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Nicole called out to Luke across the kitchen of the Acadia Eatery. A speaker in the corner spat and rattled with a song Nicole had never heard in her life. Luke tried to dance to it, flailing his spatula around like a drummer with a drum stick. He was in his own world, sizzling crispy shrimp and dancing. “In his own little world,” Heather had said about this side of Luke, her eyes all day dreamy. It didn’t serve Nicole now. She rushed up to him, placed her hand on his shoulder, then promptly frightened him so much that he dropped his spatula to the ground. It clattered around as his grey eyes danced with surprise.
“Sorry, Nic,” he said, using the nickname her sisters only ever used. “I got caught up.”
“I can see that.” Nicole drew her arms across her chest and puffed herself up a bit to feel taller, stronger.
Luke nabbed the spatula and danced over to the sink. “What’s up, boss?”
“I wanted to know if you could manage the kitchen for the next few hours? Heather, Casey, and I have an appointment with the lawyer.”
The kitchen door swung open to reveal Heather, dressed to the nines in a sleek black get-up, high-heels, with her jet-black hair gleaming with the bright lights of the kitchen. Luke stopped dead in his tracks. He looked like a lost boy. He swiftly reached over, cut the music on the speaker, and wolf-whistled. Heather’s cheeks blushed crimson.
“Stop it, Luke,” she shot at him with a smile.
“You want to impress that lawyer of your Uncle Joe’s?” Luke asked.
Heather drew a strand behind her ear as her blush remained. “The girls took me shopping in Manhattan. Do I look ridiculous?”
“Bar Harbor isn’t exactly the place for chic-wear,” Luke told her with that cheeky grin of his. Without taking his eyes off of Heather, he then asked, “So you need me to take over the kitchen, Nic?”
“If you can find the strength within you,” Nicole returned sarcastically.
“What was that?” Luke asked, hardly giving her even a single ounce of his attention.
“Get back to work,” Heather declared with the arch of her eyebrow. “And try not to burn the place down while we’re away. Us Harvey girls put our trust in you. Don’t make us regret it.”
Luke snapped a hand across his forehead in salute and playfully said, “Aye aye, captain.” He then darted to the speaker, blared the music again, and returned to his wild dance groove, which seemed to help him get everything done in a timely manner.
Nicole walked out of the kitchen behind Heather and her clacking, three-hundred-dollar shoes. “That boy is smitten with you,” she said under her breath.
Heather buzzed her lips distractedly. She paused at one of the tables in the Eatery, lifted the candle holder, and gestured for a busboy to come over. “I noticed a lot of the candle holders have pathetic-looking candles,” she noted pointedly. “I think I saw a stack of fresh candles in the supply closet. Mind refilling all the holders before the lunch rush?”
The busboy rushed off to fulfill Heather Harvey’s request. Nicole whistled, impressed.
“What?” Heather asked.
“I just didn’t know you had taken to the inn and Eatery,” Nicole replied. “I thought you were just pitching in because I cared about it.”
Heather stopped walking abruptly, where the Eatery morphed into the little hallway that led to the Keating Inn’s foyer. Silence filled the space between them for a moment. In the distance, near the front desk, came the sound of Abby’s voice as she spoke with a potential Keating Inn guest. “Yes, that’s right. We’re booked that Friday, but we would be happy to serve you the Saturday through following Wednesday.”
“I think we’ve got a family affair on our hands,” Heather said with a crooked smile.
Nicole’s heart surged. But before she could answer, Heather said, “And how dare you suggest I don’t care about this place as much as you? The inn and Eatery gave me the world. The least I can do is help out here and there.”
Casey waited for them in the car out front. Nicole slipped into the front passenger seat while Heather took her rightful younger sister's place in the back. From the front porch, Abby and Jackie waved brightly as Casey drove them back down toward the edge of the parking lot and performed a three-point turn. It felt right to have Casey drive them to the lawyer’s office; it reminded Nicole of long-lost days in high school, when Casey had driven the three of them, blaring her speaker system all the way to school and back. The Harvey girls. Together, they’d been a force of nature.
