AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Anyway, last I heard, she married some foreign dignitary who’s given her a couple of kids and a house on the French Riviera. Exactly the life she always dreamed of having.
I pick up the pace and hurry into my office, dropping down into my chair to pull up the check-ins. Normally, I let front desk management handle all of this, but it’s something I made myself learn in case of emergencies. Or when some pissed-off guest insists that I handle whatever has gone wrong. I’m the owner, but mostly, I hover in the background like a ghost with a wrench, fixing random crap that goes wrong but going unnoticed by most guests.
It’s easier than trying to make my brain focus on things it doesn’t want to focus on.
But the storm has me worried, so I quickly open up the spreadsheet. It takes me three times longer than someone else to process the words and numbers on the screen, but eventually, I can see that a group of four are checking in: a couple in the Pine suite, then two smaller rooms on the second floor, and that does present a problem considering the plumbing.
The bottom floor is entirely occupied, which is pretty common since there are only six available suites, but all of them are leaving today.
Housekeeping will be done by four, so there’s time to put the new guests down there… so long as they don’t decide to check in early. But the pipes are also the least of my concerns if I factor in the impending monsoon that’s supposed to last all weekend.
I tap my chin and sigh. It’d be tricky to cancel their reservations on such short notice. If the guests are city snobs, they’ll likely pitch a fit about the situation, especially since there’s no guarantee the storm will actually hit us. It’s not unusual for the weather reports to be entirely wrong, and I can’t afford to lose business like that.
But if they’re here and we do get hit and end up losing power…
Rock and a hard place, my granddad always used to say, and as a business owner, I get that now more than ever.
Rubbing my hands down my face, I sit back and decide to just let them check in. Maybe the universe will be kind and we won’t lose power and the roads won’t wash out.
Grabbing my desk phone, I quickly dial down to the front and wait for an answer.
It rings six times before Zara—my godsend and manager—picks up. “Front Desk.”
“Code creosote,” I tell her.
She sighs at my ridiculous code system that I will die before I change. Creosote smells like rain, and my brain just happens to enjoy that connection—sue me. “Yeah, I’m aware. Thanks.”
Her tone is so dry it makes me smile. “I’m keeping an eye on things, but I want us down to a skeleton crew just in case, and I need you to start canceling any check-ins we have between tomorrow and Sunday.”
“I have a group of four checking in this afternoon,” she informs me. “Zara’s getting the room keys coded.”
I guess it was too much to hope for some random crisis to cancel their plans. “That’s fine. Right now, there’s a good chance the storm is slowing, so we can encourage them to take off before it hits.”
She lets out an unhappy hum because she knows better than to toy with the weather. Hell, so do I, but it’s all we’ve got. “Who do you want me to keep?”
I drum my fingers on the desk as I consider who can afford to be stuck here for however long. “Miguel,” I say. He’s not only my best friend, but he’s our most skilled riding instructor. He’s also a certified EMT. He spent seven years working search and rescue, and he’s always happy to be on hand when shit starts to get dicey. “And René, obviously,” I add. He’s our head chef and one of the few who don’t mind working the line when we’re low on staff. He’s also Miguel’s husband, and I think they’ll both appreciate staying together. They don’t live at the lodge, but they have staff rooms for when the roads are too bad to travel back to town.
“Count me out,” Zara says. “My kid has a thing, so I’m leaving right after I’m done with this group. Iris says she can probably stay.”
It’s just as well. We won’t need a full crew at the desk. I list off a handful of more people who have overnight availability. “Tell Orson to make sure all the staff rooms are ready, then to get out to those generators. I’ll send a message to everyone else and make sure they all get on the road by tomorrow morning.”
“You got it,” she tells me, and then the line goes dead like it always does.
I sit and enjoy the silence for a few moments before shaking the computer mouse and waiting for the screen to come back on. I stare at the four names on the list: Flor and Sage Goldmann, Eden Rhodes, Montgomery Shephard.
They sound like two couples. Their surnames also sound very rich, like they’d fit in exactly with my family. Like they could sit and have a formal dinner with my mother and father and not miss a beat the way I always did.
And hell, I can’t really complain. It’s those people who keep my little lodge afloat during the off-season when there’s nothing to do except building repairs and long afternoon hikes. But every now and again, it feels isolating and lonely to know that I exist on the periphery of these people.
I could never fit in with them, so I made myself fit in elsewhere. And yet, even here, I’m still sort of a square peg in a round hole, thanks to my TBI and the accommodations I need at times to function.
And sure, I slip on a mask, and hardly anyone notices, but I do. Some days it feels more like slamming down a wall between me and the rest of the world than a mask I can easily remove. But I’m always a little too aware when someone looks at me twice when I do something a little odd.
So, yeah, maybe I’m an island or whatever.
Which could be worse, but it also could be a lot better.
