The last time they drove through Pittsfield, the quaint little New England town had been buried in snow. A ‘once in a century storm,’ as the news reports put it, had dumped piles of fluffy white snow over the streets and the buildings and just everything, until the entire landscape was a blank canvas, uniform and frigid. Darcy remembered how they had nearly cancelled the whole trip, rather than risk being on the roads. In the end they had risked it to get away together, one last vacation for the year.
If they hadn’t, they would have never met Maxwell Bylow, and they wouldn’t be returning again this summer.
It was a few days after they had spoken to Maxwell. They had started out early in the morning with the four of them loaded up in the car for the long drive. Darcy watched the world going by outside her window, so different than it had been at Christmastime. Now, the trees that lined the streets of Pittsfield were full of beautiful green leaves, their branches waving in the warm breeze. The houses sat close together, the lawns neatly trimmed, flowers blooming in little gardens around front porches and mailboxes. American flags were hung from the porches of more than a few of them. Children played in their yards. Dogs lazed in the sun. It was a pretty town, where good people lived good lives.
The houses gave way to the business district after a few more streets. There was a hardware store and independently owned restaurants and a couple of dollar stores. Then, there were the places that drew in the tourism dollars, the primary source of income that Pittsfield depended on. There was the Little Bit of Everything Fun Center, of course—“Where the Fun is Always On!” On the other side of the street they drove past a bowling alley. The Virtual Reality place looked newer than the other places. Most of these places had already closed for the season when they were here last. This time, it was going to be a lot more fun.
Although you wouldn’t have guessed it, from the way Colby was acting.
Jon eased the car to a stop sign at a four-way intersection in the middle of town and took the opportunity to snag Darcy’s attention. With a nod of his head, he indicated the backseat and Colby, hunkered down with her arms crossed. She had her gaze fixed at nothing outside the window, making sure that everyone could see how unhappy she was.
Colby was a perfect blend of her parents. To Darcy’s mind, she had gotten the best of what she and Jon had to offer. Darcy’s heart-shaped face. Her father’s sarcastic grin. Eyes that were an alluring mix of her father’s blue and her mother’s green, a mysterious hue that couldn’t quite be called teal. She was a beautiful girl, and brilliant, and usually full of an infectious sort of energy.
Right now, she just looked miserable.
“Honey?” Darcy asked her. “Everything okay?”
After a moment of silence, she finally answered in a grumpy sulk that would have made Oscar the Grouch seem cheerful. “Oh, I’m just wonderful. I get to waste my summer here in this dump instead of with my friends.”
“Hey, now. You loved it here last time. Remember all the fun things there were to do in town?”
Colby’s only response to that was a loud snort.
Zane, on the other hand, was bouncing in his booster seat next to his sister. “Yeah! Fun, fun, fun! ‘Member all the fun?”
In the rearview mirror, Darcy watched her daughter roll her eyes. “Little brother, you are such a boy.”
“Duh,” was the very mature comeback. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I knows all about the diff’rence between boys and girls.”
“Whatever. You’re still too young to stay by yourself so you had to come. I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
“Uh, time for Dad to chime in here,” Jon said. They were driving slower than the speed limit, and he chanced taking his eyes off the street to flick a quick look over his shoulder. “You’re only fourteen. You’re mature for your age, no doubt about that, but that just means you’re old enough to stay by yourself for a day, maybe two. Not for a week or more.”
“A week!” Colby’s arms dropped helplessly. “Are we seriously going to be here for a week?”
“Maybe,” Jon told her with a shrug. “Maybe longer. Probably not, but we don’t know for sure. I mean, I can’t stay gone from the police department forever, but I’ve got vacation time built up. How long we stay depends on how long it takes for this Sharlene Latham to learn how to run a business properly. With your mom as her teacher it really shouldn’t take that long.”
“Ugggghhh!”
Recognizing the angst in her daughter’s voice, Darcy turned in her seat. “For Pete’s sake, honey, what’s going on with you? There’s lots to do here in Pittsfield. More than there is in Misty Hollow over summer break. There’s a fun center, and there’s a movie theater, and don’t forget there’s going to be fireworks on the Fourth of July. That’s in just a few days. Trust me, you’ll have fun here.”
“Fun!” Zane agreed.
“Whatever,” Colby told them both at once.
Slowly, her brother turned a very serious almost six-year-old expression her way. “You,” he said, “are such a girl.”
Darcy hid a laugh behind the back of her hand, but honestly she was starting to be very concerned about Colby’s mood. “Seriously, honey, what’s the matter?”
She folded her arms again and met her mother’s gaze with one of her own. “There’s ghosts in the Hideaway Inn.”
That took Darcy by surprise. She had inherited Darcy’s gift to see ghosts, talk with them, understand them. Ghosts didn’t frighten Colby. Besides, they’d taken care of the haunting at the Hideaway Inn the last time they were here.
