The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn

TEN A Clean Sweep

I hadn’t been shining my kid on when I told him we would stay in Bluster if he wanted. If he was happy here, the decision was made. That said, I held back a little from my own wholehearted commitment to that plan because said kid was fifteen years old and had about two days’ worth of understanding of this place. The new school year was still about two weeks off, and who knew what he’d think of Bendixen High School and its students.

Once he was settled into something like a normal life here, maybe he’d still love it. Or maybe as he got to know the place, his enthusiasm would cool. So I kept the door of change open in my own mind while I was wholly supportive of his feelings now.

As for school, he wasn’t even registered yet. In fact, I reminded myself to add that to our to-do list for this week.

But before that, the next item on our agenda was getting a sense of how much work the guest cottages needed. If we were going to call Bluster home, then we would need to get the business back up and running.

As wildly complicated as my feelings about my childhood and my ‘home’ were, I’d never much minded the business aspects of it. I actually liked most of the work of running the Sea-Mist. Don’t get me wrong—there are decidedly gross and unpleasant aspects of every hospitality business. When you serve the public in the most personal ways—housing them, or feeding them—you get to see their most personal oddities. And there is always that subset of humanity who thinks that they have free rein to be as disgusting as possible at a restaurant or motel because somebody else has to deal with the results.

However, the property was gorgeous, the cottages were cute and cozy, and I enjoyed meeting people from all over the world and being the source of all knowledge for the area. I even liked helping Mrs. Greyfather tidy up after the (not disgusting) guests and make the cottages pretty for the next batch. The idea of being the owner of the Sea-Mist was largely a pleasant one.

Yes, there was also an element of pettiness, taking over my mother’s business. It was what she’d always expected would happen, but she’d died before she could see it. I liked that. When I say I hated my mother, I am not exaggerating or being dramatic. I mean that sincerely.

Do you think I’m a terrible person for hating my own mother? Well. I’m sure you’re not alone. But maybe you’ll change your mind down the road. Or not, whatever.

Anyway. Wyatt and I had the main cabin livable—only livable, mind you; there was a lot of work we wanted to do to make it ours, but we could take our time with that. So we turned our attention to the guest cottages.

We’d been in the nearest ones, to steal a fridge from one, and just out of raw curiosity in a couple other instances, and those had looked pretty good. Dusty and stale, but with the windows boarded and the roofs intact, all they required was cleanup (and one fridge, hopefully a used one).

We had not done more than a cursory tour of the whole property, however. When we were ready to focus on the cottages, the first thing we did was get into all twelve and make a job list for each one.

The cottages are arranged in a kind of meandering path. The order seems a little bit random—the small, medium, and large cottages are mixed together—but it’s really not. The bigger, more expensive cottages have better views and more privacy.

Each cottage is unique in terms of its specific look and floor plan, but they fall into the three basic sizes, and within those groups, they have similar amenities. Four small cottages that are basically motel rooms: one room with a bathroom, sleeps four, with a queen-size bed, a fold-out sofa, a round table and two chairs, a mini-fridge and a coffee and tea station. The small cottages have a little covered front porch, but it’s basically a stoop. No room for chairs or anything like that.

There are six medium cottages: a bedroom, a main room with living area and a kitchenette, and a bathroom. The medium cottages can sleep six; there’s a foldout sofa and two fold-out armchairs as well as a queen-size bed. The medium cottages also have covered front porches—all the cottages do—and these are big enough for a couple of Adirondack chairs.

Finally, there were two large cottages. Cottage 8 sleeps eight. It has two bedrooms, a small but complete kitchen, one full bath and one half bath. The porch is covered and screened, and spans the front of the cottage, with enough room for a comfy two-seat rocker and a redwood table with four chairs. The cottage is positioned so the porch looks out at a stand of redwoods.

