Thrill Ride

Chapter 4

C harlotte got her things together and left the airport in record time. If she hadn’t been in a rush to get home to snuggle her parents’ cat Madmartigan and finish her article, in that order, she’d take her time in Columbus and stop to meander in her favorite bookstore, The Book Loft, with its thirty-two glorious rooms of books. And she’d probably get a Highlander Grog coffee from Stauf’s next door, too. Charlotte daydreamed for a second about the blended aroma of books and coffee with caramel notes. A contented sigh escaped her lips. But no, she had to focus on doing her work for Ride Report . It’s not like freelance reporting on theme parks was going to bring in buckets of money, but she wanted to keep establishing this as a side hustle along with her consulting work at Lands until the chance to return to DreamUs inevitably revealed itself. Temporary as her current situation might be, she always wanted to make a positive impression.

She spotted her small navy car from the parking lot shuttle and mentally went over her to-do list for the remainder of the day. Charlotte could rely on the to-do list in her head as much as anything she wrote on paper. Memorizing a list, regardless of the length, never felt like a challenge to her. The lists were on a carousel in her mind, and she could pull out a topic at will. Even so, she liked to write them down too—it felt orderly, and Charlotte loved order.

Her parents told Charlotte that making lists was a habit of hers from childhood. Whatever game her friends suggested playing—hide-and-seek, shop, knights and dragons—she insisted on making a list. Worst places to hide at Lands of Legend? Check. Best found items to use as safe weapons when pretending to be a knight saving a dragon from those who would do it harm? Check. And for the record, the best-found item to keep dragon-slayers at bay was always a large stick.

Lists became more mundane as she grew older. Less dragon protecting, more chores. More giving her structure that helped stave off anxiety. They were more like her list today:

· Feed Madmartigan so he doesn’t murder me

· Finish writing article

· Unpack

· Read article one more time and submit

· Follow up with Ride Report about a “manufactured scents in theme parks” feature

· See if anyone made candles inspired by those scents and treat self

· Record business expenses from this trip

· Make dinner for Mom not that she often let herself reflect on that or how she hadn’t been on a date since she left Chad five months ago. She’d fully admit her dad’s plot worked. Madmartigan had Charlotte wrapped around his fluffy black tail.

“Are you positively starved?” Charlotte asked Madmartigan.

He responded with an alien-sounding meow. “Hmm. I thought this might be the case.”

Madmartigan walked Charlotte to the closet where her parents kept his kibble. He liked to make sure everyone knew where to find his food.

After feeding Madmartigan to his exacting standards, which included scratching his back while he ate, Charlotte went back down the steps to her apartment and snagged her laptop to continue the work she started on the plane. Talking to the creative minds at Wonder World had been both a delight and a pinprick of a reminder of what she used to do at DreamUs. The art director for Cosmic Catastrophe had practically been bouncing with joy as he discussed his work overseeing the coaster’s look and atmosphere. Everyone’s enthusiasm and pride in the work made it easy to write the feature and piece together information and quotes to explain how the ride came to be.

She stepped away from her work for long enough to unpack and consider whether she’d left anything out. A mock-up of a seasonal park guide for Lands caught her eye. It was only winter, but they were already behind on planning for fall next year. Charlotte sent a quick note to her Lands email account to check the dates for quarterly planning meetings and move them up. She hit SEND, then shook her head and drafted another email to herself to first establish those quarterly planning meetings.

Coming back to Lands after working at DreamUs for so long had been jarring. Life as a Dream Mechanic came with structure—some would say too much structure and that it inhibited the creative process. But structure, meetings, and planning were all necessary to stay on schedule and make sure DreamUs’s many parks evolved. Nothing about stagnancy was appealing. Not as a park-goer and not as a person behind the scenes.

While Lands wasn’t stagnant, the business was on the disorganized side. So, in the few months since she’d been back at Lands, Charlotte had been trying to inject some structure. It was going over as well as she hoped—which was to say not particularly well. Aunt Marianne, Uncle Frank, and cousin Emily were resistant to anything that resembled what Frank called “corporate nonsense.” Generally, that “corporate nonsense” was something innocuous like Charlotte trying to streamline meetings with agendas. She knew some baggage from the past over her obsession with working for DreamUs and not Lands of Legend played a role, too. When Charlotte so enthusiastically worked as many hours at Lands as she could during high school, her family thought she’d roll right into the business after college.