“I don’t know why you would bring that up, honey.” Darcy brought her knee up, foot on the seat, so she could reach behind and put a hand on her daughter’s knee. “You know the ghosts from the Inn are gone. We helped them move on.”
Colby’s face grew pinched as she looked out the window, her eyes cloudy with thought. “No. That place has more secrets that we haven’t seen yet. I’m telling you, Mom, there’s still ghosts there.”
Next to her, Zane watched with keen interest. “I wanna sees the ghosts.”
“It’s ‘see,’ dufus,” Colby corrected him. “You want to ‘see’ the ghosts.”
“Well, duh. That’s what I said. I wanna sees the ghosts ‘cause ghosts are cool.”
“Sometimes,” Darcy told him with a fond smile. “Sometimes ghosts are friendly, like Casper, or the Gastly Pokémon from your game. Other times, ghosts are…well, less than friendly.”
“Like the ghosts on Scooby Doo?”
“Yeah, kind of like that. Sometimes worse than that, too.”
“Hmph,” he grumped. “It’s not fair you and Colby gets to see ghosts, and not me.”
Poor kid, Darcy thought ironically to herself. Apparently being able to talk to animals wasn’t enough for him.
He could have long conversations with Cha Cha their Bassador pup, and ask the birds what it was like to fly up in the sky, and Darcy thought that was something pretty special all by itself. The gift of being able to see ghosts actually did run in their family. Her mother, her Great Aunt, even her sister Grace had a little bit of it. It always ran in the female side, though, and never showed up in the men of the family. Now, it had morphed into something completely different with Zane. How that was possible still puzzled and amazed Darcy. As far as she knew he was the first male child in her bloodline to have any sort of special ability. She’d checked every family record she could find going all the way back to the time of Willamena Duell, the family’s first relative to come to the Colonies from Europe, and never seen anything about a male relative having the gift in any form.
As strong as the gift was in Darcy, it was stronger still in her daughter. Colby could already contact people on the other side of the veil that separated life and death. She was constantly foretelling the future, even if she did it without really meaning to. If it was this strong for her now, when she was only fourteen, Darcy couldn’t help but wonder what her daughter would be able to do when she was a grown woman, with daughters of her own.
Although she was kind of looking forward to being a grandmother someday…
Even so, Darcy knew a thing or two that Colby didn’t. “Honey, I’m telling you, there’s no more ghosts in the Hideaway Inn.”
Colby only shrugged and didn’t answer.
Jon made a little sucking sound through his teeth. Darcy knew that even now, after all these years with her, all this talk about ghosts and scary dead people made him uneasy. He had always been a guy who dealt with what was right in front of his face, with the things he could see and touch. That wasn’t what the look on his face was about, though. She knew him well enough to know he was thinking the same thing she was.
“You aren’t worried about seeing ghosts at the Inn,” Darcy told Colby in a direct way, certain she was right. “This is about something else. Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, under all that pretty auburn hair. What’s the real reason you don’t want to go back to the Inn?”
That, at least, got a little smirk out of her daughter, even if it was paired with a roll of her eyes. “It’s just…I was going to spend the summer hanging out with Audrey. Her and our friends, I mean. Together. Like a group thing. Now I’m going to be here for the whole freaking summer, and she’s back in Misty Hollow, and for what? Because some guy in a crazy hospital wrote you guys a letter?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Jon said, stern but gentle. “First of all, it’s not a ‘crazy hospital.’ We don’t use that term for people who need help with their mental health. Everyone needs help sometimes, and it can be hard to ask for it. Maxwell is getting the help he needs. Right?”
Colby grimaced, looking honestly chagrinned for her slip of the tongue. “I’m sorry, Dad. I liked Maxwell. He was a nice guy, he just…needed help like you said. I’m just upset about not getting to be with Audrey. And our friends. I didn’t mean it.”
“That’s good to hear. Second, we’re not going to be here the whole summer. You’ll still have lots of time to hang out with your friends when we get back. You aren’t the only one making sacrifices to help out, you know. I’m taking time away from the police department, and your mom pushed aside her responsibilities at the bookstore. We had to leave Cha Cha and Tiptoe behind too, with our neighbor to watch over them. We’re all making sacrifices to be here and we’re doing it because someone needs our help. That’s what our family does. When someone needs help, we help them.”
“Yeah!” Zane cheered, pumping a fist dramatically in the air. “We’re good helpers. Mommy gave up stuff, and Daddy gave up stuff, an…I’m giving stuffs up, too.”
He didn’t really seem to know what ‘stuffs’ he was giving up, but Darcy appreciated his enthusiasm. They were already outside the town’s speed limit, past all the businesses and the houses, on the last long stretch of road that would lead them to the Hideaway Inn. They were almost there. No turning back now.
With a deep breath, Colby finally unfolded her arms and relented. “Fine. But if we’re here for more than a week, we’re going to revisit this conversation.”
