Page 17 of The Serendipity

But I can’t help but wonder if there could be some secret passage—another way for Willow to have entered. The Serendipity is old, and if any building were to have hidden features like that, this would be it. I feel around for hidden cracks, knock and listen for hollow sounds, and run my fingers up the wall searching for hinges.

I find nothing.

But I do make a note to contact Galentine to ask if she has blueprints of the building. Just to double-check.

After a cup of coffee—thankfully, I brought my Jura machine from the city—I find a hair tie by the front door, one Willow must have lost last night. Though I intend to throw it away, I slip it into my pocket instead, next to my mints.

I haven’t been intrigued by a woman in a long time. Maybe ever? My relationships have never been particularly engaging. They’ve been more about finding someone suitable who isn’tonlyinterested in my money.

Patricia, the last woman I dated, wasn’t intriguing so much as a woman who made sense. I was wrong, but that’s beside the point.

Willow makesnosense.

Not her appearance in my apartment. Not her flimsy explanation—or her lie. A woman who can’t be honest or who had some kind of strange temporary amnesia—another idea I had while listening to the slow hiss of air leaving my mattress—is not someone I should be thinking about.

And yet, I struggle to banish thoughts of her from my mind. The memory of the way her fingertips brushed over the back of my hand—and the reaction it elicited—makes me shiver now.

Work. Work should help. Especially when I consider the mountain of tasks at hand, starting with forging some semblanceof organization out of the mess in Galentine’s office. My office now.

Though she cleared out most of her personal items, the clutter on the large wooden desk and on every other surface makes me twitchy. The filing cabinets might as well be tables, as manila folders are stacked haphazardly on top. Galentine’s version of organization could best be described as chaotic, and it takes me an hour just to sort things into somewhat organized piles.

No order. Hardly any labels. No rhyme or reason to what I find.

One folder contains nothing but movie ticket stubs.

Another: receipts so old, the paper is soft and the ink has faded too much to read.

Yet a different folder holds a collection ofSerendipity Starnewspaper articles from the 1990s, clipped seemingly at random.

I should throw them all away, but it’s hard when I don’t know if there is some secret significance to the articles and movie stubs—perhaps something Galentine might have forgotten? I toss the unreadable receipts in the trash and place the other two folders in the very back of the bottom drawer, the tabs labeled with a series of question marks.

One of the very first major tasks will be to shift everything from physical to digital. Not only did Galentine not change the rent in the twenty-five years she owned The Serendipity, it appears she was also still using the original paper application and taking payment primarily by check.

Shudder.

Bellamy will help with organization, of course, putting systems in place here, but he’ll be heading back to New York soon. After talking with the board, we decided it would be better to have me out of sight. Bellamy will go back soon to man theship. Which means this disaster of an office falls squarely on my shoulders.

Hire someone.

I should. I will. The little voice in my head is wise, but the louder voice is stubborn, telling me to do as much of the work myself as I can. I need to learn the operations so I can improve them. It would be harder to manage someone at this point when I’m still getting my bearings. Once things are in a more manageable working order,thenI’ll hire someone.

There is another, deeper reason why I feel compelled to do the kinds of tasks I’d usually hire out. The headlines were hard to read but easier to ignore:Illegal Gaines: Like Father, Like Son?Credit to them for creative use of our last name.

But the accusations flung from reporters anytime they could get at me … those were different. One man slipped past my security as I was mobbed leaving a lunch meeting.

Before he was yanked away, he managed to spit on my tie and say, “You might still be walking free, but don’t think for a minute you’re any different from your old man.”

As I ducked into the waiting car, Bellamy squeezed my shoulder and said, “They’re just trying to get a reaction out of you.”

I knew that and still know it, but the words struck and landed.

Now, I carry them with me, less like a haunting weight and more like a torch. I refuse to be like my father. Not as a businessman; not as a man.

And if that means I sometimes make choices like this—to acquire and then be hands-on with something like The Serendipity—then I’ll dig in and do the minutiae and the hard work. Even if it’s not typical for someone like me and I’m in over my head.

I can only spend so much time in the office before it starts to feel like the walls are closing in on me. The antique desk is too large for the room, making it feel smaller than it is. It must have been assembled inside. I might have to chop it into pieces to remove it.

With my furniture delivery set for later this afternoon and an hour before Bellamy is set to arrive, I head down to the lobby alone. I’d like to assess the parlor and the library spaces to see how they might be repurposed into more functional—and profitable—areas.

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