Cottage 12 was nicer than the main cabin. Three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, an eat-in kitchen, a living room with a stone fireplace. The porch was about the same as Cottage 8, but 12 was located at the back of the property, shielded by the forest so that no view from any point showed anything but forest. A gently flowing creek forms the back boundary of the Sea-Mist, and 12 was the only building on the property with a view of that creek. It was really nice.

I was feeling pretty good about things as we went from cottage to cottage, making our job list. Each one was sealed up snugly and mainly needed some cleaning and freshening. A couple showed signs of have entertained some of the forest’s smaller creatures, but nothing that concerned me especially.

And then we got to Cottage 12. The showpiece of the Sea-Mist.

Wyatt and I stood just inside the door and stared dumbly. We were watching and listening to that gently flowing creek, but not through any window. We could see it straight through the kitchen wall.

At some point, either from a storm or simply old age, a tree had fallen and taken out most of the cottage’s back half. And not recently; the damage was extensive and layered. Several storms had clearly occurred since the tree had fallen, and the forest had made strides toward reclaiming the whole thing.

It wasn’t a redwood but a Douglas fir. Firs can get really big, but this one looked like it had been only about twenty or thirty feet tall. Its top lay on the floor of the cottage like a giant’s discarded toilet brush.

“Can we fix it?” Wyatt asked quietly.

“I have no idea.” I sighed. “Technically, I guess probably somebody on this earth would know how to repair all this damage, but I can assure you it is not you or I.”

“Somebody on this earth? You don’t think we can narrow that down to somebody within driving distance?”

Sometimes that kid sounded like a full-grown man, and I was sure I’d never get used to it.

His dry tone added some humor to the moment and saved me from spiraling down into a new brain hole. “I guess I’m going to have to figure that out. And also if we can afford to pay that person to do all this.”

“Maybe we can teach ourselves?” Wyatt suggested.

“Maybe,” I conceded, though I was very far from believing that possible.

“Hello? Leo? Wyatt? Anybody around?” came a male voice from outside. The voice was familiar enough that I wasn’t alarmed, but I couldn’t place it right away.

Wyatt was standing a little behind me, so he turned and stepped onto 12’s porch. “We’re here—oh, hi, Mr. Mendoza.”

Roman. That was why I’d recognized the voice.

We’ve established, I think, that I knew it was dumb and embarrassing that my long-ago crush was coming back to life. I also understood that, for multiple reasons, it was a completely terrible time to be even crushing on anyone, much less ever thinking about actually dating anyone. And none of that took into consideration how seriously unlikely it was Roman Mendoza had any interest in me. In his mind I was probably just the kid he’d hired to babysit his son twenty years ago. So we all know I should not have cared he’d dropped by.

However, my brain has always chased after my heart. It rarely catches up in time, and almost never gets out in front.

Before I bothered to wonder why he was here, before I even turned around, I glanced down at myself and sent a curse into the cosmos. I wore the jeans I considered my ‘work pants’: faded and tattered, with holes made from wear rather than style—so, like, at the knees, the bottom of my ass, and so on. My t-shirt—from a CSNY concert a decade ago—was in similarly terrible shape, as was the once-red, now-greyish- pink hoodie tied around my waist. A bandana covered my hair, tied in the cutesy-country way. And I had my glasses on because contacts had felt like too much trouble that morning.

Also, we’d been scrounging around in cottages that had been sitting neglected for years, so I was streaked with dust from head to toe.

I pretty much could not have dressed in a worse way to suddenly be face to face with a guy I liked.

I guy you liked a long time ago , I reminded myself. Not a guy you like now . Who cares what you look like?

We all know the answer to that.

With no hope for a Cinderella-style magic makeover in the next ten seconds, I spun on my ratty Keds and stepped onto the porch beside Wyatt.

Roman stood on the paved path, a few steps back from the porch steps. In stylishly faded jeans and an untucked white cotton button-up shirt, the top two buttons undone, he, unlike me, did not look like a homeless orphan who’d been living in a coal chute.