At a stoplight, a wicked New England wind whipped at the overhead light, cranking it to-and-fro. “You said Evan Snow mentioned already that our lawyer contacted his?” Casey asked.
“He did,” Nicole affirmed. “And he didn’t sound too pleased about it.”
“He helped me so much with my search,” Heather said tentatively from the backseat. “He can’t be all bad.”
“I’m sure he’s not made of total evil, but I’m sure when it comes to money, he’s about as greedy as they come,” Nicole said.
“That’s typical men who come from money,” Heather tried.
Casey and Nicole gave one another sidelong glances. “What makes you say that?” Casey asked.
Heather shrugged. “Kristine and Bella have met all these high-society Manhattan boys. They say they’re kind and sweet and fun, but that there’s always something sinister about them when it comes to money. Generations and generations of enormous trust funds. It makes someone a bit different in the head.”
“It’s just strange that a place like Bar Harbor could breed such a sinister family like the Snow family,” Casey decided. “I mean, look this place. It looks like a children’s storybook.”
Heather, Nicole, and Casey studied the glorious, baby-blue houses, the little sailboats as they clunked against the docks, and the family-owned bakeries and restaurants and bars. The streets bustled with life; men and women in puffy autumn jackets, wrapped round and round with thick scarves, their smiles vibrant as they greeted one another.
“Yes. It’s like the Snow family want to be evil villains in a beautiful fantasyland,” Heather affirmed, the expert on such fantastical worlds. “Seems almost comical.”
Nicole, Casey, and Heather sat across from the Keating brothers’ family lawyer, the slow-talking Bob Hawkins, who had lost nearly all of his hair, except for a little wrap-around lining near his ears and at the base of his skull. His glasses were thick, like magnifying glasses, and he wore corduroy, as though it was a very different year.
“I took the liberty of going over your Uncle Joe’s contracts and finances,” Bob Hawkins told them after the initial greetings.
Nicole wanted to point out that he was very late with his report, but she held her tongue and shifted her weight.
“It seems that back around the time when your father, Adam Keating, still owned one-half of the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery, the brothers had a good deal of financial hardships,” Bob Hawkins continued. “There was a question of whether or not they could hold onto this, their final stretch of land. As you know, prior to this era, they owned a great deal of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island. But...”
“But my mother stole that land from Adam Keating and sold it back to Snow Enterprise for cash,” Heather interjected.
Bob Hawkins seemed unsure of what to say. He lifted a finger and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“It wasn’t a prosperous time for Adam nor Joe,” Bob Hawkins affirmed finally. “But they worked out a deal with the Snow family, namely the father, Darwin. This deal allowed them to keep the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery while paying a monthly sum to the family to keep the grounds. In return, the Snow family invested a good deal of cast into the Keating brothers, which allowed them to build back up a dilapidated inn and restaurant. You should have seen what it looked like before. Just a bunch of dust and rats.”
Casey parted her lips. Nicole could feel the heat of anger steaming off of her; she prayed her hot-headed sister would bite her tongue.
“But that should have had some sort of conclusion, right?” Casey demanded. “It seems wild that the Keating brothers still owe the Snow family monthly installments so many decades after this initial investment.”
Bob Hawkins seemed an unlikely lawyer. Nicole imagined he would have rather been a fisherman, spending his long days on a boat as it wafted to and fro with the waves.
“I found a document that may be of interest,” Bob Hawkins told them. He lifted a sheet of paper from a folder and used three of his fingers to slide it across the desk.
The three Harvey sisters bent over to investigate. The document was a letter from a long-ago era when all now-dead men had once been involved.
Dear Joe,
I appreciate that we’ve been friendly for quite some time, but please don’t misunderstand: we are not friends. This is a business investment for both of us. I have interest in this property from plenty of other men, men with incredible backbones and experience in hospitality. If you don’t agree to my terms, then you should consider yourself out of the Keating Inn and on to “greener” pastures, wherever those may be.