But then, sometime around high school graduation, Charlotte shared her DreamUs hopes and plans at the weekly family dinner with her mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and cousin. She thought everyone would be thrilled for her, pursuing a big dream and spreading her wings. And her parents did express support and pride; then again it was easier for them because (a) they were her parents and (b) they lent their time and talents to Lands between Mom’s art and Dad’s landscaping know-how, even though it wasn’t their business. But Aunt Marianne, Uncle Frank, and Emily? They went through a range of emotions from surprise to confusion, and eventually, to something like betrayal. Emily took it hard and accused Charlotte of acting too good for Lands, which was an especially hilarious comment because Emily was home from her first year of college at business school and would not stop talking about her glamorous life in New York City and how much better it was than Lake Sterling. Marianne’s and Frank’s hurt feelings dissolved over Charlotte’s years at DreamUs, but Emily found every opportunity to get in a dig about how Charlotte had “abandoned” them for greener pastures.

Charlotte and Emily had both spent hours running around Lands as kids and worked there side by side as teens for a summer, but while Charlotte would endlessly nerd out over her uncle’s detailed notes and lore for the park, Emily didn’t seem to care about that aspect, about the theming. Instead of sneaking onto rides after-hours with Charlotte at Lands, Emily switched to another part-time job at a local restaurant and spent her free time in high school with popular kids. When Charlotte chose to take her love of theme parks to another company, Emily had yell-cried at her. Emily had expected Charlotte would stay at Lands and eventually step into Frank’s and Marianne’s shoes, but if Charlotte wasn’t interested, then it left Emily stuck to carry on the family business—the family business she would support because she loved her parents, but a business that didn’t spark joy in her heart. From Emily’s point of view, Charlotte was keeping her at Lands and trapping her in Lake Sterling where she couldn’t make the most of her business degree.

Charlotte didn’t think it was fair to shoulder that blame. If it was truly bothersome, Emily should talk to her parents about how she felt, but all these years later her cousin never had that conversation and Charlotte couldn’t force her to. The tension between her and Emily tightened over time, to the point where Charlotte accepted it as part of her life. Usually, they avoided each other outside of family gatherings. Until Charlotte came back to Lake Sterling five months ago.

When Charlotte returned home and frantically planned how she would generate income, thinking about asking her aunt, uncle, and cousin for work at Lands increased her often-present anxiety to extremes. She would think about approaching them and unsettling tingles swept across her cheeks and her chest grew tight. Charlotte wrestled with it for a couple of weeks. But, for the most part, she’d had no reason to worry. Aunt Marianne and Uncle Frank were thrilled to have her join the Lands team again and bring her new experience and perspective to their operations. Emily tolerated Charlotte’s presence, while regularly pointing out how they could have used Charlotte’s expertise years ago to get their new land, Under the Waves, long in development, open, making the business more profitable. And Emily held profitability above all else.

Emily may not have wanted to be at Lands, or even in Lake Sterling, forever, but she still gate-kept the park and got territorial when Charlotte suggested ideas Marianne and Frank gushed over. Charlotte imagined Emily, to some degree, wanted to project to her parents that she was the one coming up with ideas, not Charlotte, because Emily always wanted to be the best. But Charlotte also suspected her cousin’s attitude and actions weren’t only about being competitive. She knew Emily cared about the park deep down, even while she rolled her eyes at her dad, explaining why he refused to charge guests more for simple things, like the decorated wagons they lent parents to haul their kids around the park. Part of Emily’s sense of ownership was a bizarre need to keep proving herself.

Article turned in to Ride Report and other business-of-writing housekeeping tasks crossed off her list, Charlotte glanced at the time. She had just enough time to start dinner prep before her parents got home. They were perfectly capable of cooking their own meals, but Charlotte enjoyed cooking, especially for more than just herself, and it was nice to treat her parents after their days at work. She was only home temporarily anyway, so why not spoil them. Plus her parents paid for the majority of the groceries. Not a bad deal.

Her parents, Alice and Richard, were approaching retirement but not quite there yet, so they still put in the usual eight hours in their respective jobs at the nearby college, Grove Technical. Alice worked as the vice president of student affairs, while Richard had spent his career in the landscape architecture program. They carpooled to work when their schedules aligned and shared lunch together often. They had what Charlotte would call a wholesome, sweet marriage developed over years of companionship, arguments, and challenges.

She had one hand deep into a meatball mixture when she heard the key in the side door. Charlotte leaned back from the counter as far as she could and waved with the hand not covered in ground beef and breadcrumbs. “Hey, you two!” Mom stepped through the door first and smiled warmly as she placed her worn leather bag by the door and adjusted her oversized glasses. “You’re back! How was your trip?”

