Kelley had said, “I hate to tell you this, Maggie, but we can’t afford any of the houses on Baxter Lane.” Instead they had rented an upside-down house facing Nobadeer Beach, but the waves at Nobadeer scared the kids, so they had to drive each day to Steps Beach, so named because it featured a flight of forty-one steps down to the dunes covered with Rosa rugosa. It was picturesque but also quite a haul with two kids, a baby, and the amount of paraphernalia that those kids and baby required. The next summer they realized they could buy a beach sticker for a hundred dollars and drive the kids and all the gear right onto the beach at Fortieth Pole. That year they rented a cottage on Madaket Road that had a smell, and the summer after that they rented a soulless time-share condo until they found a house on Quince Street that Margaret really loved.
Kelley has lived at the inn for twenty-two years. The man who stayed in those other houses feels like someone else entirely.
There used to be a restaurant called the Second Story that he loved, but Margaret found the food too spicy. There was a place called the India House, where Kelley took Margaret? No, Mitzi—he took Mitzi to the India House every Saturday night of her final trimester with Bart because she had an insatiable craving for their Indonesian peanut noodles with duck. The Second Story is now Oran Mor, although Kelley hasn’t been in there since two owners ago—and the India House is just gone.
Mitzi is at Kelley’s bedside. Her hair is piled on top of her head.
She says, “I’m putting the inn on the market, Kelley. I’m going to sell it.”
Kelley nods. It’s the right thing to do.
“I told Eddie Pancik I wanted to sell it only to someone who would keep it an inn,” Mitzi says. “I couldn’t stand to think of some millionaire knocking down walls to create master suites. But I’ve come around on that now. If we’re going to sell it, we sell it and wash our hands of it and let the new owner create memories of his own here.”
Kelley thinks, People will walk by the house and think, ‘I remember when this was an inn. They had a party every Christmas Eve. It was the best party of the year. Kelley Quinn, the owner, used to saber the top off a bottle of champagne. Santa Claus came to that party driving a 1931 Model A fire engine.
Mitzi is holding Kelley’s hand, and he applies pressure. He wants her to know he thinks she’s doing the right thing. Whatever happens next with this house won’t affect or diminish what they have had here.
They have had so much.
Bart comes in the middle of the night and sits by Kelley’s bed. Maybe it’s not the middle of the night. Maybe it’s late afternoon or early evening. It’s November, and the sun sets at four o’clock. It feels late, though. The rest of the house is quiet. Mitzi often falls asleep on the sofa in the living room in front of the fire, and Kelley can’t blame her. Jocelyn is the night hospice nurse. Very little gets past Jocelyn, so she must have given Bart the okay to come in.
“Dad,” Bart says. “I think I’m in love.”
In love. Kelley has lived nearly all of his adult life in love—first with Margaret and then with Mitzi. He has been very lucky in that respect.
Kelley feels like he already knew this about Bart. “The ghee. The ghee.”
“The geisha from the party,” Bart says. “Yes. Allegra Pancik. I’ve been seeing her for a couple of weeks. We went to New York together. She’s… well, she’s the best thing that’s happened to me… I don’t know, recently? Or ever, maybe? She’s lots of fun and she’s a good listener. She’s patient. She gets me, I think. You know, when I was growing up, I thought the most important thing about my future wife would be how she looked. But it turns out, that’s the least important thing. I mean, Allegra is really pretty, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t matter. I like talking to her, I like the sound of her voice; it calms me. I like surprising her, making her happy, seeing her smile when I walk through the door. I like it that she sings off-key and is a rabid Patriots fan, the kind where she screams at the TV. I like that she has insecurities and sees things in herself that she wants to improve. She knows she’s not perfect, just like I know that I’m not perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” Kelley says, though his words are unintelligible.
“You’re going to meet her on Thursday,” Bart says. “She’s coming for Thanksgiving.”
Kelley thinks, Thursday is Thanksgiving?
He reaches out for Bart’s hand and tries to squeeze. This is torture! Kelley is here, he’s listening, he’s present, he has things to say, blessings to bestow, but he isn’t having any luck communicating. Or maybe he is. He can’t tell.
Bart seems to understand. “I love you, too, Dad,” he says.
As Bart stands to leave the room, Kelley thinks eagerly about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving means Mitzi’s corn pudding and her fiesta cranberry sauce. He will have a bite of each, he thinks, and he drifts off to sleep.
EDDIE
The Christys are caught in a stalemate. Raja wants to make an offer on the Medouie Creek Road house in Wauwinet—and Masha wants the inn. Eddie checks in with Raja once a week to see if there has been any movement one way or the other.
“No,” Raja says. “She’s not backing down.”
“Well, neither are you,” Eddie says. “Right?”
“Right,” Raja says. “I tell Masha again and again: We know nothing about the hospitality business. And I don’t want to know anything about it. The point of buying a second home is having a sanctuary. A place to relax. But Masha is dead set on it. She’s like Jack with his squeaky giraffe. You can’t get that giraffe away from him when he’s in a certain frame of mind.”
Eddie has long joked that the two most useful backgrounds for a real estate broker are psychology and elementary education. Eddie has basically taken on the role of Raja’s therapist. He would like to see Raja get his way—and not only because Eddie’s commission will be bigger. Eddie wants Raja to win on behalf of all the henpecked husbands in the world. He realizes that the only reason Masha hasn’t steamrolled Raja is because the inn isn’t technically on the market yet.
But Mitzi has asked Eddie to put it on right after Thanksgiving. She says it will be ready to show—all but the master suite, where Kelley is living—on Christmas Stroll weekend.
The situation with the Christys is so confounding that Eddie is relieved things on his own home front are, for the most part, cheerful. Allegra is exclusively dating Bart Quinn now, and the relationship has completely transformed her. She is always in a good mood, always sweet and solicitous. She offers to help with the laundry and keep the cottage neat and tidy. She smiles, she hums to herself, she sings off-key in the shower.
Eddie says, “It’s like she’s had a personality transplant.”
Grace says, “She’s in love.”
Grace has also been in a good mood recently. Eddie told her he saw her biking when he was driving the Christys out to Wauwinet, and she said, “Yes, that was me. I’ve been either biking or walking every day. Trying to lose these last ten pounds.”