Uncle Bill’s hotel wasn’t fancy, but it was very good at being itself. Charm, most people called it. Forty-eight rooms, plus the three for staff. Tasty to-go breakfast boxes for all the birders to grab on their way out the door. A library of bird guides and binoculars and waterproof outerwear for residents to check out. Local artwork in every room; extra towels because if people weren’t seeking migratory flocks they were going to the beaches; cool blues and greens throughout.
We’d all worked there, off and on, growing up. Especially Cole and me, when I was repaying Bill for the abortion and we were saving for Cole’s top surgery. My favorite gigs were behind the scenes, though everyone had to be customer-facing to some extent. For this winter, Bill had me coordinating tours, taking a few front desk shifts, and updating the website to look a lot less like 2004 got lost in it.
It suited me at least as well as my last job, which had been all remote and too overloaded with Zoom meetings. The firm liked me enough to offer a permanent position as my contract expired, which I felt a bit bad rejecting out of hand. But at least there, no one in my family was pulling out guilt tactics to get me to accept.
Uncle Bill was getting downright ruthless. “Margo, sweet girl, do you know how much the guests are raving about you?” he asked as I opened his office door. He was leaning back in his chair, riffling through a stack of papers. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and I noticed the rings under his eyes. They’d been getting deeper lately, and his smiles a little tighter. “I printed the comments for you.”
I laughed. “I can read them online.”
“Well, I like having the paper. Maxima gave me an album to paste them in.”
“Aunt Max boasted at Thanksgiving about offloading all her old scrapbooking supplies on you. You know she’s decluttering.”
He deflated a tad, and set down the printouts. “Well. I still like them.”
“And I appreciate the kudos.”
“Thing is, sweet girl, you’re good for this place. And I’m not getting any younger.”
“As your gullibility with Maxima proves.”
He blew a raspberry at me. “Stop making out like I’m senile. I’m trying to compliment you.”
I sat opposite him and gave him my best ‘not having it’ face. “You’re trying to butter me up so I agree to train up and one day take over this place so you and Sam can spend your days scrapbooking or something.”
“What if I am?”
“I’m not interested.”
“See, you keep saying that, but what if you just don’t realize yet that you are? Your dad says you don’t have a plan for after migration season. Why not stay here, then?”
I rolled my eyes. “The family’s been trying to get me to move home for years. I don’t know how many more ways I can tell you to stop ganging up to protect me like I’m a bird with a broken wing.”
“Ganging up is a sign of love and family, Margo.”
“Is it really love when you try to wear someone down with emotional manipulation?” I asked.
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”
“You were using every trick in the book,” I said. “The silly salary you’re paying me, the printouts, the ‘I’m not getting any younger’ card. Come on, Uncle Bill, I’m not falling for it.”
“All right, all right,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You got me. But that doesn’t change the fact that we could really use your help around here. And why not?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s not my dream?”
“What is your dream, Margo? What is your big plan?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
And the flash I had of Karl’s face was no help. I hadn’t called him yet. Hadn’t decided exactly what I was going to do there. I mean, have more great sex, sure. That’s why his number was in my phone before I even pulled away from his curb Thursday.
But fun as he was, Karl wasn’t part of my big plan, any more than Uncle Bill’s hotel was.
Or more accurately, I didn’t have a big plan. Not one that I could point to and say, “That. That’s my dream. That’s what I want to do with my life.”
Not that I needed one. I was twenty-four. Sure, I had peers who knew what they wanted to be, had known for years. And good for them, but that wasn’t me. I worked jobs I didn’t love while exploring how I wanted my adult life to go. Plenty of people did the same. Nothing wrong with going through the motions, when the motions were my choice.
But now? I chose to search out the things I loved. For my own dream.
Because if I didn’t, I knew how easily I might float into a career like the one at the hotel, settle into some Rockport-like place, and maybe even sink into a relationship with someone like Karl.
Whatever my plan was, drifting into someone else’s idea for me wasn’t it.
“I don’t know what my dream is,” I told him. “But I’m working on it. Working on it is what I want to do.”
“And in the meantime, you’re just going to keep saying no to me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. I’m sorry, Uncle Bill. But no.”
He thumbed the printouts and sighed. “Oh, fine. Search for your passion. Maybe I can talk your little sister into taking over my hospitality empire.”
I grinned as I stood. “Let her finish college first, though, yeah?”
He made a noncommittal noise as I left. I’d drop a warning to Emmeline when she came back for Christmas break, but meanwhile? I was going back to Project: Journey. Destinations were all well and good, but for me, I had to enjoy getting there.