“Oh, you know, rode a roller coaster so many times I felt unsteady, ate a lot of popcorn. The usual. I got to spend some quality time with Melanie, too,” Charlotte replied. She didn’t mention her run-in with Chad; her parents had met Chad only once and not been impressed with his attitude toward Charlotte’s “quaint” hometown and “quaint” family theme park. “Did I miss anything while I was away?”

“Madmartigan cried pathetically at the basement door for so long we eventually let him go down there so he could see for himself that you weren’t home,” Dad joked. He ran his hand through his continually disappearing gray hair. “But other than that, nah. Nothing exciting going on.”

Charlotte caught the forced nonchalance in his voice and noticed he wasn’t making direct eye contact. Maybe, she thought, he’d decided to finally retire and wasn’t ready to announce it to her because that would make it real. It’s something he would do, but she knew pressing him directly wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she tucked her questions away for later—maybe she could catch him off guard during dinner.

“That sounds like Madmartigan.” Charlotte put on a face of faux concern and asked, “Do you think we spoil him too much?” Mom, not the cat’s number one fan, adjusted her glasses and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to unwind on the porch with a glass of wine. How long do I have before dinner’s ready?”

“About forty minutes,” Charlotte said, and nodded toward the meatballs. “These are nearly ready to go into the oven.”

Charlotte appreciated how her mother knew she didn’t like to talk while working in the kitchen. They’d catch up later. If Charlotte would have told herself six months ago that she’d enjoy living at home again, she wouldn’t have believed it. The reason why she’d moved back to Lake Sterling wasn’t ideal, and society said living at home at the age of thirty-three wasn’t cool, but she couldn’t complain about spending more time with her parents. Mom headed toward the bedroom to change. Charlotte knew her dad would go to the storage shed to grab tools and do some kind of work out there until he had to come inside. He was like a child in that way, refusing to come indoors if he could be outside. Instead of playing with friends he was tidying his planting areas or placing new plants into the ground. Not all flowers either. His dedication to his ever-growing vegetable garden had been yielding quite the bounty. Usually, it produced so many vegetables they had plenty to share with neighbors and donate to the food pantry downtown.

After they sat and caught each other up on the last few days, Mom pushed her spaghetti around her plate. “So, are you doing any work at Lands tomorrow? You haven’t gone in for a week or so.”

Again, Charlotte picked up on a weird edge to the conversation, something her parents were clearly leaving a wide space around.

Charlotte replied, “Yeah, freelance reporting life has been busy recently. But yes, I am. I’m planning to stroll the grounds in the morning and then work on a couple of ideas for winter social promotions in the office, see if we can get more folks in the park before we close for the season. I want to think more about spring activities, too. We need to see some serious growth in attendance if Uncle Frank and Aunt Marianne are ever going to get Under the Waves open.”

Under the Waves would be Lands of Legend’s fourth themed area and it had been a dream of Frank and Marianne’s for years. Marianne thought of it as a space dedicated to learning about the ocean’s mysteries with a mermaid palace, a dark ride through the ruins of Atlantis, a sprawling splash zone with sculptures of wild aquatic creatures, and most exciting of all, an ambitious roller coaster that would go underwater—or at least would look like it went underwater thanks to the art of illusion.

But despite elaborate plans, excavation, a man-made mini lake, and a huge chunk of completed construction following exacting engineering plans, Lands wasn’t bringing in enough revenue to help Under the Waves inch toward completion. Aside from the roller coaster, each project in the area was so close to being ready for opening. So close she knew Marianne could feel it, and that the years the project had taken were discouraging her. Without an infusion of funds, they had to keep stalling and putting it off, with the projected opening date marching into the future. They’d never released the opening date to the public at least, so they didn’t have to confront disappointment on that front. Alice looked at her, eyes crinkling around the edges with concern. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something, and if not, who knows? Things may work out.” She exchanged a heavy look with Richard.

Charlotte put her fork down, sat back, and looked at each of them directly. “Is there something you two aren’t telling me? You’ve both been a little off since you got home.” Mom suddenly found the rest of her meal fascinating. Dad stared at the table for a second and sighed deeply.

“We promised Frank and Marianne that we’d let them tell you tomorrow and I want to keep that promise,” he said. “So, all I’ll say is that you should be open-minded about change that will help Lands of Legend stay open in the long term and help them open Under the Waves in the short term.” He reached out to put his hand on Charlotte’s shoulder and repeated, “Open. Minded.”