Casey furrowed her brow, exasperated. “His terms? What the heck were his terms?”
Bob scratched his bald head, leafed through his documents again, then dragged out a contract. Uncle Joe had signed this contract four days after Darwin Snow had written the previous letter. Within the contract, Uncle Joe agreed to pay three thousand, five hundred dollars per month for the property on which the Keating Inn sat. That number went up as per inflation— which meant that now, the rate per month was a full six thousand.
“Jesus,” Casey grumbled. “He threatened to kick him out. No wonder he agreed to pay.”
“It seems like an exorbitant number,” Nicole breathed. “Six thousand?”
“I just don’t see how you fight a contract like this,” Bob Hawkins explained then. “It’s been signed by the previous owner.”
“But the rate is much, much higher than that property should allow,” Heather interjected.
Bob’s eyes were clouded with sorrow. “You don’t think it’ll come down to you closing down the Keating Inn, do you? Your Uncle Joe killed himself to keep that place afloat.”
“But he shouldn’t have had to kill himself to do it,” Nicole blared. Her hands formed into fists as devastation draped its full weight over her. “He should still be here— with us.”
Back in the car, Nicole pressed her fingers over her eyes until orange flecks of light spun through the darkness of her vision. Nobody knew what to do. At the stoplight, Casey asked, “How long do you think we can keep it open as things stand right now?”
“Not more than six months,” Heather replied, deep in thought.
“We have to fight these guys,” Casey blurted out. “You said Darwin’s son is the guy in charge these days. Is he more reasonable?”
“I need a drink,” Nicole interjected.
“Go to that little dive bar,” Heather instructed. “The first round’s on me.”
The little dive bar in downtown Bar Harbor had been Uncle Joe’s favorite, so much so that upon the Harvey sisters’ grand entrance, the bartender poured them three beers “on the house.” They fell into stools across the bar and thanked the bartender, who said, “You three look like you just got news your dog died.”
Heather and Nicole exchanged glances as they added up whether or not to be truthful about what had happened.
“We just found out the Snow family has been basically robbing from the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery for decades,” Casey blurted, without a care in the world.
The bartender’s face grew blotchy with anger. She poured herself a thin line of whiskey and cleared her throat. Another guy at the bar blared, “What was that about the Snow family?”
The bartender gulped her drink down and slammed it back on the counter. “You know the same old drill, Gage. The Snow family loves to take what isn’t theirs. Old Darwin isn’t around, but he sure instilled his values into his sons.”
Gage grumbled inwardly. “No use messing with the Snow family. They’ve got Bar Harbor wrapped around their little finger.”
Casey’s volatility mounted. “We should get a better lawyer. Someone from the city.”
“Come on, Casey. You saw that document. It’s clear as day what Uncle Joe signed.” Nicole leaned back on her stool.
Casey’s nostrils flared. “Are you just going to give up, Nic?”
Nicole shook her head vehemently. “We have to push back somehow.”
“What if we just stop the payments?” Heather suggested suddenly.
Casey and Nicole exchanged glances, surprised. Heather had never been the rule-breaking kind. None of them really were.
“They would seek legal action...” Nicole offered.
Heather shrugged. “We have to let them know we’re serious about fighting this somehow. We can’t just cower to their demands, just because everyone else has done that for decades.”
The bartender poured herself another sliver of whiskey. She seemed to want in on whatever scheme they created. She smacked the glass back on the counter after her shot and said, “You show those Snow brothers what you’re made of, girls. Show your dad and Uncle Joe proud.” She then pointed off toward the photos, which hung across the wooden-slatted walls behind her. There, off to the right, hung a photo of Uncle Joe and Adam Keating, mid-way through their twenties, their firm arms flung around each other’s shoulders. Their eyes spoke of hope and prosperity. It was up to the Harvey girls to keep moving in the name of all the love they’d left behind.