Touching Stars (6 page)

“It’s worth losing the income.” She paused a beat. “Until I pay the next batch of bills.”

“I brought something for Jared. I left it by the front desk.”

“What’s that?”

“A graduation present. He told me last month he was hoping he’d get a laptop computer from his grandparents. I got him a gift certificate for any extra software he’ll need.”

“You’re such a good friend to all of us.”

“I don’t have to work hard at it.”

“You might get tired of this situation before summer’s end. With the boys at the camp, you’re going to see a lot of this family.”

“Worse things have happened.”

“You’ll be at the party tomorrow night?”

“I’m guessing you might need another adult to chaperone.”

The presence of their favorite history teacher would encourage better behavior from the graduates. She was relieved and grateful.

She squeezed his arm lightly, then dropped her hand. “I made chocolate-chip muffins for breakfast, and I’m about to make chicken-salad sandwiches for lunch.”

“I promise I never had a thought about food on my way over here.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure. Come with me and you can chop the celery and hard-boiled eggs.”

“My timing was off. Another ten minutes and I’d have had lunch handed to me on a silver platter.”

She didn’t tell him, but there wasn’t much she wouldn’t hand Travis on her best heirloom sterling. Having an uncomplicated relationship with a good man who simply valued her friendship and that of her sons was one of the things she was counting on to get her through the summer.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you use my best cutting board.”

“Do I get to use one of your new Santoku knives, too?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Me? I just wait and watch until the time is right to get what I want.”

“So that’s your secret?”

He smiled one of his rare smiles. “Wait and watch and see.”

G
ayle overslept on Eric’s first morning at the inn. One moment she was sitting up at her usual time, peering sleepily out her window at a lightening sky. The next the sun was fully up, and the converted carriage house, where she and the boys made their home, was rumbling with the snuffling and murmuring of awakening adolescent males.

This time she leaped to her feet and peered at her alarm clock, wincing when she realized it was almost eight. She threw on a robe and padded across the Aubusson carpet she had found in an antique shop in Staunton. China, not France, was probably the country of origin, and the nap was too worn to grace the guest area. Normally the multihued roses sprinkled across the spring-green surface made her feel as if she were walking barefoot in a garden. This morning she passed over them too quickly to notice.

In the family room, Dillon and Noah were doing excellent imitations of roadkill. She hoped they were awake enough to decipher her words.

“I fell back asleep. Did either of you check on your dad this morning?”

“You always get up early,” Dillon said.

“Apparently no longer true.”

“Jared’s making pancakes. He woke us up.” Dillon looked as if Jared hadn’t done a thorough job of it.

“Dad’s still sleeping,” Noah said.

Gayle slowly let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Well, good. I’ll get dressed and help Jared. Remember, he graduates tonight.”

Dillon scratched his head with all ten fingers. “I think we should wake up Dad and make sure he eats.”

“He needs sleep as much as food,” Gayle said.

“And stop pointing out he’s skinny,” Noah told his brother. “Can’t you figure out he knows that better than anybody else?”

Apparently Dillon was too sleepy to take offense.

Gayle showered, then dressed quickly in blue jeans and a white cotton crewneck. She didn’t bother with makeup. After slipping into loafers, she left her younger sons to finish the transition to the land of the living and headed outside.

The inn was really an assortment of buildings, and she loved them all. The bones of the house dated back to the mid-nineteenth century, but at the turn of the twentieth, the sprawling main house had sheltered the growing family of a country doctor. According to local historians, in later years the doctor and his wife had each taken in a sister, along with her husband and children, adding rooms and outbuildings to accommodate everyone.

Unfortunately, as succeeding generations had taken over the care and the property taxes, the huge old house had slipped into disrepair. Contemporary families were smaller and less likely to want to grow old together. By the time Gayle and Eric had seen the property, the house had been well beyond a fixer-upper. Instead, the sales pitch had revolved around the potential for a new house on the same site.

Gayle had never regretted the decision to ignore sage advice and renovate the old one.

In addition to the house, which had been whittled down to eight functioning bedrooms, and the carriage house, which was the family living quarters, there was a bonus room over the modern garage that Jared and Leon, when he was in residence, shared, and a garden shed—soon to be the Star Garden suite—which had been converted into an efficiency apartment for the assistant innkeepers. The shed was perched, not surprisingly, at the edge of what had once been a garden large enough to feed the doctor’s family.

