Rose gasped in happy surprise. The inn had mostly served as a family retreat for the past several decades. There were much nicer places to stay on the island. She’d never imagined it attracting a wider audience, but if itdid, Max could really use the extra income.
She needed to text the family group chat to tell them Boyd was here. She’d been posting nothing but bad news for months now. Finally she had something good to share. Wasn’t her youngest brother a Meteor Man fan? Maybe he’d want to come out and meet Boyd?
“What would the article be about?” Tom asked, sounding cautious.
“The basement project could be a great angle,” Boyd said.
Tom was not on board. “You mean the project you came up with while drunk yesterday and which only exists as a few notes on a teenager’s iPhone?”
Boyd and Rose both frowned at Tom in disappointment.
“It looks better inside,” Rose said. “You got the kitchen cleaned out, right?”
If she made a big breakfast spread, they could probably find an angle to shoot the kitchen where it looked appealing. She probably also needed to feed the kids if she wanted them to stick around.
“I only got the bees out yesterday,” Tom complained. “It’s notHouse Beautifulin there right now.”
Rose opened her mouth to offer help, but Tom seemed to gather himself.
“But I’ve got it,” he insisted, still looking a little wild-eyed. “No worries.”
“Are you sure?” Rose asked. “Tell me what you need help with. I’ll organize the fangirls.”
“I can handle the remediation,” he said, firming up the line of his lips. “Go have fun with the kids.”
•••
Aunt Max’s “office” was more of a closet at one end of the third-floor bunk room, the air warm and wet even in winter, the only natural light coming through a screened-over ventilation hole high on one unfinished wall.
Tom had mostly happy associations with the bunk room: it was hot and stuffy there too, especially in the summer, and several of Rosie’s cousins had snored, but he’d also gotten laid in secretive but spectacular fashion on several occasions. He’d never previously had a reason to go into the office, but it was a much less fun place. There were generations of spiders living in the corners of the room, a PC somehow still running Windows NT, and a couple of long-deceased orchids. Also the inn’s records. After several days of fruitlessly calling contractors, Tom had gone up to see if there was any record of previous repairs.
Max had at some point exhibited Rosie’s genius for planning and organization, but the files for the most recent decade provided evidence of Max’s decline and the Kelly family’s neglect. Papers were shoved haphazardly into folders and wedged in drawers with unopened mail and invoices that might or might not have been paid. He’d been going through it the entire morning with no success. Perhaps Rosie might have made sense of it, but the aromas of dust and mildew and the debris of storm damage made Tom fear she’d cough out a whole lung if she came in here.
Nonetheless, he brightened when there was a careful knock on the door behind him, because he thought it was her. It wasn’t—it was that Puffin character, who was still lurking around the inn, bearing a covered paper bowl full of hot shepherd’s pie. She silently put it on the desk and took a step away with her hands clasped behind her back. Tom checked his phone; it was already lunchtime, and he hadn’t even found the papers he was looking for yet. He had a missed text from Rosieasking if he was coming down to eat with everyone else. From forty-five minutes ago.
Shit. Not only had he made no progress, it looked like he’d blown Rosie off. Fuck his life.
“Thank you,” he told the girl belatedly.
“Rose told me to ask you if you needed anything,” she said, looking hopeful.
“No, just tell her thanks for lunch,” Tom said, shoulders slumping. He couldn’t go back down and report exactly no progress. “Are things going okay downstairs?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the Great Puffin said, fidgeting. “We got the hallway walls and baseboards all painted, and now we’re starting the crown molding.”
“Um. Does she look like she’s having an okay time?”
The Great Puffin blinked at him. “For sure. I mean, she madeBoyd Kellaghergo to Alley’s and get her stickers for a chore chart. And he did it. That would be, like, a big day for me?”
Tom wondered when Boyd might be going home. Or at least away. While he was glad for Rosie to have fun creating years’ worth of blind items for Boyd’s publicist to rebut, or to enjoy the questionable thrills of commanding a dozen underemployed members of Gen Z, it was hard to imagine the two of them having time to work on their relationship while supervising Boyd and the growing number of fangirls. He’d barely seen her alone for a single minute over the past week. She cooked and planned and organized from sunup to evening, then collapsed in a happy heap—alone—in the big bed in the loft.
Tom sent the Great Puffin back downstairs with instructions to get him if it looked like Rosie was not having fun at any point in the afternoon, then resumed his fruitless search for any documents evidencing the previous roof replacement. The insurance company was fighting him on how many years the roof was supposed to have lasted before being swept off in the hurricane. Finding no records, he made a last-ditch call for help. He’d called everyone he knew at this point. Cashed in every favor.
“Do you remember when it was that you last had the roof at the inn replaced?” he asked Aunt Max once he’d answered fifteen questions about his parents’ health.
“Sweet boy, I don’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning,” she told him cheerfully. “But I’m glad you called anyway. When’s your next premiere? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’re not getting too ambitious with your auditions, are you?”
“Mm, literally nobody has ever called me too ambitious, Max, but I’m waiting for the negotiations on a Broadway transfer right now,” he said, identifying a folder of tax returns from the early 1990s. It appeared that the inn hadn’teverdone much better than break even, gauging by the losses described. He tossed the tax returns in the trash.
