Fifteen
For days, they worked together—Harper’s cool efficiency and London’s improving helper skills paying off. Guests would begin arriving soon. They had three days to clean, bring in furniture—and likely, clean furniture—as well as stock the kitchen and prepare guest rooms.
And London had three days to figure out how to talk to Harper without running her off again.
She’d worked diligently by Harper’s side but hadn’t mustered the courage to ask the question.
The clock was running out. When the first guests checked in, the deal would be done.
Just like Laurie’d said—eight seconds in overtime.
Was she going to take the shot or accept the defeat without even trying?
When Sebastian arrived to go through the re-opening plan, London was on her knees, scrubbing the foyer floor to remove the tape adhesive that had kept the brown paper down.
“Does the floor know what it did wrong?” Sebastian asked as he tossed a scarf and overcoat onto a hook behind the front door.
London leaned back on her heels and looked up. “The tape lied to me.”
“How dare it,” he said, crouching beside her, his signature blown-dry part damp from snow. “An unforgiveable betrayal.”
“It said it would come off cleanly. This is not ‘clean.’”
“Honey, of course it lied to you. That’s how we get tension in the movie.”
The woodsy smell of Sebastian’s cologne almost masked the solvent she was using to reclaim her new floors.
“What tension?”
“This ‘will they or won’t they’ thing you’ve got going on with Harper. Everything has a role to play in that saga.” He pointed a figure at the floor. “Even the tape.”
“It’s that obvious?” London scrubbed harder.
“Only to people who are paying attention,” Sebastian tapped his pen against a clipboard.
“Which in this town, means everyone.” He tapped twice more.
“Last I heard, you were making out on the bakery roof during the lighting ceremony and then fighting at the winery. After that, the gossip pipeline went dry. I assume the next episode is in development.”
Sebastian had turned her life into one of his Hallmark movies. Great.
“Just what I need with three days to go. The whole town whispering about my personal life.” London switched her sponge hand and kept scrubbing. “This is what I was trying to avoid.”
“Oh, sweetie, this is so much bigger than just you. Where’s that man of yours, anyway?”
That was a new one.
“She’s not mine—and, I’m not sure.”
Sebastian stepped back and surveyed the lobby. “Ok, well. We have eight rooms, three days, and our furniture is still covered in tarps. Have you called in the lesbian cavalry to come move it back in for you?”
London stood, arching her aching back into a stretch. Besides being ready to hang up her toolbelt, this remodel was doing a number on her body. She didn’t know how Harper moved big sheets of drywall and plywood by herself and didn’t complain of constant pain.
“As a matter of fact, I have. Cindy and Cheryl are coming tomorrow. Laurie’s already working on a linen refresh.”
London could always count on her friends, which reminded her, she needed to ask Joel for a handful of extra gift baskets to thank them.
“I gotta hand it to you. Your crew knows how to show up for each other. The lesbian mutual aid network is dialed.” He bit the end of his pen.
“I’ll come triage after. But as I see it, we still need furniture, kitchen inventory, and guest room re-assembly.
Have you resumed the pastry order for breakfasts? ”
“Yep, took care of it when I saw Joel a few days ago.”
“What about the cleaners?”
“They’re coming tomorrow.”
“Excellent. I’ll start the guest rooms and then the kitchen inventory. We need wine and coffee, if you think of anything else, text me.”
“Text you? You’re right here.”
“So I don’t forget! Text me.” Sebastian waved his pen like a conductor’s baton. “My brain is currently storing a dozen reopening tasks and an overly emotional subplot.”
“Are you calling me a subplot?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Depends entirely on what the lead actor does next.”
London tossed the sponge back into her bucket and scoffed, ready to spar. And then didn’t. A perfect comeback wouldn’t have mattered anyway—he was gone, halfway up the stairs muttering about towel counts and mini bars. The squeal of a power sander erupted in the backyard.
So that’s where Harper was.
Eight seconds.
London pushed through the back door, its usual creak nearly imperceptible over the sander. Harper stood at the far end of the yard with a massive slab of lumber suspended between two sawhorses. The familiar smell of wet sawdust lingered.
“Hey,” London said, stuffing both hands in her back pockets. It was freezing outside.
Harper lifted a gloved hand without looking up. No words, just a nonverbal cue—she saw her.
“Could we—hey, can you shut that off for a moment?”
The sander lifted, its whine reduced to a mere buzz before she clicked the power button.
It was unclear what Harper was sanding, but it was massive. Thick and irregular along the sides, the bark still intact on one edge. She slid oversized red earmuffs onto her neck and waited.
“Can we talk?” London’s voice cracked. Her mouth was so dry she had the urge to drink some snow.
“Yep,” Harper clipped.
The monosyllables were killing her.
“Okay,” London said, forcing the words out before she lost the nerve.
“First, I truly want to thank you for everything you’ve done for the inn—for me.
You could be doing a lot of other things with your time right now and getting paid.
” She gestured toward the house. “You’ve always shown up for me, and I don’t say that enough. ”
Harper brushed a line of sawdust off the slab. “You’re welcome.”
“And,” London swallowed. “It’s been brought to my attention that I have completely failed in holding up my end of the bargain.”
“What are you talking about? We had a deal—your end hasn’t come to fruition yet.”
“Not the deal,” London put air quotes around the word “deal” with her fingers. “I never asked you what happened—why you left. I never asked about Bryce.”
