Chapter Five
Victoria settled into her room after checking in and receiving the tried and true, old-fashioned brass key. Her aunt had always used the ornately-wrought keys for guest rooms. Holding the cool metal with the open heart on one end in her clenched hand was nostalgic and filled Victoria with warm memories.
She put her things away, cleaned up, changed her clothes for something not travel weary and tucked the key in her pocket. Then she headed back down to the Lovelock Inn’s main level to find Aunt Lily for a chat. She wanted to catch up on all things Valentine Key and the Lovelock Inn.
She found her aunt in the kitchen, making hot tea for them both in lovely teacups nestled on matching saucers. The enticing scent of jasmine tea greeted her the minute she stepped into the large, beautiful kitchen.
In true Lovelock fashion, the kitchen had been built for grandeur and didn’t disappoint, even after all these years. There were a few things that dated the space, like the shape of the cabinets, the color and design overall, but it impressed nonetheless. Many of the rich materials that had been used in its construction held up. The beautiful Italian tile backsplash, the granite countertops and the large island looked great.
Victoria knew her aunt had repainted the dark cabinets a lighter color maybe fifteen years before, when she’d done some minor upgrades to the space.
Despite the cosmetic changes, Victoria couldn’t walk into her aunt’s kitchen without a flood of wonderful memories from her summertime visits while she was growing up assaulting her senses.
A huge picture window over the white farmhouse sink showcased the view of not only the flower-filled backyard, but the spectacular vista of the ocean. The southern exposure on this side of the house made for quite a few amazing sunsets.
“Do you want me to cut up a lemon for your tea?” Aunt Lily asked.
“Nope. Just a little sugar is all I want in my tea, thank you.” Victoria suited words to action, stirring a scant teaspoon of sugar into her cup.
They each carried their tea to the eat-in dining space right next to the kitchen. There was a banquette along the same wall as the kitchen sink, so they each sat on the opposite side of the table in chairs that looked to be the same ones as when she’d been a little girl. From here, they could look out at the backyard and the ocean beyond. The view really was spectacular.
As she let the comfort surround her, Victoria understood how much she’d missed it.
Aunt Lily and Victoria sipped their tea quietly as they gazed out at the beautiful ocean, keeping their thoughts momentarily to themselves.
Lily’s white hair framed her delicate face, lovely despite the wrinkles, in soft waves. Her blue eyes—the distinctive Lovelock eyes that Victoria had inherited from Horatio—looked as bright as ever, though Lily’s petite figure looked almost frail to Victoria’s assessing gaze.
After a little while, and in a quiet voice, she said, “I’m happy to see that not very much has changed here.”
“Are you?” Her aunt sounded thoughtful. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing. Although, as I explained in my letter, I suspect I’ll have to change more than a few things if I want this business to remain viable.”
Victoria reached out and touched her aunt’s hand. “Are things really dire or are you just not in the mood to do any drastic changes to the inn right now?”
Aunt Lily patted the back of Victoria’s hand with her free one. “It’s not that I’m not in the mood, dear, it’s that I’m getting up there in years. How many more do I have left? I don’t know. How do I want to spend them? Probably not doing a big complicated renovation of an inn that’s almost older than you are. And I know that I sound a bit crotchety. I don’t mean to. I especially don’t mean to be that way with you, my dear, sweet Victoria.”
“I completely understand, Aunt Lily. In your shoes, I would probably have to think long and hard about the time, effort and stress involved in a renovation of this magnitude. Even so, you wouldn’t have to do too much, would you?”
“Visually, no. It’s the behind-the-scenes and behind-the-walls things that are going to cost big. I just don’t know if I’m up to it. And maybe it’s not even that. Maybe it’s more that I don’t think I want to.”
Though she felt a pang at that admission, Victoria squeezed her aunt’s hand and tried to be understanding. And she truly did understand where her aunt was coming from.
She was a couple of years past seventy, at an age when many people her age were retired, but here she was, plugging along as an innkeeper. Being responsible for a big property like the Lovelock Inn, dealing with the staff, handling the wants and needs of guests—it would be a challenge at any age. And Lily had done it all on her own since the beginning.
“I find it hard to blame you for that. Have you ever even taken a vacation? If you have, I never heard about it.”
