Page 24 of Once Upon a Fall

Feeling unsettled from the conversation, I get up and change into basketball shorts and a T-shirt and put on my running shoes. I’m not sure a run is in the cards, but a jog to clear my head is just what I need.

I check my work from yesterday, and sure enough, the joint compound has cured. When I get back, I’ll sand it, paint it, and then once that’s dry, I can rehang the shelf.

If I were consulting this business, I’d tell Rosie that doing the job right the first time would cost her a lot less time and money in the long run. But I’m not consulting, and I’ve learned the hard way that unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated.

The jog feels good in the crisp morning air, the smell of damp leaves and woodsmoke, birds chirping around me, but it’s doing nothing for my mental state. I’m not worried about my mom and her choices. She’s an adult; she can make her own mistakes. What’s bothering me is her unintentional reminder that I have no idea what I’m doing with this property.

If it were a client, I would tell them to liquidate it without further debate. It’s a negative-yield deteriorating asset with no strategic fit. Not worth the time or the effort. I know this. Except that this is my family’s legacy, whatever is left of it. It’s not just a piece of land. It’s my heritage.

And my heritage just happens to be a dilapidated farm that’s been taken over by raccoons.

He’ll know what to do.

I stop to catch my breath, hands on my hips, my chest feeling tight. It’s only been a week since I ran, but I feel more out of shape than if it had been a month.

I’m almost to the farm. My legs brought me here of their own accord. Or maybe it was my subconscious. Either way, I could go see it again. Maybe the answers are there in the early-morning sun, in the quiet, without neighbors around.

Or . . . I could go back and finish working on the wall.

Decision made, I start up my jog again and ten minutes later I walk through the door at the inn.

In the great debate between visiting my grandparents’ house or going back to sand down a wall and paint it, the wall won.

“Oh, hey,” Rosie says when she sees me. She’s got jeans and a pink T-shirt on, her hair down around her shoulders. No overalls today.

“Hey,” I say in return.

“Out for a run?” she asks, pointing to my clothing.

“Yep,” I tell her. I could have said something wittier, but right now I’m feeling all out of jokes.

“What’s your plan for the day?” she asks, a soft smile on her face.

“I’m going to finish patching the holes in my room, and then try to find a company to remove the raccoons from the house.”

“Oh, yes, the uninvited visitors,” she says.

I nod. “What are your plans?”

She blinks, looking surprised by the question. Like no one has asked her this in a while. It’s none of my business, really, but she asked first.

“I’m working on the inn and then going to a football game tonight. It’s the first high school game of the season; pretty much everyone in town goes. I really don’t have the time, since I have to have the inn ready by the festival, and I only have four weeks to do it, but I promised the Ednas I’d take them. They’re two older women who’ve lived in town forever,” she says, answering the question before I could ask it.

“I’m never sure which one is Edna B. or Edna G. and it feels weird to ask them now since I’ve known them basically my entire life. But I have a fifty/fifty chance of getting it right tonight, since I’m picking them up at one of their houses. If I get it wrong, they’ll probably tell anyone who’ll listen, since they’re the gossip queens of the town, and I’m sure they’ll say something like ‘that Rosie Harper can’t tell us apart,’ and I’ll spend the next decade being quizzed each time I see them as penance.”

She covers her mouth. “Rambling, sorry.”

“You have to have the inn ready in a month?”

She eyes me. “That’s what you took from that? Yes. We have a fall festival in October. All my rooms are booked, and they have to be done by then.”

“So, then why would you say yes to taking the—what did you call them?”

“The Ednas,” she says.

“Right. Why would you agree to take them to the game if you don’t have time?”

She blinks again. That same look from before.