Harper went still. Her thumb was on the power button to the sander and London half expected her to go back to her task.
“You want to know, now?” Harper said finally. “Seriously?”
“Yes, I would like to know what happened with him. I know what I saw, and what I think happened, but I never asked you. And that’s on me.”
“Shit.”
Still with the monosyllables. Harper dragged a hand through her hair and turned toward the fence, but London had already seen her cheeks flush.
“I wish you’d asked this a year ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
How woefully underpowered that sounded.
“What you think you saw and what happened aren’t the same thing.”
London’s arms folded across her chest on autopilot, and she stopped herself, putting them back in her pockets instead. “I saw you having a really tender moment with him,” she said. “The kind of moment you should have been having with me.”
Harper let out a sharp laugh and turned back. “You mean the moment he was holding me up, so I didn’t fall over?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I was crying to him about you.” Harper’s jaw tightened. Her thumb threatened to push that button. “I was so lonely in our marriage. He had a studio in the space where I had the furniture shop. We’d grab coffee, a beer, talk about our troubles.”
“That’s all it was? Talking?”
“Yes. London. We only talked.”
“You weren’t sleeping with him?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Harper stared at the live edge slab on her sawhorses. “No, I wasn’t sleeping with him.”
She stepped closer, frustration finally breaking through. “This is what I don’t understand about you. You saw me hug someone and instantly jumped to the conclusion that we were having sex?”
“Well, you’re bisexual, so I thought—”
Harper recoiled, like she’d been slapped. “What the fuck?”
London immediately regretted letting her mouth say something her brain knew not to.
“Being bisexual doesn’t mean I don’t have a moral compass,” Harper snapped. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t take our vows seriously. It doesn’t mean I would just fall onto the first dick that appeared when you disappeared.”
London flinched. She deserved that—and it stung.
“I didn’t disappear.”
“Yes, you did. When your dad died, a switch flipped. One day, we were living our normal life. We were talking, doing things together—,” Harper stopped, and filled her lungs to maximum capacity.
“And when he was gone, I barely saw you. Barely heard from you, and we shared a bed. I became a background player in your life, instead of your wife. Your dad died and you shut out the world—including me.”
“I was grieving.”
“So was I.”
“You were?”
“Of course I was. He was my legal father-in-law for ten years, and in spirit for ten years before that. I loved him, too.”
London hadn’t thought of it that way. Hadn’t realized that her father’s loss would impact Harper in the same way it had her. Harper still had her dad. And mom. They were both healthy and mentally acute.
“I tried to be there for you, but you pushed me away.” Harper drove the nail in deeper.
The sting hit the edges of London’s eyes first and spread from there.
“You stopped even noticing me. Your world became your mom and the inn. You avoided everything else.” Harper had put the sander down by then, and was pacing the length of the slab.
“I just needed time.”
“You needed time, I get that. It was a massive loss. I know you adored him,” Harper said. “But you totally abandoned us in the process.” She gestured between them, her hand landing on her heart. “You totally abandoned me.”
London’s feet had gone numb in her boots. She shifted her weight, as if that would help.
“I didn’t realize—”
“No,” Harper cut in. “You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” London said. “I thought you slept with my eighth-grade boyfriend. I saw you together and I couldn’t bear to know. And it fucked with my head. So, I pulled back more, and—”
“And I couldn’t take it anymore, Lon.”
“I understand now.”
“I would never cheat on you. Leave you, yes. Hold you accountable for your shitty behavior, yes. But cheat, never in a million years. You were my person. Always.”
“I hate the past tense.”
“Well, as your mom always said, ‘you’ve made your bed, love.’”
Lorraine and her sayings.
London remembered her mother asking her if Harper had forgiven her the last time she’d seen her. Remembered wondering if she knew something, or if it was dementia talking.
“Have you talked to Mum lately?”
“Every week.”
The cold wind rattled the branches above them and a line of snow dropped, dusting Harper’s shoulders and the slab between them.
“You talk to my mum every week?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I just figured—”
“You need to stop doing that, okay? If I could give you one piece of advice to take into your next relationship—stop doing that. Stop assuming.”
“What do you talk about?” London ignored the time bomb in that statement. “With Mum?”
“Whatever she wants. Birds. Casseroles. Why I must really skip the parties in Ibiza.”
“So, not us?”
“There hasn’t been anything to talk about with us in a long time. Though she does occasionally ask.” Harper dusted the snow off her shoulders.
“And what do you tell her?”
“That you’re stubborn,” Harper said. “And you’re hurting. And I’m so fucking mad at you.”
Eyes cast down, she added, “And I miss you. I came back for work, but there was more. Obviously.”
The tenderness in her voice nearly undid London.
Her head tipped back toward the moody sky.
The version of the past she’d been carrying cracked in her chest, splintering like the edge of the slab that separated them.
“Oh shit,” she said to herself in the most I get it now tone, the puff of air disappearing into the cold between them.
“Hey!” Sebastian called from the back door, slightly ajar. “Question about the minibar situation!”
For a moment, time stopped.
Not now.
Of all things, of all times, not now.
Sebastian’s voice cut through the silence again, urgent in its persistence. “Minibar!” he repeated.
London dropped her head again. Timing wasn’t their strong suit.
“Be right there.”
Harper held London’s gaze for a moment longer, then slid the earmuffs back up. She hadn’t even taken a step when the whining of the sander started again.