“Yes,” Josh snapped. He struggled to his feet and grabbed his crutches. “Let it go under and then maybe I can have a fucking life, okay?”
Mitch and Ryan were both stunned into silence, but Mitch recovered first. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Forget it.” Josh started turning away, but Mitch reached out and grabbed his crutches.
“Sit down.”
“Screw you.”
Mitch shrugged and handed the crutches to Ryan, who leaned them against the wall behind him. “You can sit down or you can drag yourself across the floor and up the stairs, but you’re not getting the sticks back until you tell us what the hell is wrong with you.”
He didn’t have much of a choice, so Josh sat. “You guys sweep in here with your grand plan to save the Northern Star Lodge. You’ll make a shitload of work and then you’ll leave again, just like you always have.”
“We have businesses to run,” Ryan said. “And what’s this about you not having a life? You’re the keystone of the family. You run this place for all of us.”
Josh snorted, shaking his head. “Because there was nobody else to do it. One by one you all went off to college and didn’t come back. What the hell was I supposed to do? Say, ‘Sorry, Dad, you’re on your own’? Somebody had to stay. And then he died and you all came home but, after the funeral, you all left again.”
Mitch didn’t know what to say and, judging by the silence, Ryan didn’t either. Josh had always run the lodge with their old man, and he’d kept on running it after he died. He’d never said he didn’t want to, as far as Mitch could remember.
“I think we should sell it,” Josh said.
Sell the Northern Star Lodge? It was home—the one place that was always there, no matter where he roamed. Their great-grandfather had built it, their grandfather had re-envisioned it and their father had saved it. It was as much a part of who they were as their blue eyes, stubborn streaks and last name.
And it was an albatross around Josh’s neck. An anchor dragging him under. Whatever stupid expression that meant his youngest brother had been stuck in Whitford, living a life he’d been stuck with by default, while the rest of them were free to choose their own paths.
“It’s not a good time to sell,” Ryan said.
Mitch jumped on the excuse to resist the idea with something more than being a selfish bastard who didn’t want anything to change. “Especially a commercial property like this that’s barely treading water.”
“It doesn’t have to be commercial,” Josh argued. “Maybe somebody would just want to live in it.”
Unlikely, though Mitch didn’t say so. It was too unwieldy and hard to manage for a single family unless they were loaded. And, if they were loaded, they wouldn’t want an old snowmobile lodge.
“We’d be lucky to make a hundred bucks,” Ryan pushed on, but Mitch looked at Josh and knew it didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with profits or losses and everything to do with Josh being able to walk away.
“Ryan’s right,” he said, and Josh’s whole body tensed. In order to sell, all of them had to agree and, if he thought it wasn’t going to happen, what was to stop Josh from saying screw it and walking away? “But, I get it now, Josh. We both get it and we’ll figure it out.”
Josh’s muscles relaxed and he propped his elbows on the table to scrub his hands through his hair. “It’s been building a long time, I guess. I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad until Rosie told me Mitch was coming to take care of things for six weeks. For a few seconds I actually wondered what I’d do or where I’d go if I could leave this place for six weeks, but then I realized I couldn’t do jack shit with this cast on.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t just…up and go,” Ryan said.
“Just abandon the place? And leave Rosie?” Josh glared at him. “I deserve more credit than that.”
“Yeah, you do.”
Mitch sighed and looked at all his grand plans laid out on the table. “Before we can decide if we’re going to sell, somebody has to talk to Sean and Liz. And I think we should still go ahead with the preliminary legwork for getting connected to the ATV trails. If we decide to sell, being able to show prospective buyers that potential new revenue could make a big difference in the asking price.”
Josh picked at the corner of a stack of papers. “But you’ll consider selling?”
“We have to do something,” Mitch said. “Now that we know how you feel, we can’t just walk away and leave you here without a plan.”
Ryan nodded. “It never occurred to me you didn’t want to run the Northern Star. I don’t think it occurred to any of us.”