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The first day after Tyler had left Olivia, Olivia had walked silently through the house they’d once shared as though it were a tomb, and she was sent there to mourn the dead. There, the couch that they once cuddled on through the night as they had flicked through television shows and squabbled over which move to watch; there, where they had watched Chelsea take her first steps and stagger across the carpet; there, where they’d kissed one another over and over, good morning and good night as the days had passed them by. Later, the tomb had eventually returned to its normal state — just another house, a space she and Chelsea had shared. It had lost its sorrows; its memories had faded.
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THE HESSON HOUSE NOW echoed with ghosts, just as Olivia and Tyler’s house had. Olivia gripped Chelsea’s hand hard as she blinked out through the now completely open foyer, where the wind had barreled through the front door and broken through even the shields. Water rushed up from the waterline and made the parking lot a sort of stream. This meant that the water had completely obliterated the front beach restaurant area and probably the boathouse along with it. Olivia and Chelsea aligned their stride and marched into the open area of the porch that swung out toward the parking lot, careful to watch for glass beneath them.
The glorious, ancient trees that lined the property had taken a real hit. Many of them remained, with their limbs strewn out along the ground as the water swerved around them. Some others had been ripped up from the ground and cast to the side, like trash.
“Oh no. No, no, no.” Olivia muttered to herself, knowing just how un-rational she sounded yet unclear on how to make herself calm.
“It’s okay, Mom. We’re all okay.” Chelsea’s words were somber yet clear.
The waters trickled around the vehicles, cutting up about halfway up the tires. Tony’s big pickup truck seemed generally unaffected. He would maybe be a blessing yet again, as perhaps he could help drive some of the guests to the ferry — if the ferry was cleared to take people off the island.
“There’s much more to see,” Anthony said as his eyes found Olivia’s. He beckoned for her to follow him through the foyer and then back to the dining room. Much of the dining room was still intact; apparently, their storm shields had worked properly. But when they stepped out onto the back porch, they found one-half of it ripped off and cast to the waters below, which rushed wildly around the property. The hotel now felt like a floating dock.
“This stupid porch,” Chelsea said as she bucked back, frightened. She’d broken her leg out there months before and apparently didn’t trust it with her weight. Olivia didn’t blame her.
“I went upstairs as far as I could, but a lot of that is destroyed,” Anthony said with a sigh. “Much of the top floor is obliterated. I think we should be able to get up into the guests’ rooms and retrieve their things. There shouldn’t be water damage unless the rain got into their rooms.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Olivia felt faced with a horrific realization that they would soon have to close The Hesson House, perhaps for the foreseeable future. One moment, she had been the proud new owner of The Hesson House, one of the most exclusive and beautiful boutique hotels on the east coast (according to several magazines, all of which had interviewed her since the opening in July).
But now? Now, she was just the owner of a dilapidated hurricane-destroyed sack of bricks and wood and marble. And she had thirty-seven disgruntled guests — all of whom had arrived at Martha’s Vineyard for what had been described to them as a “beautiful time of relaxation and refined living.” There was nothing refined about being trapped in a library for four hours, playing cards and listening to the wind roar outside.
It didn’t matter how much money you had. Nature cared very little about that. It cared very little about your best-laid plans.
Olivia’s lower lip quivered as she pondered what to do next. “Does your phone work yet?” she asked Anthony, who shook his head no.
She suddenly felt as though they had crashed their ship into a deserted island. It was still largely impossible to drive to town. Many of their things had been destroyed, and there was no contact with the outside world.
Olivia rushed back to the kitchen, where she found that their pantry and stockpile of food hadn’t been touched. They still didn’t have electricity, but she would ask the chefs to improvise the best they could.
“Let’s set up the dining room as beautifully as we can,” she said to Anthony and Chelsea. “It could be the final dinner at The Hesson House — maybe ever.”
“Mom...” Chelsea said as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“We don’t know. The damage is extraordinary,” Olivia said somberly. “I think it’s best to go out with a bang.”
Olivia returned to the library, where she found all of the guests, the staff members, and Tony, the dock worker standing up, eagerly waiting. When they spotted her, they all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Hello, everyone.” Olivia’s voice wavered just slightly. “It’s an unfortunate thing to report, but we don’t yet have contact with the outside world, and we need to remain here at the hotel a little while longer. The damage is — well, extensive from what we can see so far. There are no two ways around it. It’s enormous. We want to keep you downstairs in the dining room and feed you and let you drink up as long as you like. We’ll also bring pillows and blankets in for those of you who wish to sleep.”
“What about our things?” one woman cried as she lifted her hand frantically.
“Due to the storm, we’re a bit hesitant about the integrity of the house at this time,” Olivia explained. “So we don’t feel comfortable allowing you to go into your rooms. We can, of course, go up and retrieve anything you might need. Anything of real importance.”
The guests exchanged worried glances. Olivia had the overwhelming sensation that they blamed her for the storm — that it had been up to her to keep it at bay, and she’d failed them. She opened the door wider and stepped to the side to allow the guests their mass exodus. As they went, their eyes turned leftward to investigate the enormous hole cut through the foyer. Their gasps were the perfect soundtrack. It really was dire, what they saw.
