Ophelia (Hamlet 2)

Stiffening, Maria struggled to keep a friendly smile in place. After four years of working towards building her bed and breakfast, she should have been used to well-meaning neighbors asking about it. In a way, she was. But it didn’t make it any easier to hear the questions.

Because, inevitably, she only had one answer for them all.

“Soon, Mrs. Walsh. It’s just not quite ready yet.”

She was beginning to suspect it might never be. Four years after her “project” began, they’d barely gotten out of the construction phase.

Construction was essential. The De Angelis family home was quite large but it hadn’t been built as an inn like Bonnie Mitchell’s. Once Maria decided to create six rooms for guests—three on the first floor, three on the second—she enlisted the services of some of Hamlet’s finest contractors and handymen to help her knock down walls, build the new bedrooms and add bathrooms to each suite.

Since there were only four people in town who did that kind of work and they couldn’t always work with her, she expected it to take some time. She planned on it taking a year. Eighteen months, max.

But that was before all of the… incidents.

Maria tried her best not to dwell on them because, superstitious Catholic that she was, it was all too easy to believe that this endeavor of hers was cursed. How else could she explain it?

It started with small things. Minor things. And then it escalated.

Lumber she ordered from outside of Hamlet never arrived. When Lucas drove into town to find out why, he came back and reported that someone had called and canceled the delivery. But how, she wondered, when there weren’t any phones?

Maria was hesitant to let any of the contractors use her Papa’s tools. She had no choice when hammers, slides, screwdrivers all seemed

to go missing as soon as someone put them down. She guarded Papa’s well-loved tools fiercely, watching them closely, and breathed a sigh of relief every time she put them away in Papa’s handmade toolbox.

Frank Davies and Guy Larabee quit halfway through the project for no reason that Maria could tell. All the same, she couldn’t quite blame them. For every one step closer to opening she got, construction seemed to take two steps back. She tried to convince them to stay on and got nowhere; even she had to admit her efforts were half-hearted. So, with only two workers left—and Lucas pitching in whenever his practice and Caitlin let him—construction crawled along at a snail’s pace.

Just when Maria thought they might be making some progress, a pipe in one room burst. Two days later, right after they finished cleaning up the flood downstairs, a second one went.

Mike Johnson gave up last spring. Poor guy walked out after an industrial-sized bucket of spackle somehow fell on top of his head. He nearly suffocated before she yanked it back off, apologizing effusively even though she’d been on the other side of the house when it happened.

Last time she saw him, there was still white dust behind his ears. She tried waving at him. Mike grabbed his wife by the hand and hid inside of Jefferson’s store.

And then, only a couple of weeks ago, Phil Granger and his golf cart arrived with a letter for Maria. Some uppity fellow high up in the county sent a warning that her permit applications were denied. As if she actually filled out an application for a construction permit.

That one almost made her laugh. Since when did anyone in Hamlet allow an outsider to dictate what they could or could not do—or, in this case, build—in their own village? Maria crumpled the letter up, tossed it in the trash, said a quick prayer and threw herself back into her work. After all this time, she was getting pretty damn good with a wrench.

Since Lucas had been away on his most recent trip, the last man standing—Benedict Nixon, a wily old carpenter who looked like he was born with a hammer in his gnarled hand—finally pronounced that construction was done. She didn’t want to believe it, though she was practically itching to get to the next phase: decorating the bed and breakfast.

That thought in mind, she offered Mrs. Walsh another smile. If it was anything less than genuine, she hoped her former teacher didn’t notice. “We’re getting there.”

“That’s wonderful news, Maria! Mr. Walsh and I look forward to your opening. We’d love to be one of the firsts to spend the night at—” The older woman hesitated, puzzled. “Have you come up with a name yet?”

Maria’s smile fell away from her face. When all she did was doubt that she would ever get the doors open, what was the point in deciding on a name?

“No, ma’am. Not yet.”

“It might be the English teacher in me, and maybe some good old Hamlet pride, but have you ever considered Ophelia? I don’t know if any outsiders call their fancy little bed and breakfasts by a name. It seems like it might fit you, though, dear.”

Maria held her breath. Absolutely floored.

Ophelia.

It had a musical quality to it that was so perfect, she could scarcely believe she hadn’t thought of it before.

“Plus,” Mrs. Walsh added, “the name itself means ‘help’ in Greek. And isn’t that part of the reason why you’re working so hard for it? So that you can provide a service and help? It seems so darling to me. Don’t you think?”

She hit the nail on the head as squarely as Maria had learned how to do with a real hammer. No wonder Mrs. Walsh had always been one of her favorite teachers. She had a way of seeing things in her students that even they didn’t know was there.

On impulse, Maria threw her arms around Mrs. Walsh. Though she dwarfed her by more than a foot in height and Mrs. Walsh was still sitting, Maria bent her knees and enveloped the other woman in an embrace before smacking her lips against Mrs. Walsh’s cheek.