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Charlotte sat at the edge of Van’s unmade bed. “You already know Grandma and I don’t get along.” She hoped that would be the end of it, that Van would take that information and be done with it.
Instead, Van pushed it. “But you never really told me or Collin why. We always wondered, you know? Like, every summer we came out to White Plains, Grandma kept her distance. It was always so weird.”
“It must have felt terrible for you,” Charlotte whispered. “Grandchildren should feel loved and supported by their grandparents.”
“Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma gave us all the love we really needed,” Van remembered. “And it was okay. We always had a brilliant time here. It was just strange, you know?” She pressed her lips together and continued to stare out the window. “Now that I have a baby, I’m just thinking of all the possible ways I’ll mess up as a parent. I’m already failing in a million small ways. But I just can’t imagine avoiding Ethan like the plague, the way Louise avoids you. And I want to know about what happened, if only so I can avoid making the same mistake. If we don’t learn about the past, we’re doomed to repeat it. Right?”
Charlotte’s heart cracked at the edges. Her daughter was wise beyond her years.
“Your grandmother felt very disrespected by my life choices,” Charlotte offered finally, hoping that would be enough.
“But it’s not like you ever did anything that crazy,” Van tried to joke. “You don’t have any tattoos. You went to college. You had both Collin and I when you were married, for goodness’ sake. I mean, you’re basically boring.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You know what I mean.” Van laughed. “I’m tired, and not everything is coming out the way I want it to.”
Charlotte touched her daughter’s shoulder. Sometimes, she felt as though her love for Van had tripled in size since Ethan’s birth, and that love threatened to drown her.
“Why don’t you get some more sleep, honey?” Charlotte suggested. “You need to heal up and rest.”
Van frowned, and a little wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. She seemed to weigh up whether she wanted to push this conversation further. Maybe she wanted to fight until Charlotte admitted what had happened twenty-eight years ago. But she collapsed at the edge of the bed and rolled into a ball.
“This isn’t over,” she threatened in a soft voice, shaking her finger.
“I love you, sweetie,” Charlotte said, giving her hand a squeeze before she left the room. “Sleep well.”
ChapterEight
Charlie returned to the snow-capped cabin that afternoon, his stomach bulging against the waistband of his jeans, heavy with the biggest and most delicious, soul-affirming breakfast he’d eaten in many years. The strange incident with the waitress still gave him pause. He had a funny instinct to take his phone off of Airplane Mode and text someone back in Manhattan about it. “Aren’t small-town people crazy?” he might write. “I never know what they’ll do next.”
But just as soon as he thought it, Charlie was soured with the fact that he had no idea who he would send that text to. His assistant, Timothy? Had he ever seen Timothy laugh? No, he wasn’t sure he had. Beyond Timothy, however, Charlie didn’t have much in the way of friends. He’d sequestered himself off from “real life” over the years, only attending social functions he was required to, ones that Timothy explained advanced his career.
What had it been like to have a best friend to share things with? Charlie racked his mind, searching for memories. There had been Jason Swartz back in high school, a guy with black curly hair and thick-rimmed glasses, with whom Charlie had discussed his fascination with the female gender. Neither of them had understood girls in the slightest, and they’d approached the concept of dating as though it were a difficult exam in school. Charlie wished he could remember the last joke he and Jason had shared. Always, in relationships that had faded, there had been a “last conversation,” a “last word.” Yet it was probably always so menial and boring, a last gasp of something that had already died.
Of course, Charlie could remember every single thing he and Sarah had said to one another in their final conversation. That was a blessing and a cursing.
Charlie spent the afternoon re-drawing the designs for the Cherry Inn. After he finalized them, he fed the grease-speckled pages to the fire and watched them turn to ash. He filled a glass with whiskey and sat in the warm glow of the fireplace, watching the snow outside. To distract himself, he imagined Charlotte’s face when he showed her the designs for the Cherry Inn. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and he imagined her eyes widening, her plump lips parting with surprise as she inspected his precise drawings. He imagined her locking her gaze with his and breathing, “I can’t believe this. They’re sensational. You’re a real artist.”
Charlie shook with laughter at himself. He’d grown accustomed to people saying things like this to him, to endless praise. Manhattanites begged him to flip their apartments and townhouses; they ached for him to inspect their stepson’s dying restaurant or their grandmother’s old, haunted cinema in Queens. “Use that artistic touch to bring it into the twenty-first century, Charlie,” they begged. “Please.”
But Charlotte didn’t know what talent she’d stumbled into in Rudy’s bar. She didn’t know that the single-greatest mind of property development had offered to electrify the Cherry Inn and bring it back to life.
The morning after the incident at the diner, Charlie rolled up his plans for the Cherry Inn, drank a second cup of coffee, put on his snow boots, and strode into the winter wonderland outside his door. A cardinal landed on a branch above him, a flitting red dot, and it twittered as he walked past. He filled his lungs with frigid air, and his skin tightened over his cheeks. If everything panned out, perhaps he could book the cabin for another six months, build back up the Cherry Inn, and reveal it to the world by summertime. Perhaps, from this cabin in the woods, he could watch winter melt into a gorgeous spring; he could smell the blooms as they swelled beneath a warming sun.
Charlotte was expecting him. She opened the front door of the Cherry Inn as he bucked up the front steps. Her eyes were heavy with questions.
“Morning,” she said. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
Charlie said sure. She led him into the living room of the old inn, where she’d removed a white sheet from an ornate green couch. She urged him to sit down, then disappeared through the back door to fetch two mugs of coffee from the back apartment. She set the mugs on the coffee table before them and eyed the cylinder in Charlie’s hands, in which he’d placed the plans for the Cherry Inn.
“How is it going with the new baby?” Charlie asked, surprising himself. He wasn’t accustomed to wanting to make small talk.
“Oh, you know. We’re just overwhelmed with love for him.”
Charlie smiled. “Is this your first grandchild?”
“I have two granddaughters,” Charlotte explained, “but they live in California.”
