Determined to earn her trust, Calisa spent the next several days dusting, scrubbing, and mopping. Auntie Zee was frequently nearby, puttering in the kitchen or sitting in the now-cobweb-free front room or just following Calisa around to check on her progress.
She got a friendly grunt for the dining room. Plus an almost smile for the laundry.
“Your last cake was dry,” Auntie Zee said as Calisa wiped the grime from the corners of the stove. Her great-aunt was perched on the stool. Steve the lizard was outside on the windowsill, gazing mournfully into the kitchen, his wings drooping as he watched her with his marble-like eyes.
“I overbaked it.”
“You should try it again for tea tomorrow.”
Casually, Calisa said, “You know, if we’re able to draw in more guests, I could make a whole bunch of cakes and we could offer different flavors.”
Auntie Zee glared at her. “We don’t have more guests.”
“Or we could expand the menu and offer little sandwiches. Like in England. Cucumber sandwiches, though I feel like cucumber isn’t enough to really make it an actual sandwich. Jam sandwiches? You’ve a huge collection of jam in the kitchen, in addition to the maple syrup. Or I could learn to make pastries. How about croissants? Everyone likes croissants. I know you have to layer in the butter and fold it a billion times. Complex, but I could try. What did your guests used to like? Did they have favorites from wherever they’re from?”Tell me about the portals.If Auntie Zee would just open up to her, Calisa could ask about the inn and the guests and how it all worked and maybe be able to help more with keeping the inn in business.
“Don’t get grand ideas. You’ll only be disappointed.”
Calisa stared at her. “Wow. What terrible life advice.” And it said so much about Auntie Zee and her worldview. Had she always been this pessimistic?
Auntie Zee scowled back. “You have an attitude. Did your moms ever tell you that?”
“Where do you think I learned it?” Calisa said.
Her lips quirked, and Calisa wondered if that was almost a smile or just an involuntary twitch. “You don’t understand the difficulties of running an inn.”
“Then teach me.”
For an instant, an expression crossed Auntie Zee’s face that Calisa couldn’t place, then it vanished, and she shook her head. “That would be pointless. You’ll be gone at the end of the summer and not look back. Just like your mother.”
Ah, was that the source of their issues? She pounced on that little bit of insight. If she could fix whatever was broken between Mom-Kate and her great-aunt…fix the inn, fix her family, fix herself…that was a worthy goal for the summer…. Wait, did Auntie Zee just say “end of the summer”? Did that mean she had approval to stay for the entire summer?Unlikely,Calisa thought. “Did you want Mom-Kate to stay?”
“Your mother wasn’t suited for this place,” Auntie Zee said, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or another, but Calisa knew she was onto something. Perhaps the inn had been handed down generation to generation, and Mom-Kate didn’t want it? Or Auntie Zee thought she couldn’t handle it?
“Did she want—”
Auntie Zee interrupted. “You should continue with the gardens. Tell Jack not to overprune the roses.” She waddled out of the kitchen without another word.
Calisa followed Auntie Zee into the lobby, intending to continue the conversation, but Auntie Zee was nowhere in sight. There was only the cat, Portia, in the sitting room, and the firebird burning softly in the library fireplace.
—
Following Auntie Zee’s directive, Calisa resumed gardening with Jack. After two days of weeding, she had blisters on herhands from the clippers, she ached in muscles that she didn’t know she had (who knew forearms could ache? biceps, yes, but forearms?), and she’d been scratched so much that her skin was speckled with red dashes. But the front yard had been stripped of brambles and weeds. There were patches of bald soil from where the weeds had driven out the flowers, but elsewhere it looked as if the bushes and plants could finally breathe.
She hadn’t seen Auntie Zee except briefly when she’d served leftover cake for tea, and then her great-aunt hadn’t done more than grunt at her. But Kendra continued to enjoy the cake, and even Mulligan had appeared briefly (in daylight, which doomed her vampire theories—she was still sticking with chocolate wizard) to claim a slice, even though it wasn’t chocolate. She hadn’t attempted chocolate yet. The recipe in Jack’s dad’s cookbook had looked tricky.
After finishing weeding around another rosebush, Calisa walked between the plants in the front yard and frowned at the bald patches. Beside her, Steve waddled at a sedate pace. Occasionally, he paused to contemplate the soil. “You’re right. It needs something,” Calisa said. She asked Jack, “What’s that bark-like stuff called that people put around plants and shrubs to make the gardens look neater? Especially people in the suburbs?”
“Mulch?” Jack said.
“Yes, mulch. We need mulch.”
“Can’t afford it,” Jack said.
That was a shame. It would have made the flower beds look intentional instead of haphazard and kept the weeds fromimmediately growing back. She crossed her arms and studied the yard. At her feet, Steve nudged her toe and then rolled over onto his back. She reached down and scratched his belly the way he liked as she considered the issue of mulch. Mulch was definitely the kind of thing that a well-manicured yard at a well-maintained inn would have. “Can we make our own? It’s just wood chips, right?”
“A lot of wood chips.”
She had no idea how to make wood chips, but there was plenty of wood—a whole forest’s worth of it. Seemed like they had the raw ingredients.