Strangely, he held an old-fashioned, natural straw broom. It was obviously intended as a gift—there was a length of blue ribbon tied around the handle with a bow.

I did the best I could to look unbothered by his unexpected presence, the oddness of his (I assumed) gift, and the state of my attire. “Hi, Roman! What’s up?”

“Hey there. I should have called. Sorry I caught you in the middle of something.”

“No worries.” I closed the cottage door and went down the steps to his level. Wyatt stayed on the porch. “I don’t have the landline back up yet, and I don’t think you have my cell number. What’s with the broom?”

He looked at the broom like he was surprised to see it and confused about why it was in his hand. “Oh. Um ... it’s a gift.”

When he handed it out to me, he met my eyes. He was actually blushing.

I took the broom. “Oh, well ... thanks.”

“Now that I’ve given it to you, I see it’s weird—but it’s a thing in my family. A Mexican tradition, I think? We give a broom when someone has a new home. It’s supposed to mean a ‘clean sweep,’ removing the presence of the previous owners.”

I’d heard of something like that before, and I was touched by the gift. “Thank you. That’s very sweet. But ... this isn’t a new home for me.”

The next thing Roman said and did ended the question of whether my crush on the man was a thing of the past or a thing of the present.

He did one of his deep-dive looks into my eyes and said, softly, “I think it is new for you, Leo. I don’t think the life you make here now will be anything like the life you had here before. If you sweep away the past, this can be a good home.”

I’d lived all my life under the impression that everyone else in Bluster (with the exceptions of Jessie and Erin, who knew some but not all of my truth, and maybe Catherine, whose expressive affection for me suggested she’d intuited my need for that) believed my mother to be a difficult but basically decent person. I’d thought they all assumed she was therefore a strict but basically decent mother, and that I was therefore a cruel and ungrateful daughter to have run away and never returned in her lifetime.

Roman’s gift and his reason for it suggested a deeper understanding of my truth than a neighbor I’d occasionally babysat for should have had.

Or I was reading way too much into a traditional gift of a cheap broom. Either way: very present crush.

“Well, thank you,” I said again, this time with more sincerity. “It’s very sweet.”

Then we stood there and let everything get awkward.

Wyatt came down the porch steps. “I’m gonna go back to the house, Mom. I want a Dr. Pepper.”

“Okay, bud. I’ll be in in a minute.”

“Nice seeing you, Mr. Mendoza,” he said as he came up to Roman.

“Good to see you, too, Wyatt,” Roman said with one of those ‘everybody matters’ smiles.

As Wyatt walked away, it finally occurred to me that I should offer Roman some hospitality. “I’m sorry—would you like a drink? We’ve got Dr. Pepper and Coke Zero, and water and fresh sun tea.”

“No, thank you. I can’t stay long.”

“Okay.” This was becoming unspeakably uncomfortable, and I was growing ever more aware that I smelled like someone who’d spent the past three hours or so climbing through filthy cottages. Crush or not, I needed this encounter to end.

I hefted the broom still in my hand. “Well, thank you for the broom. It’s a very sweet gift.”

Roman did not seem as anxious for an exit as I was. “You’re welcome. I really am glad you came home, Leo.”

“Why?” The word came out before I took the time to consider if it, or the tone of my voice, or both, was too confrontational or assertive or something, and Roman’s dark eyebrows went up for a second, as if he were indeed surprised with that terse, direct question.

“You were missed,” was his answer. I wanted to ask who’d missed me, but before I could, he added, “I saw Jessie in the shop yesterday.”

That seemed like an answer. I knew Jessie had missed me. Now I began to wonder if she’d been the catalyst somehow for Roman’s visit, but I couldn’t think why. It wasn’t her style to meddle in other people’s lives. Hadn’t been, at least, when we were kids. People change over two decades, sure, but I still couldn’t imagine her meddling.

“Is that unusual?” I knew Jessie was still a meat-eater; we’d had lunch together when she helped us unpack, and burgers had been involved.

