CHAPTER FOUR
RYAN

Marcus has been talking for thirteen minutes and I’ve retained about four of them because Jake’s crew fired up the compressor in the east corridor and now the entire building sounds like it’s vibrating loose from the foundation, which based on my preliminary assessment might be exactly what’s happening. I duck out through the back door, leaning against the wood porch railing to hear better.

“… the obvious choice for Meridian,” Marcus is saying. “You know that.” Meridian the firm I work for and the company currently tasked with a ten story complex of luxury condos in the heart of Nashville. It’s a flagship project for the new contract the partners have entered with a music label that wants to provide housing for their artists when they require them back in the city. That’s not something we hand to just anyone. You know that.”

“I know.” I sigh.

“Which means we need you back. Present. In the building and at the table. Not… off in Nowhere, USA managing a bed and breakfast renovation.”

“It’s my family’s inn.”

“Ryan, we need a return date.”

“Eight weeks, max,” I say.

Marcus sighs into the phone. “The board meets next week. I don’t have to tell you how they’ll feel about you being gone for eight weeks.”

I drag one hand down my face and groan into the phone’s speaker. “Tell them I’m managing a family situation.”

“That’s not going to fly,” he scoffs through the speaker. “Not when the partnership is on the line.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, Marcus.”

“Patterson’s already circling Meridian.”

“Patterson can circle all he wants.”

“Ryan—”

“I’ve been at that firm for ten years, Marcus. Ten years. Patterson’s been there for what? Three?”

“Three and a half,” he reminds me.

“And he still can’t even make a cup of coffee in the break room without asking me how to do it.”

Marcus barks out a loud guffaw at that because he knows I’m right.

“By the way,” I add, “the fact you know exactly how long he’s been with the firm off the top of his head is genuinely depressing.” 

“You know what would be actually depressing?” he asks and I already don’t like his tone.

“What?” I ask but it’s really more of a grunt than an actual word.

“If Patterson became the favorite to make partner because he shows up for Meridian on time and under budget.”

I drag a hand through my hair, glancing at the back wall of the inn and taking in the full scope of what’s in front of me. “Just buy me some time, Marcus.”

“I can give you until they meet next week,” he says. “But that’s the best I can do.”

I let out a long exhale that doesn’t do much to release the tension building in my shoulders and crawling up my neck.

“Thank you, Marcus,” I groan, dragging out the sounds for as long as possible. “That’s something.”

“That’s what I’ve got. Don’t waste it.” I reach for the screen to end the call but before I can tap the button, he continues. “And Ryan? For what it’s worth, I hope the trip back home is worth it.”

He hangs up and the line goes dead. I holster my phone on my belt clip and lean against the railing of staring out at the valley, just like I did every single night for as long as I can remember, until I left for college. It’s beautiful. Amber and copper hues rolling out past the tree line like the sky is showing off. How did I let myself forget it looked like this?

I let the back door close harder than necessary behind me and the sound of the wood hitting against the door trim echoes in a way that makes me scoot checking for woodrot around the doors and windows higher up on my to-do list and slide into a stool at the breakfast bar.

My project board is open on my worksite laptop, which looks like it could be run over by a tank and still survive. The timeline I built this morning—clean, sequenced, color-coded, the kind of thing my grandparents would call obsessive and I call thorough—is already wrong and I haven’t even opened a wall yet. I’m staring at it, running the math on where I can cut without it showing, when the front door opens and my mother’s voice fills the lobby

“Ryan.” She appears in the doorway still in her coat, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, already looking at the ceiling with the same surprise and disappointment I had when I saw it a few days ago. “The molding above the front windows—”

“They’re on the list.” I make my way across the room, wrapping her in a hug. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, honey…” she says, “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Yep,” I agree, stepping back to give her a full view into the room. “It’s all on the list.”

“Did I see water damag—”

“Mom.” I grip her face with both hands, forcing her to look at me. “The list… It’s a big one.”

“Where are your grandparents?” she asks, pulling back from the hug and glancing around to take in the state of the inn as a whole. 

“Grandma’s at her book club meeting. Apparently it was a real doozy this week,” I smirk  at that remembering her face when she closed the book last night. “And Grandpa’s gone to the hardware store. He should be back any minute.”

She nods, still scanning the surroundings and taking it all in. “It’s worse than they let on. I had no idea…” her words trail off as her gaze bounces around the room.

My father comes in behind her, hands in his pockets, moving at the unhurried speed of a man who has never once in his life sent a follow-up email. He looks at the lobby the way he looks at everything, like he’s waiting for the subject to show its hand. At this point it feels like the inn is folding. “How’s it coming?” he asks.

“Making progress.”

He nods once, like that settles it and makes his way up the stairs to the guest rooms. 

My mother moves into the lobby without another word still wearing her coat, letting her fingers linger on the walls. The last time she was actually inside this building my grandmother still had the original wallpaper up and my grandfather was the one answering the door. She’s doing the math the same way I did when I walked in, noticing the gap between memory and reality, the quiet accounting of what a few years of FaceTime and holiday visits at my parents house on the west coast mixed with they said it was fine actually cost.

I follow my dad up the staircase. He stops and puts his hand on the railing. “Your great grandfather milled this himself,” he says.

“I know.”

“Twenty-six years old.” He runs his thumb along the curve of the newel post, slow. “Didn’t have the money to hire it out so he just figured it out.”

I look at the railing.

Decades of hands have worn the finish away in all the places our family and their guests have held on. The wood underneath is still solid and completely unbothered by everything that’s been done or not done to it while nobody was paying attention.

While I wasn’t paying attention.

My father claps me on the shoulder once. “It’s good to have us all back together again,” he says, then picks up the suitcases he’d set on the stairs at his feet. “I’m going to start getting unpacked.” His boots fall slow and steady over the oak treads my great grandfather built at twenty-six with zero experience and no margin for error.

I watch him go and think about the life I’ve built for myself and how different it is from my family’s legacy.

Ten years.

Ten years of projects that don’t require any explanation about where you came from or what your grandfather built with his hands. A version of myself constructed entirely on its own terms in an industry that rewards what it sees and doesn’t ask what it cost. No context required. And nothing we build will last anywhere near as long as this staircase railing that’s been holding people up for generations just because one man didn’t have the luxury of handing the job over to someone else.

But I built a life for myself.

That was the whole point, wasn’t it?

To break away and do my own thing. To prove myself. The partnership is the proof it worked and it’s one board meeting away.

I look at the railing.

My grandfather never once left to prove he could make a life somewhere else because it never occurred to him that he needed to.

Nope. I’m not going to think about that right now.

I go back to my laptop and pull up the project board, adding a note under the railing entry. Do not replace. Refinish only.

I stare at that last word longer than necessary.

Down the hall my mother has found the damaged baseboards and is making her feelings about them known, but I can’t make out her words. Her voice has a way of moving through the inn, like the building has been waiting on her specifically to come home and is glad she’s finally here even if she’s approximately four years late.

I close the laptop to go find her before she starts knocking holes in walls that aren’t on the list.