Room at the Inn

“The wiring is okay.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“You don’t prepare for anything. You just go along thinking life is wonderful and safe, and it’s not safe, Julia. It’s not safe by a long shot.”

“You’re the one who’s running off to Dubai.”

“Not until I check all your wiring and change the batteries in your fucking smoke detectors.”

“The wiring is fine. I had it looked at. I couldn’t have opened the bed-and-breakfast if it wasn’t safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to look at it again.” He walked away from her, heading toward the basement steps.

Her heart lurched. It always did when he walked away from her. She hated it when he walked away.

“Carson,” she called, and he whirled around in the doorway.

His mouth had flattened into a white line. His face got so serious and severe when he wasn’t smiling, and even more so now with his brows drawn together, throwing deep shadows over his eyes.

She wanted to put him at ease. To placate him. But everything about him was so precious to her, so dangerously precious, and she worried she couldn’t do this much longer.

“I wish you’d make up your mind,” she said.

He stared at her while the kitchen clock ticked out second after interminable second.

And then he turned and clomped down the stairs to the basement without a word.

Chapter Eleven

Carson opened his father’s refrigerator. Stocked. Danya had come over three times now, and Dad agreed she could keep coming. There was a casserole in the fridge, some fruit, a bowl of green beans with almonds wrapped in a tight casing of Saran Wrap.

“It’s a mistake,” Martin said.

Two days before Christmas, and the temperature had dived again. Julie’s house was full of strangers whose presence he didn’t resent as much as he’d expected.

She’d introduced him as her “partner.”

The guests came from all over the place, though quite a few were from New York City, looking to add a bit of quiet, rural nostalgia to their Christmas celebrations. Carson kept finding himself pulled into conversations—at breakfast, while passing through a room on his way to one place or another. Most of these people had interesting jobs or lived interesting places. It was a cosmopolitan crowd.

His father liked them. He’d approached breakfast at Julie’s as a trial to be endured, but at the table, he’d slowly come to life, asking questions, passing butter and muffins, fetching things from the kitchen as though he belonged in the Comstock mansion and always had.

Carson was happy for him. Happy for Julie. But he didn’t belong in that house, playing Julie’s partner.

He didn’t belong in Potter Falls.

His dad’s place once again looked as it had when his mother was alive. The sun streamed in the picture window by the bird feeders. His father was showered and dressed, his leg well on the way to recovered.

There was no reason for Carson to stay.

“I’ll be back in a few months,” he said.

“You’re a fool.”

“Just keep going to Julie’s for breakfast, all right? She can use the help.”

“Got it all figured out, do you?”