“No, no. But I guess you know she’s out of town for a few weeks.”

“Yeah, she told me. One of her art friends has a show opening in New York, and she plans to do some research for her own stuff while she’s there.”

He nodded like he knew as much as I did, and he well might have. “There’s a town council meeting on Thursday night.”

I nodded; I’d seen the notices posted around town.

“She thought you’d want to go to it. If you open the motel back up, you probably need the council on board, but she won’t be here, so ...”

“So she asked you to babysit me at the town council meeting?” I wasn’t worried about the council getting in my way; the mayor had hired a private investigator to bring me back so I could take care of the Sea-Mist. That strongly suggested they wanted me to reopen.

“I don’t think ‘babysit’ is the word she’d use. It’s not the word I’d use, either. She just didn’t want you to be alone if you went to the meeting.”

“And she thought you’d be okay being my ... wingman, or beard, or shield, or something? Do I need one of those?”

“People are talking. You’ll get some attention at the meeting.”

“Talking how?”

He shrugged. “The way people around here talk. Lots of questions about why you came back now, lots of guesses, some things said like facts when they’re just guesses. Gossip, Leo. You’re the star of the town story right now.”

To be completely honest, I was surprised. A week ago, as we were headed here, I wouldn’t have been, but now I’d been in town a few times already. To Catherine’s, and the Granary, and O’Grady’s. I’d been in Roman’s store, and I’d run into Grundy & Sons Dry Goods for some nails and screws. Grundy’s is like if Walmart was hit by a shrink ray.

I’d seen probably three dozen people I knew or thought I’d recognized. About half of those had said hi or nodded or otherwise acknowledged my existence in some pleasant, harmless way. Exactly five people I’d known before had really engaged with me: Catherine, Roman, Jessie, Peter Greyfather, and Erin, who was the only person in Bluster who’d been openly hostile.

Oh, and the lighthouse guy, but he’d never known me, so he didn’t count.

I’d taken that to mean my disappearance had not been as scandalous as I’d always thought. I’d begun to think that people had either understood more than I’d realized, or cared less.

But it was so very much worse. People were talking about me behind my back, and pretending to be pleasant to my face. That could be a nuclear level of scandal. It was less dangerous for the people of Bluster to be openly hostile than to be outwardly and vaguely nice. In the way of all gossips, they did their nastiest talking amongst themselves while they smiled pleasantly at their subject.

Jessie, of course, knew that, and she was in a position to know what was being said. The same went for Roman. They were banding together at my back.

I dropped to sit on the bottom step. “How bad is it?”

Roman sighed, then gestured at the step beside me. When I nodded, he sat.

I’m pretty sure it was the closest we’d ever been in physical space, but at that particular moment, I wasn’t thinking about his hotness or my not-so-dormant old crush.

“I honestly don’t know how bad. You know how that kind of talk is—people have different opinions. But your mom said a lot of stuff after you left. You’ve been a recurring town story all this time, and it got worse when Marilyn got sick. Then you weren’t back for the funeral—”

“I didn’t know she’d been sick or died.” I doubt I would have come home if I had, but I didn’t say that aloud.

He made a short sound like an almost-chuckle. “Then Marilyn was cooking up some stories for sympathy, because she said she’d begged you to come home and you told her you hoped she’d die quick. We all thought you’d been in touch the whole time you were away and were refusing to come home.”

Now I made one of those almost-chuckles. “Typical,” I muttered. “For what it’s worth, I had no contact at all with my mom from graduation day forward. The first I heard from anyone in Bluster in all those years was when Mayor Holt’s private detective found me about two years ago. Then I found out she was dead and had no will, so I’d inherited this place.”

“But you didn’t come home then.”

Staring at the copse of firs before us, I shook my head. “I had a life I liked, one I thought was completely mine. I didn’t want anything she’d touched.”

“But you’re home now. Can I ask what happened?”

