Page 30 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
“I don’t need help. I’m fine.” Putting both feet on the ladder again, I looked down at him. “Did you come in because you need something, or just to check on me?”
He looked up at me without answering; I could tell something was bothering him. “Scoot,” I said, “I’m coming down.” Wyatt stepped warily back, and I set my cleaning supplies on the ladder’s shelf and worked my way back to the floor.
“What’s up?” I asked.
It took him a second or two, but he finally asked, “Are you thinking about selling?”
Ah. Despite the hostility of our encounter with Darryl Manfred, Wyatt hadn’t discounted the idea that there was an offer already on the table.
I hadn’t, either. Obviously I had no intention of selling to that jerk, but I sure was thinking about all the things I’d learned in that brief exchange with him. That my mother had been working on selling when she’d died. That the mayor had taken the time and expense to hire an investigator to find me, even though there was somebody interested in buying the place and I’d been gone so long. Maybe they couldn’t have sold without making an effort to find me—I was fairly well versed in the probate laws of Arkansas, but I had no idea about California.
Still, Manfred was perched in my brain like a vulture in a tree, waiting to swoop down and feed.
I tugged on Wyatt’s sleeve. “Come sit with me.”
We sat on the sofa. I turned to sit sideways and faced him. “There is nothing I can imagine that would induce me to sell even a used piece of toilet paper to that man.”
“No, I know. He’s terrible. And rude doesn’t cut it—he was ... it was like he thoughtwewere trespassing onhisproperty.”
I nodded. “I think that’s pretty much what he thought—because we got in the way of his done deal. He’d have to offer a billion dollars for me to even stop to think about selling to him.”
“But are you thinking about selling to anyone?”
I chose my words carefully. “The other night, when we were at Hidden Beach, you told me you didn’t ever want to leave here. I told you we won’t, and I meant that. As long as you want to stay here, we will stay.”
He relaxed a little and nodded, but he said, “I’m glad. But it sounds like a hedge. I don’t know why. Just a feeling, I guess.”
“It’s not a hedge, bud. I think you’re sensing that to me, it’s not a perfectly iron-clad decision for either of us.”
“But I said—”
“I know what you said. And I know you mean it. But we’ve only been here about a week. You haven’t started school yet, we don’t have this place ready for business yet, we haven’t settled in yet. I’m just leaving room for the chance that when wearesettled, we might not like it as much as we think right now. We might change our minds.”
“Doyoulike being here now?”
I don’t know if Wyatt had any idea how complicated that question was. I took the time to devise an honest answer, though, complicated as it was. “I think ... I think I like it better than I thought I would. I think I was expecting to be greeted by an angry mob, and I’ve been surprised so far that people have been either kind or uninterested in me.”
“Mr. Mendoza is interested in you,” Wyatt asserted.
While my heart did a little tap dance on the inside, on the outside I rolled my eyes. “Maybe. But it’s not a factor.”
Wyatt’s smile told me this talk was easing his mind. “You’ve got a date with him tomorrow night. I think that means he’s interested, Mom.”
“Okay, buddy. Let’s just not make more of that than it is. It’s just dinner.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, we are here as long as you want to be here. I mean that. If Bluster is where you want to put down roots, we will getto digging. But I’m not sure if that means we’ll keep the Sea-Mist. I have to be able to get it going again and make it earn enough to keep us secureandpay for your college. There’s a lot of rebuilding we have to do, and I don’t know yet if running this place is the best way to rebuild, or if selling it, getting a little place in town, and going back to teaching is better.”
“You said you never wanted to teach again.”
“That would have been true if we’d stayed in Little Rock. I think I wouldn’t be a teacher in a red state right now even if the alternative was homelessness. California is different. I wouldn’t have been fired for teaching James Baldwin in California. So it’s an option if we can’t afford to get this place going again—if I could find a position in a school close enough, anyway.” That was too far off for me to worry about while I had so many much closer worries.
“Okay. I hope we can make the Sea-Mist work. I like this place. It’s cool. And the woods are so pretty.”
“I like it, too. It’s still a little bit haunted to me, with all the stuff from when I was a kid, but I like the idea of making it ours.” I put my arm around him. “Feel better?”
He rested his head on my shoulder. “Yeah. That guy made me mad. And scared, too. He acted like he hated us.”
