Room at the Inn

“Wants to turn it into an arts and crafts place, some kind of cooperative to bring up the tourists from the city.”

“It would cost a fortune.”

“I know. She tried to get the Chamber interested a few years back, but they stonewalled her.”

Carson wondered if she’d talked to Leo about it. If Leo liked the idea, planned to invest in it? Maybe that explained why Julie was attracted to him—all that money a form of potential she couldn’t resist.

But he didn’t believe it. She’d never been interested in money. Other currencies moved Julie.

Community. Belonging.

“You taking a card or not?” his father asked.

Carson returned his attention to the game. Tried to, anyway. Part of his head kept running off on him, thinking about what it would take to fix up that factory. What contractors he’d have to hire. How much it would cost, how many months it would take. He could preserve most of the limestone, keep the window openings but replace all those small panes with larger expanses of glass. Knock down some of the walls that darkened the smaller wing.

Leo would mess it up. He didn’t have the imagination for this kind of project, and Julie had the vision but not the knowledge.

“It’d be a good job for you,” Martin said.

Carson’s head snapped up. “What would?”

A lame question. His father didn’t bother to answer it.

“If you weren’t goin’,” he added.

“But I am going.” For the first time, something inside him stumbled over the declaration. He ignored it. “You need to get ready for when I do. I called a woman to come over tomorrow and steam clean the carpet. If you like her, I think you should keep her on. She can stop by three, four times a week and do laundry. She cooks, too.”

“What woman?”

“Danya Marvelle.”

“She’s a busybody.”

“And you’re not? Bruce told me you two were gossiping about Julie and Leo over at the hardware store.”

“Wasn’t gossiping.”

“Whatever you call it.”

“I don’t want that woman in your mother’s house. Your mother never liked her.”

“Mom is dead,” Carson said firmly. “And you need to get on with it.”

He looked down at his cards, pushing back against the rush of feeling his own words had unleashed. They needed to have this talk. His father had to hear the plain truth.

Martin threw a chip onto the pile. His hand trembled. “Raise you ten.”

“Call.”

Instead of laying his cards down on the table, his father met his eyes. “What if I don’t want to get on with it?”

Carson thought he had nothing to say to that. But he fanned his cards out on the table and said to his hands, “I’ll help you.”

Martin grunted. They left it at that. The closest thing they’d managed to a moment of real communication—and a far cry from good enough.

Chapter Six

He’d gotten accustomed to the view out the kitchen window—a clear shot down the slope of the broad lawn to the pond, where dried reeds bent under the weight of the snow. It was a clean, empty view, and he liked to rest his eyes on it when he’d been focusing on the ceiling too long.