Page 9 of The Grump Who Stole Christmas
He walked over and dumped the remains of his coffee in the sink, and then placed my mug on the counter next to it. “Can you make sure you wash this mug by hand? I don’t like it to go through the dishwasher.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice pitched dark and low. “I’ll get right on that.”
Little did he know, he was never going to see my mug again.
* * *
Forty minutes later,my hair properly tamed into a braid, my clothes on correctly, I made my way down the path that led from the main house to the inn. I could see it had already been shoveled and I suppose I had to thank Paul for that, as well.
How did I not know my dad had someone living in the house with him? He said he’d told me, but that seemed like something I would remember.
I grimaced. Unless I hadn’t been paying attention. If I’d spoken to my dad while I was at work, there was a good chance I’d been multitasking, which I knew really meant I was busy reading emails and probably not focused on what he was saying.
Damn, I could be a shitty kid to an amazing father sometimes.
The path led directly to the inn’s front steps. Like my parents’ house, it was a traditional two-story white clapboard house with a big wraparound porch with a swing where people could huddle up and take in the mountain views. There were rooms both upstairs and downstairs available in the main house, and then a series of private cabins neatly lined up behind it for a more rustic experience.
Beyond that was the big red barn that no farm should be without, but for a while now had mostly been used for storage.
The inn served a continental breakfast each morning and there were traditionally always baked goods scattered about the house where people could snuggle into a comfortable chair with a good book and a cupcake or a cookie.
Immediately after Thanksgiving, the Christmas decorations would go up and the place would like a winter wonderland nestled in the mountains of Colorado.
The Kringle Inn.
Except when I stopped to look up at the house and the decorations, I was again struck by that sense that something was off. The lights and holly were the same. The plastic elves and reindeer, also the same. It just felt a little off.
Did the place look less magical than it usually did or was I just seeing it a little more clearly now as an adult?
A very jaded, bitter adult.
“I’m not going to focus on that now. I’m here in Salt Springs to take care of my dad, make sure he gets rest, and make sure everything is running smoothly while he’s resting. Focus on what’s in front of you and not what’s behind you.”
I glanced around and was grateful no one had heard that. I climbed the steps up to the porch and opened the door. The front of the house had been converted into a lobby with a check-in desk. Currently unmanned. Also, there was no plate of chocolate chip cookies sitting on the counter.
The Kringle Inn at Christmas with no cookies?
What was happening?
Actually I knew what was happening. Rhonda quitting was what was happening.
I stepped behind the front desk and tapped on the keyboard of the computer. It prompted for a password, which I knew was MERRYCHRISTMAS, and once in I could check the software that tracked the bookings.
Instantly, I was taken aback by what I was seeing. I clicked the calendar forward a few weeks and back a few weeks and tried to make sense of it.
Confident no one was due for arrival, I went searching for my dad.
I found him in the kitchen, at least sitting, with a cup of coffee and the paper, his crutches leaning against the table.
“Dad, the inn is only barely booked and we’re only a few weeks out from Christmas. What’s happening?”
He looked up from his paper and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Maybe folks are planning on staying home this year.”
“Okay, you know that’s bad for business. Like really bad. And where are the cookies we normally have at the front desk?”
“Rhonda handled all that,” my dad said. “You know. After your mom passed.”
It was a fact that my mother had been the driving force behind the Kringle Inn’s success. It seemed like every year since the mayor had started the Salt Springs Christmas Jamboree it got a little bigger and my mother had always made sure that the Kringle Inn grew along with it as a Christmas destination.