“Well, I have taken a few vacations over the years. Usually, I went to Key West for a weekend during the quiet season or up into mainland Florida and visited Miami, Orlando, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville. By necessity, I kept my trips to a few days or a long weekend here and there. I couldn’t leave the staff to handle the inn on their own.”
Victoria thought that sounded bleak. While the logical part of her knew running an inn like this meant working days and evenings, weekends and holidays, she hadn’t honestly given much thought to what it would be like to not have anyone else to help carry the load.
Aunt Lily had seemed to love it so much she’d made it all seem natural and easy to take care of the vacationers who came and went from Valentine Key. When did that leave her time to take a vacation? Clearly, it didn’t.
She wanted to ask who was going to take over the inn one day, since it was abruptly clear that Aunt Lily couldn’t do it forever, but found she didn’t have the voice to do so. She kind of felt like it wasn’t her business. Her aunt was going to leave the inn to whomever she wanted to leave it to.
If she knew her aunt, and she did, she would probably find a way to divide it into six equal pieces and give one to each of her nieces. Victoria didn’t think that would happen easily at all.
As if Aunt Lily could read Victoria’s thoughts, she said, “I was hoping that maybe one of my nieces would want to run the inn one day, but I don’t know that I think that anymore. It feels like asking someone to take on a burden that I’ve curated for half a century. It feels like too much to ask anyone to take on.”
Victoria leaned over and laid her head on her aunt’s thin shoulder. “I don’t think anyone would view the Lovelock Inn as a burden, more as an opportunity. I don’t know that running an inn is in my wheelhouse, but I would certainly try to help.”
“Yes. I know that you have never thought about becoming an innkeeper.” Aunt Lily laughed, sounding much younger than she looked. “You were always too busy speaking foreign languages. I thought that was very cool, by the way.”
Victoria smiled. “You did? You thought my knowing all those languages was cool?”
“I did. It made me think of your mother, Isabella. She also knew quite a few languages.”
Victoria sat up straight in her chair. “My mother knew several languages? I never knew that.”
“Oh, yes. You and your mother have quite a bit in common, as a matter of fact. I always wondered if that was why Horatio wanted you to spend so much time in all those foreign boarding schools. Because that was how your mother grew up after her own mother died when she was very small. I thought maybe Horatio was trying to turn you into Isabella. As time went on, I decided maybe I was just an old woman with foolish ideas, so I never said anything.”
Victoria felt very emotional. She thought she’d known all there was to know about her mother. It turned out she didn’t know anything. “While I’m here, could we spend some more time talking about my mother and how she apparently lived exactly the same life I did but I never knew it?”
“Absolutely, my dear, sweet Victoria. I never meant to keep it a secret from you. It was just something I never thought about until now. Looking back at your life and comparing it to Isabella’s life made me put the two together. The biggest difference is your mother decided to become a housewife and mother instead of becoming a translator. But who knows what she would have done had she lived longer? She was so very young when we lost her.”
Victoria nodded. Aunt Lily didn’t need to go into detail about that. She knew exactly what had happened to her mother after she married Horatio and had Victoria. Thinking about how she and her mother had lived their younger lives in the same way left her feeling like she was on the verge of a big cry.
Victoria was shocked to find out she hadn’t known something so important about her mother until this late date. She made a mental vow to find out all she could on this visit to Valentine Key. Meanwhile, she needed to think about her aunt’s current problem, not her own issues about losing her mother at a young age.
She laid her head back on her aunt’s shoulder.
“Regarding the future innkeeper position of this wonderful Lovelock Inn, perhaps all of us sisters can get together and discuss either taking turns running this place or helping out in other ways. That way you wouldn’t have to shoulder the entire burden yourself. Or maybe there are some quiet and previously unspoken desires where you might find a bona fide wanna-be innkeeper among us. Who knows until we ask, right?”
Aunt Lily laughed. “Yes. You are right. Thank you, Victoria. You always make me feel better.”
“I promise I will always do my very best to make you feel better, Aunt Lily.”
“Would you like to take a stroll down memory lane and do a walk-through of the Lovelock Inn, like we used to when you were little?”
Victoria lifted her head from her aunt’s shoulder and nodded enthusiastically. “I would absolutely love to do that. It’s been years, literally years.”
They washed up their teacups in the farmhouse sink and exited the kitchen. As they headed toward the staircase, Victoria caught a glimpse of someone approaching them. Her heart seemed to skip a beat. Was that who she thought it was?