“At my old job, I would create pop-up museums, and your barn is the perfect spot for one. Imagine this.” I hold my hands up, palms open, painting a picture for her. “Renovations? Paid for. Reservations? Booked, back-to-back. You’ve got a space for art, and people from around the country—no, the world—drive—”
“The world?”
“That might be ambitious. But we’re talking about lots of people coming here to Harlow. To The Mirage.”
“What do renovations have to do with this?”
“We’d get investors. The money upfront could pay for renovations. We’d earn it back through the museum—not to mention all the reservations from having a must-see attraction on your property.”
“That’s cool.” She sets her fork on her plate, and her lips pucker like she’s chewing the idea over. “But these renovations are…they’re not small things.” Using her fingers, she counts off every change that she wants to finish before busy season picks back up in the fall. The bathroom stands out as the biggest project…until she mentions the termites.
At Impressions, I didn’t deal with finances—I handled the artists, artwork, and the space. The renovations Daisy has on her list will rack up into the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that art lovers have deep pockets. And while doing this could capture the attention of someone at Tate, it absolutely will help Daisy, and that means more to me.
“What do you get out of this?” Her questioning eyes bore into me like needles. “Is this about your old job?”
“I need something new on my resume. There…there was some messy shit with my boss,” I say more quietly. If I’m proposing a business endeavor, she deserves to know. My stomach clenches as I explain the disaster that was Impressions—the illegal dumping, the sexual assault claims—and I can barely meet her eyes. “I’m caught up in it, even though I didn’t know about any of it. Even though I should have known.”
“Damn.” She nods her head, and I hate not knowing what she thinks of me right now. “That explains the No Google rule.”
I don’t need to tell her about the Tate job because that’s not a definite thing. What is definite is I can’t sit around and hope a teaching gig will do the trick.
“What I do next could define my career, and I think this could be it, Daze.”
“It sounds incredible.” She runs her finger along the edge of the coffee table where the polish has faded. “I can’t, though. This is a whole new thing that sounds high risk. Right now, I’m in low-risk mode.”
“But what I—”
“People come here to get away from it all. I can’t have heaps of visitors driving here and interrupting them. Would they park on the side of the road? My lot can handle hotel guests, but not a museum, so I’d have tons of folks crossing the main street. It’s an accident waiting to happen.”
Within thirty seconds, she’s poked holes in my genius plan.
“In some universe, this could be a really amazing idea,” she says. “But a museum? That’s a new thing to market. There’ll be people to hire and infrastructure needed that I don’t have.”
“We’d figure it out.” I swallow, my confidence on shaky ground. “If this is a tough season for you, then you shouldn’t be going low risk.”
“You would say that. You traveled around and set up these museums, and if something didn’t pan out, it wasn’t a big deal because you had this company, and they’d just contract you to do some other museum somewhere else. But me?” She puts a hand on her chest, the rings on her fingers glistening against the mood lighting. “I have one job, one place. It is my sole responsibility, and I can’t risk losing it. I don’t have anything ‘next’ after this. Nothing bigger and better to move on to.”
All the hope and excitement drains out of me. I want to promise her that this would work, that it would be alright in the end, and that I would never, ever abandon her. But I can’tmake those promises because I don’t know what I’m doing, and I already have one foot out the door.
We eat the rest of our Thai food in companionable silence. It doesn’t taste as good as I remember.
Chapter Ten
Daisy, 14 Years Old
“This is…” Mom counted the guests in the lobby one by one, her pointer finger bouncing through the crowd. “Wow. It’s everyone.”
“Everyone?” I tempered my excitement, but the question came out more like a squeak. “I told you people’d be interested.”
“Max is gonna be the belle of the ball,” Dad said. “I’ll get the car situated for our little caravan.”
Mom and Dad kissed, and I had a good feeling about them this time. Dad had been home for months already, and they barely fought.
I toyed with the wildflowers I’d picked for Max—my tradition for any of his art events. He would receive an extra-large bunch this evening since it was his first high school showcase.
“This is a very sweet thing,” my mom said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and planting a kiss on my temple. “I’m glad you mentioned it.”
I couldn’t change his parents’ minds, and neither could my mom.Buncha damn fools, she’d muttered after talking with them on the phone. I didn’t understand why Max’s mom and dad were so negative with him, especially when he was clearly not born to be a lawyer.
