CHAPTER TWO
Ryan

The inn is worse than the photos. It’s not a surprise though. It never is. Clients always send optimistic angles. The ones that catch the good light and crop out the water damage, but standing in the lobby with the late afternoon sun coming through the grimy front windows, I can see exactly how much the photos were lying and just how much I’d missed.

The ceiling medallion above the entry chandelier has a crack running northeast to southwest that somebody filled with the wrong compound and painted over twice. The baseboards on the east wall have separated from the plaster. There’s moisture, probably a slow leak in the wall cavity, could be the upstairs bath, could be the roof line, could be both. The staircase is sound, mostly, but whoever refinished it last did it in a hurry and the grain is rising on three of the treads.

I stand in the middle of the lobby with my tablet and document everything.

This is what I do. I find what’s wrong and I make a plan. I’ve made a good life for myself over the last ten years at a firm in Nashville.

My project management board is full of notes, labels and tags by the time my grandfather finds me.

“Thought I heard someone in here,” he says from the doorway. He’s in his usual attire. Jeans and a flannel button down despite the mild weather, the particular kind of unbothered that only comes from living in the same place for fifty years. He looks at the lobby the way he always looks at it. Like it still surprises him a little, even now.

“Just doing an initial assessment,” I say.

“Find anything good?”

I look at the staircase. At the millwork above the windows, still intact, still exactly what it was when someone put it there by hand a hundred years ago. “The bones of this place are stubborn and solid,” I say, which is surprising considering everything that’s been done to it—and not done to it.

He nods like that’s settled then and moves through the lobby and I can’t help but wonder how many times he’s walked that exact path over the last several decades. I lose count while trying. “Your grandma’s got supper on,” he says. “When you’re ready.”

“I’ll be a little while,” I say, biting back the guilt creeping up my throat at the thought that I let this place get this bad before coming home. I knew they were living here and I didn’t come back home to check on it. I just took their word for it when we’d talk over the phone that it was doing fine. 

Fine is subjective, I remind myself.

But this isn’t fine under any circumstances.

He pauses at the doorway to the back hall. “She’ll keep a plate warm for when you’re ready,” he adds over his shoulder before disappearing toward the kitchen. 

I go back to my project notes and the lobby goes quiet again, just the particular silence of an old building settling, the small sounds of wood and plaster doing what they do.

I take pictures of the ceiling medallion. 

The baseboards. 

The treads.

And I load them all into their respective project cards on the board with notes about what needs to be salvaged, restored or removed completely.

I don’t write down why it took me four days longer than it should have to agree to come home or what I was doing instead, which was staring at the partnership papers instead of signing them. Something wouldn’t let me put that digital pen to the screen. 

I’m hungry, I tell myself. 

That’s why my mind won’t stay focused on work. It always tries to go sideways when I’ve gone too long without a meal, which is more often than it should be because I get so involved in my work I forget to come up for air sometimes. 

That must be what’s happening now too.

Yep. 

Hungry.

That’s it.

My grandma is in the back sitting room when I come through, exactly where she always is at this hour in the wingback chair by the window with whatever she’s reading. The lamp casts a warm circle of light against her features. 

She looks up when I come in and her face shifts into a slight smile. “Sit.”

I sit. The sofa is the same sofa. Everything in this room is the same. The lamp, the rug, even the particular smell of it that’s something like old wood and mold. I haven’t been in this room for a decade, but it feels like I never left.

She looks at me over her reading glasses.

“Have you eaten?”

I shake my head.

“Are you hungry?”

I nod.

She takes her glasses off and sets them on the side table as she goes to the kitchen without another word. I lean back on the sofa and look at the ceiling. It’s clean. No cracks. She would not have tolerated cracks. Through the window the Square is partially visible. Something weird happens in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what that means.

My great great grandfather built this house to face the Town Square. I don’t know why that feels significant today.

My grandmother comes back with a sandwich on a plate, but her sandwiches aren’t like the ones I get back in the city. “Grandma’s homemade bread?” I ask, feeling my stomach rumble in response to the smell of the bread mixing with my grandpa’s smoked turkey.

“Just the way you like it,” she says, placing it on the cushion next to me without comment. 

She goes back to her chair, puts her glasses back on and reopens her book and I pick up the sandwich and shove it in my mouth.

Outside, the Square holds its position in the window. I’m not going to try to unravel why it keeps pulling my attention back to it and decide to just focus on my sandwich instead.

I glance at my phone and see two unread messages from the firm about the partner timeline. 

Nope. I’m not going to deal with that today either.

Instead, I reopen the project management board on my tablet where the assessment list is getting longer. “The ceiling medallion in the lobby needs to be redone,” I say, mostly to have something to say.

My grandmother turns a page. “I know,” she says. “Your grandfather keeps meaning to get to it.”

“I think we should have it professionally refinished to make sure it maintains its historical integrity.”

She shakes her head at that. “We can’t afford professionals doing everything.”

“I know,” I say, taking another bite. “I’ve got that part handled.”

“You’re not pouring your savings into this place,” she says, putting her book down on her lap and glaring at me over the rims of her wireframe glasses.

I hold my hands up in defense. “Just calling in a few professional favors. That’s it.”

She holds her gaze, waiting to see if I break. That’s how she’s always been able to tell when one of us kids was lying. If we could hold eye contact then we were considered to be honest and upstanding youth. If we glanced away… well, then we were liars and there would be consequences.

My eyes are stinging but I refuse to let myself blink.

Finally, she gives in and goes back to her book. “I mean it, Ryan. We can handle things ourselves.”

I glance around the room, taking in the water damage and peeling paint. “I know.”

She doesn’t look up from her book, which means that lie got past her.

The house settles around me, unimpressed.

I go back to eating the sandwich and avoiding the question in my mind. Why did I let it get this bad before coming home?