A family man who needed to provide for that family. For Richard, it had been a very important deciding factor in hiring the man.
He remembered as a boy listening to his own father tell him stories about his great-great-grandmother, Ruth, and how she’d converted her home into an inn to keep from losing it, as well as a way to provide for her five children.
Keeping those stories foremost in his mind was what had kept Richard from ever turning away a single person who needed a place to stay.
“And just how did J.D. intend to ‘butcher’ the inn?” he asked Alex.
“He didn’t intend to do it,” Alex corrected her father. “But that would have been the end result of what he was going to do to the inn.”
Richard glanced at his other daughter and then at Dorothy, but there was no enlightenment from either quarter. “I don’t think I understand.”
To Alex, the inn was like a living, breathing entity. Something to watch over and protect so that it would be here, just as her ancestor had intended, for many, many years to come. J. D. Clarke, she was certain, had ideas that would’ve dramatically changed the direction the inn had been going for more than a hundred years. And his staff sure hadn’t given her any confidence that they could do good work that would stand the test of time.
“You’d hired him to make additions to the inn. He took it upon himself to go in a whole different direction. He showed me these really awful sketches he planned on ‘bringing to life,’ as he put it. When I said they would clash with what was already here, he told me I’d change my mind once they were completed. I think he felt I was challenging his judgment and he wouldn’t budge. So I fired him. He left me no choice.”
Alex took the folded piece of paper she’d slipped under the sign-in ledger she kept on the desk and placed it in front of her father as exhibit A. It was the only one of Clarke’s sketches he had left behind.
“It looked more like a growth than an addition,” she said indignantly, stabbing a finger at the drawing. “And it’s modern.” Alex all but spat the word out, as if it was a new strain of a fatal disease.
She watched her father glance over the sketch. By his expression, she could tell that he couldn’t quite understand the problem.
“Dad, you can’t just slap something that looks like it vacationed in the Museum of Modern Art onto a Victorian house. The two décors clash horribly and at the very least it would make us look...indecisive,” she finally declared for lack of a better word, “to our guests.”
“Indecisive?” Cris asked, puzzled. She pulled over the sketch to look at it herself.
Alex wanted support from her sister, not a challenge. “Shouldn’t you be back in the kitchen, getting ready for the guests coming in for lunch?” she prompted.
“Got it covered,” Cris told her cheerfully. “Go on, you were saying?” It was obvious that she wanted to see how far Alex was going to go with this.
Alex turned her attention back to her father, stating the rest of her case. “All the other additions over the years always retained that original Victorian flavor. It’s what the guests who come here expect. Not to mention he was intending to knock down that wall. That wall,” she emphasized, pointing to it. “That’s load-bearing, isn’t it? And if it isn’t and I’m wrong about that, well, he sure didn’t argue. Because he didn’t know better. The guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Besides,” she added in a quieter but no less firm voice, “Clarke acted as if he thought he knew what was best for the inn.”
“When we all know that you are the one who knows what’s best for the inn,” Cris declared solemnly, suppressing a grin.
Richard looked from one daughter to the other. He had devoted his life to raising his girls and was experienced enough to know that there was a confrontation in the making. His daughters loved one another, but that didn’t keep them from going at it heatedly.
He headed the confrontation off before it could get under way.
Kissing Alex’s forehead, he told her, “I trust you to make the right decisions. Of course, this means we’re going to have to find another general contractor.” He sighed, reminding her that the contractor had originally been called in to make some much needed repairs. Repairs that as of yet hadn’t happened. “If we don’t, then with the first big rain of the season we’ll have an indoor pool in the kitchen, thanks to the fact that the roof has seen much better days.”
“Why don’t we use the one we had the last time?” Cris proposed. “Mr. Phelps was really nice,” she added.
Alex looked at her. “Do you remember when the last time was?”
Thinking for a moment, Cris shrugged. Richard was only too aware that a great deal of life had happened to Cris since then so she couldn’t really be expected to know the answer to that question. “Five, seven years ago?”
Alex shook her head. “Try ten.”
“Okay, ten,” Cris acknowledged. “So? What’s the problem?”
Alex looked at her sister for a long moment. Didn’t Cris think she would have gone back to the other man if that had actually been an option? “Other than the fact that he’s dead, nothing.”
“Dead?” Cris echoed in surprise. “When did that happen?”
“Around the same time he stopped breathing, I imagine. Give or take,” Alex replied in the calm voice she used when she was trying to remove herself from a situation. Situations that usually only involved her sisters and came from being one of four kids. Growing up fighting to get an edge over the other three.
She expected her father to say something to rein her in, but he didn’t. She found that a little odd.
“Very funny,” Cris retorted, her expression indicating that was exactly what she didn’t think it was.
Alex ignored her. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll find us another general contractor. One who listens to what the inn is trying to say.”
Richard laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. Alex picked up on it instantly.
“I’d settle for a contractor who doesn’t charge an arm and a leg,” her father said.
“No body limbs, just reasonable rates. Got it,” Alex promised with a wink.
Cris glanced at the oversize watch on her wrist. It was large and bulky and made her seem even smaller and more fragile than she was. The only time she ever took it off was when she showered.
The watch chastened Alex and she regretted what she’d said to Cris. The watch had belonged to Mike. It was the last thing he’d given her before he’d left, saying that every time she looked at it, she should think of him and know that he was that much closer to coming home.
Except that he wasn’t and he didn’t.
Mike’s unit had been called up and, just like that, he had been deployed to Iraq. He’d been there less than a week when a roadside bomb took him away from her permanently.
He’d died before he’d ever been