I turned to look him in the eyes. He watched me intently. “I lost the life I’d made.”

His nod told me he understood. With a glance at his ringless left hand, I wondered if maybe he did. I still didn’t know what had happened to his wife and son, but it had become keenly apparent they weren’t in his life anymore—at least not as they had been.

“I’d be glad to go to the council meeting with you, Roman. Thank you.”

He smiled. “How would you feel about getting some dinner beforehand? There’s a good Italian place on Marina Street that wasn’t around when you were here before.”

I wasn’t sure if he was asking me on a date or just inviting a friend to share a meal, but at that moment, it did not matter. “Sure. I’d like that.”

ROMAN LEFT SHORTLY thereafter. He didn’t ask about the work we were doing or express any interest in Cottage 12, and I didn’t show him the disaster we’d discovered right before he’d thrown a detour in our day.

He lived a little farther north on the 101, so we made a plan that he’d pick me a couple of hours before the town meeting, we’d eat at this new Italian place, and then head over to the town hall.

If I was about to face some kind of gossip tribunal, I didn’t really want my kid there to witness it, but then I felt guilty about excluding him. So while we stood in the main cabin’s kitchen, side by side at the counter, I told Wyatt the dinner-and-a-meeting plan and asked if he wanted me to change it so he could go to the meeting.

Wyatt started shaking his head before I got the question all the way out. “A town meeting sounds boring, and I don’t want be a third wheel on your big date.”

I plucked a green grape off the stem. We were sharing a bunch I’d placed in a big stoneware bowl. “It’s not a date, Wy. Just eating at the same table.”

My son dropped his head and looked at me like he had bifocals to peer over. “Mother. Mr. Mendoza looks at you like you’re a model on a magazine cover or something. He likes you.”

I shook my head. It felt really important, like for safety reasons, for that not to be true. Also, I most assuredly did not look like a model on a magazine—if I ever have in my life, it wasn’t on that day. “He’s just a pathologically nice guy. He looks at everybody he talks to like they’re the most interesting person around.”

Wyatt popped a handful of grapes into his mouth and chewed them contemplatively. I leaned back against the counter and waited. There was a water stain on the ceiling, in the corner behind the door to the living room, traveling the wall to a point about halfway down. It was normally obscured by that door we never closed, so I hadn’t seen it until now.

Maybe the roof wasn’t in the decent shape we’d thought. Sigh.

“It’s okay if you go on a date, Mom,” Wyatt said softly. “It won’t make me mad if you get a boyfriend.”

I returned my full attention to my kid. He had on that damned grown-up expression. There are no words in any language or all of them together that can contain how much I love that boy.

I reached out and cupped my hand over his cheek—and I felt the faintest hint of stubble there. As a girl desperate to be grown enough to make myself free, childhood had felt endless. As a mom, I know how scant those years really are.

“I love you, buddy. And I thank you. But I’m not ready for that.”

He nodded in my hand. “Okay. But when you are, I’ll be okay with it. I just want you to know.”

There’s a thing I’ve heard every now and then. The first time, it completely laid me out. Every time I’ve heard it since, it makes me cry. I think it’s one of the most poignant, bittersweet truths about being a parent, and it’s this: you never know the last time you pick up your child and hold them in your arms.

Probably the last time I picked Wyatt up, I did it without thinking, because I had other things on my mind. Maybe I was irritated, because he was getting heavy and I was busy. But I vividly remember the feel of him, the way he always settled in, the way he’d hook an arm over my shoulder, the way his chubby little fingers liked to play with the hair at my nape.

The thought that I will not, cannot, ever feel that again is a grief to this day. It is an end of something important, a loss that deserves commemoration, yet we all let it go by without realizing we’ve lost it until it’s too late.

At fifteen, Wyatt was pushing six feet tall. My days of picking him up were far behind us. But he was right here beside me, and every aspect of my life was better because he was in it.

I drew him to me and held him close.

He settled in.