Page 24 of The Promise Of You

He never came back.

I met with vendors and restaurant owners who were kind enough to show me how they operate, so I’m not too green when I get to Uncle Kevin’s restaurant.

Now it’s time to go, and as I’m driving away, I blink back the tears threatening to fall again at the thought of everything I had that one night and lost right away.

Boston fades away in my rearview mirror, and with it, any chance of seeing him again. He truly is gone from my life forever.

It’s time for me to put that away and to move forward.

Like Fiona said when I called her to tell her (most of) what happened, rebounds aren’t meant to last.

He was the perfect rebound from Tucker. Time to move on.

Breathe in, breathe out. I turn my mind to what awaits me in Emerald Creek.

First impressions are everything, and I don’t want my uncle’s staff to realize immediately that until a few days ago I’d never set foot in the kitchen of a restaurant or behind a bar. So I mentally review the vocabulary I recently learned and put myself in the shoes of a restaurant owner.

Aunt Dawn can say all she wants that it’s a numbers’ game; I know for a fact that every business is a people’s game.

After two hours on the interstate, nondescript malls and highways and billboards disappear, giving way to rolling hills and farm stands and horses and cows grazing lazily.

I stop at Aunt Dawn’s to reattach my U-Haul and get the keys to the restaurant and the cottage.

“I haven’t been there in years,” Aunt Dawn tells me over coffee and pie. “I hope the cottage isn’t too dusty. I don’t know if your Uncle Kevin paid much attention to it. It’s only about an hour drive from here, so he barely used it at all. Only in case of a bad storm on a late night. He didn’t want me to fuss over it.”

“Don’t worry about that, Aunt Dawn. I’ll be fine.”

“And don’t let that landlord get to you, honey. He was Kevin’s bane.”

“How so?”

She turns her coffee cup in between her hands. “Kevin never really said. At some point the building was on the market, your father was thinking of buying it as an investment, but there was some funny business, and it was that man who got it instead. After the sale, it got so bad that Kevin was concerned he might lose the lease, but ’parently, the lawyer did a good job, and that lease wasn’t easy to break. But he and Kevin never saw eye to eye. There was always something, he would never say what. But I could tell it was eating at Kevin.” She stops worrying her coffee mug to put a hand on my arm. “That man all but killed my Kevin with his own two hands.” Her eyes water.

“What—what do you mean?” I ask under my breath.

“Stress, honey. Uncle Kevin was under a lot of stress, I could tell. He kept saying everything was fine, but it wasn’t. Now, the restaurant is doing fantastic, so what else could be eating at him? The landlord. That man caused trouble for years and years. It never got better. But recently, it got worse. Much worse. I bet you it had something to do with the lease renewal.”

Shoot. The lease is up for renewal? What else did she forget to tell me? “Aunt Dawn, the lease is a pretty important part of the sale you’re planning.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, nodding. “Careful with the pub owner.”

I scoop the last of the pie crumbs and ask, “What pub owner?”

“The landlord! He opened the pub right next door to Uncle Kevin’s restaurant.”

“Wait—the landlord opened a pub right next to Uncle Kevin’s restaurant?”

“He did. Caused your uncle to lose a lot of business. Used to be something or other. A garage, maybe? Or a store. I don’t remember anymore.”

A pub next door wouldn’t necessarily harm a restaurant. If the style and the price point are different, they could actually benefit from each other’s presence. But Aunt Dawn is saying it caused Uncle Kevin to lose a lot of business, and I have no reason to doubt her. I guess I’ll find out once I get to Emerald Creek. “What else did Uncle Kevin say about this man?” I’m more concerned about having a landlord in my face all day.

“There was always something. The garbage wasn’t disposed of right. Something about window boxes.” She fidgets. “And then he stole his chef.”

“He what?”

She nods. “The chef before this one went to work for the pub. Would you believe it?”

Hmm. Well that could account for actual competition. If the chef moved next door, he could have brought customers with him. “Why would he do that?”

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