"She had a gift for people who showed up when it mattered."
His arm tightens around me. His mouth is at my temple.
"I love you," he says. Like now that he's said it once, he doesn't see any reason to stop.
"I know," I say. "I love you too."
Below us the last guests are leaving. Vernon's voice carries through the plasterwork. Darlene laughing. The sound of Silver Ridge at the end of a good night, going home warm and full and happy, and up here in the owner's suite Nash Brennan is exactly where he's supposed to be.
So am I.
Epilogue
Nash
Thegateisfixed.
I've been at it for forty minutes in the February cold. The original wrought-iron hinge moving true and quiet, the way it was built to move a hundred years ago, before weather and time and neglect got into it. I wipe my hands on my work rag and swing it once to check. Perfect.
Wrench has been lying on my feet the entire time providing no assistance whatsoever, except for maybe keeping my toes warm. He lifts his head.
"I know," I tell him. "I've been out here too long."
He agrees, apparently, because he gets up, goes to the front door and looks back at me. I gather my tools. I look up at the kitchen window.
She's there. She waves.
I do the thing. The acknowledgment that meansI see you,andI'm coming,andthe gate is done.She smiles and disappears from the window, and something in my chest does what italways does when she smiles and disappears from a window. Same thing it did in October when she was a client and I was a tradesperson and I was very thoroughly lying to myself about what was happening.
I'm not lying to myself about anything anymore.
I go inside.
The kitchen smells like coffee and whatever she's been baking and the particular warmth of a room that has been lived in properly. Her project files are spread across the kitchen table. The hotel is booked three months out. There's a heritage garden tour in June that somehow grew from a single afternoon into three days with a waiting list and journalists calling from Vancouver. The BC Heritage Society award is in the reception hall. She had to look at the ceiling when they gave it to her to keep her composure. The write-up in the provincial tourism magazine called Brooks Boutique Hotel a love letter to a vanishing era of craftsmanship. She read it out loud to me in bed and then put it face-down on the nightstand and didn't say anything for a full minute.
Ruth would have pretended not to understand what the fuss was about. She would have been quietly, fiercely pleased.
Maple is at the counter with two mugs ready.
Rivet is in the velvet window seat in the front parlour. That's Rivet's permanent post and has been since the first morning I brought the dogs over properly. Eleven thousand people follow this hotel on the internet, and a meaningful portion of them are there because of Rivet, which is the least surprising thing I have ever learned. Penny is asleep in the kitchen on her folded towel. That's Penny's primary contribution to hotel operations and she makes it with great dedication. Wrench goes directly to his spot below the breakfast sideboard, where Maple slips him things she categorically denies slipping him.
The box has been in my jacket pocket for three weeks.
I've been waiting for the right moment. I've been telling myself there isn't one. I've been carrying it around like a piece of equipment I don't know how to install, which is not a feeling I'm familiar with. I know how to install everything.
She hands me my coffee. She's in her dress, deep blue today, vintage cut, completely impractical for a February morning. Her hair is loose. She has a pencil behind her ear and flour on her wrist from this morning's baking and she looks like the best thing I've ever walked into.
"Gate's done," I say.
"I saw." She looks up at me. "You were out there a long time."
"Original hardware," I say. "You have to be patient."
She smiles at that. She knows I'm quoting myself back at myself. She turns to get her own coffee, and that's when Rivet appears.
She has gotten down from the window seat, which she does approximately never during business hours, and trotted into the kitchen with the focused intention of a dog who has a plan. She sits in the middle of the kitchen floor and looks at me. Then at Maple. Then back at me.
Then she looks pointedly at my jacket pocket.