A thousand questions erupted in Charlotte’s mind simultaneously with such force she could practically hear them bubble up. “Whatdoyoumeanopenmindedaboutwhat?” she pushed out in one long breath. “Is the park in danger of closing? Are Aunt Marianne and Uncle Frank okay? Is Emily doing something shady? Do we need to—”

“Breathe, honey. Take a deep breath,” Alice cut her off and threw dagger eyes at her husband. “Your father . . . we . . . weren’t supposed to say anything.” More dagger eyes in Richard’s direction. Based on Dad’s pained expression, Charlotte was pretty sure Mom had kicked him under the table, too. “But since that cat’s out of the bag, I don’t want you to spiral all night. And we both know you will, with how much you dislike uncertainty. You know Emily has been looking out for investors for some time; she wants to get Under the Waves open so it can stop being a literal money pit. And that’s on top of Frank and Marianne wanting to retire— Marianne wants to get out and see the world before, in her words, her ‘bones turn brittle.’ ”

Alice paused to make sure her daughter registered what she said.

Charlotte nodded.

“Well, Emily has found an investor for Lands. One with deep pockets. A firm called Ever Fund.”

Charlotte exhaled. “Oh, that’s amazing news. An influx of cash means opportunities for a lot of overdue upgrades in addition to opening Under the Waves . . .” She trailed off as she noticed her parents didn’t seem joyful about this turn of events. At least not as happy as they should be. “What? What’s the catch?”

Richard coughed. He was clearly deciding how much to divulge.

“It seems like the investors—I’m sorry, ‘venture capitalists’—may want to make changes. They’re as focused on the financial aspects of the business as Emily is, obviously, since they’re providing money, and they’ll want to make it back.” Charlotte gave her father a quizzical look. “They want to claim a big stake in the ownership and day-to-day operations. Frank worries they want to make Lands more of an amusement park. They’ll open Under the Waves but the concept of theming might be secondary to them. They want to do what will get people paying for admission. It’s not clear if they share Frank and Marianne’s vision. And Emily wants the park to make piles of money, so . . .”

“Is it a done deal? How long will Uncle Frank and Aunt Marianne stay involved in park operations?” Charlotte asked. Her throat suddenly had a lump she could barely swallow around, and those telltale anxiety tingles started to prickle her cheeks. She didn’t know a person could crash from optimism to cynicism so quickly.

Alice replied, “I guess we’ve gone past not divulging details. Please, please act surprised tomorrow. From our understanding, the deal is mostly done. Emily and your aunt and uncle did a virtual presentation for the venture capitalist firm between Christmas and New Year’s, and now that Ever Fund’s had time to digest, they’re coming to Lands to kind of sell themselves? They want to make sure the investment is a good fit for both parties. So, I don’t know what that means for Frank and Marianne, but I’d be surprised if they keep working at the park beyond opening Under the Waves. It’s either continue struggling to keep the park open, working long hours to do so and putting themselves under financial strain, or it’s make this deal and help their life’s work continue on in some way while they move on with their lives. Though I’ll eat this fork if they completely step away. That park is their baby.”

Charlotte sank deeper and deeper into her chair as her mom explained the stakes. If Ever Fund was coming to Lands tomorrow, that probably had something to do with the meeting Aunt Marianne texted her about. The news had somehow sucked out her bones because she melted closer to the floor like human-shaped goo. Could Lands of Legend even exist without her aunt and uncle’s thoughtful oversight? What would happen if it was left to Emily’s care along with this firm, Ever Whatever? Would Lands of Legend keep its ability to transport people to different places? Charlotte had been hesitant to go all-in with Lands since she’d been back; Emily hadn’t put out a welcome mat and had excluded her from the big conversations—like this whole presentation to Ever Fund—and that, right or wrong, hurt Charlotte’s feelings. Charlotte had been going along with the vibes, doing her best to help Lands, but trying not to overstep since she knew she wouldn’t be staying forever.

But an investor. Marianne and Frank retiring. Emily as the heir apparent, taking over sooner than Charlotte thought. Maybe it was time to overstep. To insert herself into every ounce of Lands of Legend’s business. While she was here, she’d make sure to put Lands on the right path and protect it from the investor and Emily putting carnival rides in every land.

She found her bones and straightened in her chair. She looked first at her dad, then her mom.

“Thank you for letting me know what’s going on. I promise I’ll act surprised when I see Uncle Frank and Aunt Marianne tomorrow. Would you mind cleaning up from dinner? I have work to do.”