Kate ran to him and together they approached Pop slowly, not wanting to startle him.
“Pop?” Kate called gently.
He turned, and his face was streaming with tears. “I can't find it.”
“Find what, Pop?”
“My boat. The Sarah Elizabeth. Someone stole my boat.”
“Pop, you sold that boat years ago.”
“No.” He was adamant. “It was right here. Elizabeth christened it. Right here.”
Kate's throat was tight. “Pop, let's go home.”
“This isn't home. Home is with Elizabeth.”
They got him back to the inn, with Amy taking over. But Kate stood in the lobby, shaking, the weight of everything crushing her.
“He's getting worse,” she said to no one in particular.
“Yes,” Lillian said. She was still in the chair, had been there the whole time. “He is.”
“I don't know how to help him.”
“You can't.” Lillian's voice was gentle but firm. “Some things are out of our control, Katherine. They can only be endured with grace, but at some point you have to let go.”
“I don't have any grace left.”
“Then borrow some.”
Kate looked at her grandmother, this dying woman who'd lost her daughter, her pride, years of family life. “From where?”
“From the people who love you. From the man who restores chairs and saves buildings and looks at you like you hung the moon. From your siblings who came home. From me, if you'll let me.”
Kate sank into the other restored chair, her mother's chair, and finally let herself cry. Not the angry tears she'd shed before, but deep, grieving sobs for everything already gone and everything slipping away.
Ben appeared beside her, didn't say anything, just handed her a handkerchief. An actual handkerchief, probably his grandfather's, soft with age.
“The ceiling can wait,” he said quietly. “Everything can wait.”
Kate nodded, unable to speak, clutching the handkerchief like a lifeline. Around her, the inn creaked and settled, damaged but standing, full of people who were trying to help her even when she didn't know how to let them.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe it was the only thing that mattered.
Maybe accepting grace wasn't weakness but the only way to survive when everything you loved was falling apart.
The chairs her mother had chosen, now restored, held them in the lobby while the sun moved across the floor and Pop dozed upstairs and the ceiling in Room 5 dripped steadily into a bucket Rosa had placed beneath it. Everything broken, everything breaking, everything somehow still holding together.
For now.
CHAPTER 16
The morning after Kate's breakdown in the lobby, she woke with swollen eyes and a strange sense of lightness, as if crying had physically removed weight from her chest. It was five-thirty, her usual time, but for once she didn't immediately jump out of bed. She lay there listening to the inn wake around her: Amy's footsteps overhead, the coffee maker gurgling to life in the kitchen, the radiators clanging their morning song.
Her phone showed three texts from Ben, sent late last night:Fixed the pipe temporarily. Will hold for a few days.Left supplies in the basement for permanent repair.You don't have to do everything alone.
Kate stared at that last message. Such a simple statement, but it felt revolutionary to her. She'd been doing everything alone for so long, she'd forgotten there was another way.
