches for the kettle and one of those disgusting herbal blends she insists are good for the nerves, while I lean against the counter and take another gulp of lemonade.
“So,” she says after a beat, keeping her voice mild. “When were you going to tell me about the chef quitting?”
I choke, nearly sending lemonade up my nose. “Right… now,” I lie once I can talk again. “I was just waiting for the perfect moment. You know, soft lighting, romantic music—”
“Boy.”
“Maybe some candles—”
“Nevan.”
I sigh. “Okay, I was hoping to fix it before you found out and killed me.”
“You know I see everything in that inn, right? Because it’s mine, even if you forget that sometimes. I know that the radiator in Room 6 is noisy and Table 7 has a wobble.”
I look down at my sneakers. The left one has a hole near the toe where the fabric has finally given up.
Perfect. Even with dragging my ass to the logging company after every shift at the inn, I can’t afford to replace them.
Not when I’m paying Mabel rent for the cottage, buying groceries, putting money aside for Jasper’s future, and paying Mom’s medical bills.
“I fixed the radiator yesterday,” I mutter. “I bled it and checked the pressure valve. Should be good now. And I fixed Table 7 this morning. Just needed the leg shimmed properly.”
She studies me, then steps closer and brushes a strand of hair out of my face like she’s done since I was small enough to stand under her elbow.
Now I’m so tall she has to rise onto her tiptoes to reach me.
“You’re good at that, you know.”
“At fixing things?” I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”
“At taking care of people. At keeping this place running.” She steps back. “But you can ask for help, Nevan. You don’t have to carry the whole inn on your shoulders.”
There’s an unspoken, “And I don’t think you can,” tucked beneath her tone, and it stings that old, raw place in me.
Mabel thinks she knows all, but she has no idea how much I see that she doesn’t.
The table and the radiator were only two things in a never-ending list. No one knows those rooms, those pipes, those squeaky floorboards better than I do.
I’ve patched half the place myself with nothing but duct tape and YouTube.
If anyone can run the inn—really run it, not just keep it from collapsing—it’s me, despite recent evidence to the contrary.
But that idea of me actually being in charge of the inn is only in my head because she once half joked about maybe selling it to me when the stars say it’s time. I’ve been hoarding every spare cent since, which is another reason new shoes will have to wait.
Only fifty years to go until I can afford it.
“I’ll find a solution,” I say, forcing my shoulders to unknot. “Everything will work out. You’ll see.”
She studies me again for a long second, then nods. “All right, but don’t you dare burn that kitchen down trying to prove a point.”
“I won’t, promise.“
And I mean it. From a young age, I knew that trying to make my mother promise to be better for me and Jasper was useless, so I never asked. Because promises should mean something.
I glance at the time. “I’ve got to get changed. Your nephew will have my ass if I’m late again for the truck runs.”
She snorts softly as she fusses with the tea. “Always running, that’s you. Go on then.”
I retreat to my room, which is the only space in this entire house that isn’t drowning in crystals, dream catchers, and energetic clutter.
Like always, my door sticks a little when I push it open.
There’s just a small bed, a secondhand dresser, and a beat-up desk with my sketchbook and graffiti markers piled in one corner.
I set down the lemonade and peel off my inn clothes, swapping them for the heavy-duty jacket, worn canvas work pants, and steel-toed boots I keep ready for the logging shift—gear built for things going wrong.
Grabbing my beanie last, I pull it down over my ears, then pick up the lemonade from my desk for one last pull before I head out.
When I close my eyes, it still smells like her.
I don’t know what to do with that or with the fact that I was a complete asshole to the first person who made this day easier.
I set the bottle back down and head for the door.
I’ll figure out how to apologize tomorrow.
I’m good at fixing things.
I’m just not sure yet if that includes the damage I do.