“Let’s all head to the dining area!” Olivia called as they wandered out. “Please, everyone, stick together. Don’t leave the premises. Please.”
One man paused and disobeyed her, right before her eyes. He cut through the foyer and peered out, then coughed. “My Porsche,” he breathed. “The water. It’s probably flooded inside.”
“You can’t think about that right now,” Olivia pleaded with him. “The water will go down soon. We’re on a hill. It will retreat back to the ocean where it belongs.”
“That Porsche is my life,” the man told her as his broad shoulders rounded downward.
Olivia yearned to say something pointed here — something like, “I hope your wife knows your car is your entire life.” But she kept that at bay, thank goodness.
“Please, sir, can I ask you to head to the dining area with everyone else? We’ll know more very soon.”
The man looked at her with the cruelest expression she’d ever experienced, then sauntered in after the other guests, grumbling to himself. Probably, he had a choice word or two for Olivia. Probably, she’d read about it in a Google review later. Great.
By some sort of grace of God, the piano, located just on the other side of the foyer, between the library and the dining area, seemed untouched. Olivia placed her fingers delicately on the keys and then created a chord, then another. Her heart surged. When she lifted her eyes toward Chelsea, Chelsea beamed and hustled toward the keys.
“I’ll play something,” she said.
“Really? I didn’t think you’d played in years.”
“I’ve been practicing in New York,” Chelsea told her. “There’s a piano in the restaurant, and I play after I’ve finished my duties for the night or before the guests arrive for the first dinner wave.”
Chelsea sat at the piano as though she’d performed that very action every day of her life. She wagged her eyebrows, showing off and then churned into an old Billy Joel tune, aptly named “Piano Man.”
“Thank you,” Olivia breathed, although Chelsea couldn’t hear her any longer.
The ambiance shifted considerably. The guests sat at the round tables in the dining room, frequently pairing up with other guests, many of whom they hadn’t known previously. There was an air of having survived something, a great catastrophe, and exhausted laughter filled the air. A young woman toward the far end of the dining room began to sing the lyrics of “Piano Man,” and several others joined in for a sing-along.
“Sing us a song, you’re the piano man!” they cried. “Sing us a song tonight. For we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling all right.”
The staff of The Hesson House began to rush from the kitchen with bottles of wine and glistening wine glasses, which had miraculously survived the storm. Candles had been lit; still more were brought in from storage. Despite the darkness of this post-storm, everything was suddenly illuminated. Anthony’s strong arms wrapped around Olivia’s waist, and he held her like that, as though she might fly away along with the tree limbs, and swayed with her in time to the music. Slowly, as the minutes ticked on and Chelsea selected another song, the realization took hold: this was probably it. It was time to make the most out of these memories. The curtain was about to be drawn closed for an unforeseeable amount of time.
Olivia and Anthony spoke with the chef about his plans for the make-shift dinner. “We have a big selection of cured meats, smoked salmon and plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits. We’d only just baked all these baguettes, so we’ll send out bowls of sliced bread shortly, along with dips from the fridge. I’ll try to use up as much as we can — since I’m guessing...”
Olivia nodded. “You’re guessing right. Who knows when we’ll serve a meal here again?”
“I just hope we can get these people home safe by tomorrow,” her chef said. He smeared a hand across his sweaty forehead and ogled the window, where a full view of the ocean, shimmering up along the porch line, was reflected back. “And I hope phone service comes back soon, too. I need to call some family. I’m guessing you do, too.”
Olivia nodded as tears sprung to her eyes. There was no telling what the rest of the island had taken in the rush of this hurricane. Clearly, the storm had rolled on across the ocean — maybe headed for the Carolinas or down for Florida. It was done with them. It had eaten what it wanted and passed on the rest.
“But for right now, we have guests to feed. People to care for,” the chef said, echoing Olivia’s sentiments exactly. “Which is maybe the best feeling in the world. At a time like this, it’s much better to be able to give back. In any way, we can.”
“I feel exactly the same,” Olivia affirmed.
Dinner was a success. Everywhere Olivia looked, guests ate heartily — smearing homemade dips on freshly-baked bread, sipping wine, feasting on smoked salmon and fresh vegetable sandwiches, and speaking together. It felt like a great celebration. And when she knew all had been fed, Anthony convinced her to sit at one of the round tables with a few other guests and eat her fill, too. Her knees clacked together as she took her first bite. The bread and cheese together were remarkable. Olivia’s eyes closed with a mix of sorrow and joy and relief. It had been ages since a single morsel of food had passed her lips.
“What time is it, anyway?” she asked Anthony.
“It’s just past one.”
“And nobody even looks tired,” Olivia said with a laugh.
Tony the dock-worker, who sat on the other side of Chelsea, eating much more than his fill, said that this lack-of-fatigue illustrated a funny thing about people. “People can withstand so much more than they realize,” he said between bites. “It’s incredible.”
Olivia, who couldn’t be annoyed or hate anyone at that moment, nodded her head in agreement. He was right.