Until recently the apartment had been occupied by an older couple who had helped with every phase of the inn’s upkeep and management. But two weeks ago they had retired to Florida. Gayle planned to incorporate the suite into her overall rental plan, but first it needed serious updating. She was subcontracting the work herself, which was progressing too slowly to suit her, and at the moment she didn’t see much hope that it would be rentable until fall.

This morning, with mist rising from the river and the sky brightening, all the hard work seemed worth it. Like many owners of country inns, she knew living in a scenic area, in a house rich in history, was one of the bonuses of her profession. She was proud that she had saved the rambling old house and found a way to make it pay.

Cutting across the patio, through a well-organized storage room and into the kitchen, she found Jared frying bacon.

All the boys helped with the running of the inn. They routinely answered telephones, set tables and washed dishes. They did garden chores under protest, and more willingly helped with any chore that required use of the computer. Leon Jenkins, the high schooler who often lived with them, did an equal share. Helping had never been optional, but Gayle had been careful not to expect so much that the boys resented the inn or her.

“Hey there,” she said, closing the door quietly behind her. “Happy graduation day! I’m sorry I overslept. I don’t know what got into me.”

He flipped a few slices, then a few more. “I was up early anyway. I figured you could use the help.”

“What’s going on the griddle?”

“Florida cakes.”

“Yum.” Florida cakes were Jared’s specialty. He used a standard pancake recipe, but he replaced the milk with orange juice, added diced bananas and pecans, and sometimes, if shredded coconut was handy, sprinkled a dollop on the pancakes before he turned them. Florida cakes were a favorite with his brothers, particularly Dillon. Guests always enjoyed them, too.

“I checked on Dad,” Jared said. “I didn’t hear any noise from his room.”

“If we don’t hear him by the time everything’s ready, let’s take him a tray. He doesn’t need to skip a meal.”

“How bad off is he?” Jared removed half the bacon with a practiced hand. The cast-iron griddle spanned two burners of the six-burner commercial stove and got a daily workout.

Gayle thought about last night’s dinner. After sleeping most of the afternoon, Eric had insisted on coming to the table, but it had been clear that hunger and exhaustion were at war. Much to Dillon’s disappointment, he had eaten, then gone straight back to his room for the evening.

“I talked to him after we ate,” Gayle said. “He assured me the doctors expect him to recover quickly. Remember, he was in Germany for more than a week, and they did every conceivable test. Then they repeated some in Washington, just to be sure. It’s mostly as simple as rest and food and, once he’s up to it, getting back into his daily routine a little at a time.”

“It’s hard to see him like this.”

Gayle was surprised Jared was so forthcoming, but she wasn’t surprised at the sentiment. It
was
hard to see Eric, always bursting with high spirits and in the peak of health, so thin, tired and pale. She suspected he was depressed, as well, although that wasn’t something she wanted to share with her son.

“We’re going to have company this morning,” she warned. “So he’ll probably want to stay in his room.”

Jared took a handful of pecans from a plastic bin and tossed them to the cutting board beside the stove. “Who?”

“The quilters are going to set up their frame.”

“Oh, yeah. Some guy from church came by earlier and dropped it off. I forgot to tell you. I helped him get it into the morning room.”

“Thanks. I’ve also got a couple of deliveries for the party. And early in the afternoon I’ve got an interview.”

“How are the interviews going?”

Gayle had decided to replace her live-in couple with a gardener, two part-time innkeepers and a cleaning team of three, a decision she hadn’t made lightly. But by her calculations, the renovated Star Garden suite would bring in more income than its relative value as housing for another live-in couple.

She was wary about the change, but hopeful it would work if she could find the right employees. Finding a cleaning team had been easy, and they were ready to start work next week, when guests began arriving again. Unfortunately the part-timers, who would be asked to do a little of everything, were proving harder. She just hadn’t found the right combination of skills and warmth, and she desperately needed help.

“I whittled the applications down to four. Nobody really jumped out at me, though. I’m still advertising.”

The door opened, and Noah wandered in. “I’m going to take Dillon down the road to practice swimming after breakfast, so don’t tell me I need a shower.”

“Under those circumstances, I can put up with the grime.”

“Funny.” He made a face. “I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t desperate. He doesn’t listen to me. You know he doesn’t. I might hold him under myself.”

Unfortunately, she knew Noah was right. “Give it a try until I figure out something else, would you? He knows the basics. He’s just not comfortable in the water. He needs practice, and I promised Mr. Allen.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

She changed the subject, knowing this one could only go downhill. “Jared, do you have a final head count for the party?”

Jared was removing the last of the bacon. “Sixty, maybe.”

“Counting adults? Parents? Friends from church?”

“Best I could come up with.”

She decided to finalize plans for seventy-five. Too much food was better than too little, and the family was used to leftovers. The boys had thrived on egg casseroles and oven-puffed French toast for dinner, one of the perks or hazards of B and B life, depending on whether breakfast food was a favorite.

As Jared cooked the first batch of pancakes, she ran the final menu past him. “We’ll grill hot dogs and hamburgers, and set up a nachos bar. I’ll buy half a dozen of those big pizzas you like from the grocery store. Macaroni and cheese, baked beans, fruit kabobs and green salad.”

Jared didn’t point out that everyone would have eaten before the ceremony. The party would go on into the wee hours of the morning, and his friends would be starving the moment they arrived. “Dessert?” he asked.

“Lots of it, I promise. Mr. Allen’s coming,” she said. “I’ll put him to work at the grill.”

“You’ll put him to work making sure nobody brings in liquor or smokes anything they rolled themselves,” Jared said.

“I’d prefer they didn’t smoke at all,” Gayle said. “But just make sure they don’t smoke inside, okay?”

“My friends hang out here. They know the rules.”

The party would be sedate by teenage standards, but kids always seemed to have fun when they came to the inn. Since Jared’s wouldn’t be the only party, she made a mental note to watch closely and make sure that anyone getting into a car could drive safely. She could keep an eye on them here, but she couldn’t control what the kids drank at other houses.

Jared flipped the pancakes, and Gayle went for plates. Dillon arrived, but not Eric. She made her ex a tray, adding a small pot of the coffee Jared had brewed and a decanter of orange juice; then she handed it to her youngest son. “Take this to your dad, okay?”

For a moment he looked unsure. “Wake him up?”

“Just tiptoe in and put it by the bed.”

“He ought to be out here with us.”

Gayle couldn’t fault Dillon for the sentiment. She had been nearly thirty years old before she had stopped wishing Eric wanted to be with his family.

The quilters arrived just as Gayle and Noah finished loading the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. Gayle saw a car pull into the parking area behind the kitchen.

“You want to help set up the frame?” She dried her hands and tossed the dish towel to Noah, who made a graceful catch.

“Yeah, I’d like to see what it entails.”

Jared was on the telephone with Brandy, and Dillon was outside scrubbing down picnic tables and rinsing them with a hose. She hoped he wouldn’t aim the spray at Helen Henry.

By the time she stepped outside, Helen was just getting out of a station wagon from an earlier decade, assisted by Cissy Claiborne, a young woman of about twenty. Cissy and her husband, Zeke, lived in Helen’s house as companions. Helen, a big-boned farm woman in her eighties, had resisted help, but a few years ago she had finally come around to the necessity. The fact that Cissy and Zeke had a newborn had cinched the deal. For a while, it wasn’t clear who was going to be looking after whom.

Now the relationship was as secure as a family bond. Cissy, with a dreamy face surrounded by a cloud of strawberry-blond hair, might look as if she needed instruction and protection, but she had proved herself to be an excellent mother and a tactful companion to Helen. Gayle had grown fond of Cissy, as had most everyone else in the community.

Two more women got out of the back seat, then a third. Gayle recognized Kate Brogan, one of the younger women in the Bee, Cathy Adams, a newer member but right at home in Toms Brook after moving from the big city, and Peony Greenway, a woman in her late sixties who, like Gayle, always seemed to be on call for jobs at their church that no one else wanted to do.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Gayle called. “Apparently the frame already arrived. My son helped unload it this morning.”

“Zeke brought it over,” Cissy said.

Helen was taking stock. “This is some place you got.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been to the inn?” A quick search of Gayle’s memory didn’t turn up a time when Helen had visited.

“Didn’t get out much for a long time there. Just haven’t made up for it quite yet.”