“Fair enough, honey. Should I pencil you in?”
“No need. I’ll put a reminder in my phone’s calendar.”
Darcy thought her daughter sounded like a defense attorney just then, with that bit about revisiting the conversation if both sides didn’t get what they wanted. She really was older than her years even if she was only a child still in a lot of other ways. This could be a fun trip for all of them, if Colby let it. Oh, there was no doubt it was going to be a lot of work, but there would be a lot of fun, too.
After a series of turns down a lonely country road bordered by trees and open fields of tall grasses, they came to the left turn onto Valleyview Lane. Darcy remembered the tall pine trees from the winter, back when their branches were bent low under heavy coats of snow. Now they stood tall and proud as the sun beat down from between wispy clouds overhead.
Zane strained forward against his safety belt as much as he could, eagerly waiting for what he knew was coming. Jon smiled over at Darcy. They caught sight of their destination before their son did, up ahead on the left, and Jon began a countdown with his fingers against the steering wheel.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One…
“There it is!” Zane called out. “See? See? It’s right there!”
“Where?” Jon teased. “I don’t see it. Oh no, I hope I don’t drive right past it! I might miss it if I can’t find it.”
“Dad! No, Dad! It’s right there. Right there!”
“Oh, on my right?”
“No!” Zane was laughing while he frantically tried to get his father to see what was right in front of them now. “It’s on the left! It’s on the left, it’s left there!”
Jon laughed so hard he couldn’t talk, and obligingly put on the left turn signal as Zane cheered.
“Ugh,” his sister groaned. “Boys are so lame.”
But Darcy could hear the change in Colby’s voice. She was maybe a little less upset about being here than she was willing to let on.
The thing that had Zane so excited was the wooden sign swinging on a post at the end of a long, winding driveway. Painted green letters spelled out the name of The Hideaway Inn between two cartoonishly drawn pine trees.
At the farther end of the driveway was the huge sprawling manor house that had long ago been turned into a unique lodging place for tourists and travelers.
Gravel crunched under the tires as the house got closer. It was the only sound until Jon let out a long whistle.
“I’d forgotten how big this place is.”
“Not me,” Darcy said. “Remember? I was the one who got lost inside.”
“Yeah, in a secret passageway hidden behind a bookcase.” Jon shook his head. “Makes you wonder what else is in there that nobody knows about.”
From behind them, Colby said, “Yeah. Like the cemetery.”
The car swerved wide as Jon’s eyes jerked up to the rearview mirror. He brought it back under control with nothing worse than a gouge in the dirt at the edge of the drive. Darcy laid a hand on his leg to reassure him this was just their daughter being dramatic again. This trip wasn’t going to turn into a supernatural escapade for them. Not this time.
“There’s no cemetery, honey,” she told Colby. “Just those few graves we saw last time, remember? The one for Orson Bylow and the others?”
Colby frowned, dropping her gaze down to her hands. She looked confused about why she would have said anything like that. Maybe she actually did mean the Family Plot but the few run-down stones—and the grave in the hillside—could hardly be called a ‘cemetery.’ More like a vainglorious monument to the ego of Orson Bylow, the man responsible for the founding of Pittsfield as well as for the construction of this huge manor house in front of them.
What had once been the Bylow Manor was now the Hideaway Inn. Two stories of red brick, with stonework arches over each of the windows and the front door. From the main, central section two wings spread to either side. The center section rose up one floor higher than the wings, although that part of the building had been closed off for a long, long time. The two side sections, running East and West, angled toward the road like arms reaching out to welcome visitors.
Steps led up from the driveway loop to the double-door entryway. They were flanked by actual stone lions that rose up on their pedestals taller than Darcy, one front leg of each raised in challenge to anyone who would dare to cause trouble here, mouths open in a silent roar.
Jon drove past the stairs to park in the area set aside for guests and employees. There were maybe twenty spots altogether, lined off with cement barricades that hugged the ground. Nearly all of them were full. By the look of it, the Hideaway Inn was doing very well.
“So what do you think?” Darcy asked as she undid her seatbelt. “Bring in the suitcases now, or go scope out the situation inside first?”
“Mo-o-om,” Colby groaned. “Did you honestly just say ‘scope out’ like it’s a thing people say?”
Giving her daughter a goofy grin, Darcy put one finger to the corner of her mouth. “Did I? Hmm. How odd. Must be I know all the cool things to say.”
Colby rolled her eyes. “Parents shouldn’t try to be cool.”
“We don’t try,” Jon said. “We just are cool. Oh, don’t give me that look, Starshine. You know it’s true. So anyway. I say we leave the luggage here for now and go see how this Sharlene is doing with everything. At least until we know what’s going on inside. We don’t even know what room we’re in yet.”
Jon calling Colby by her nickname—Starshine—earned him another eyeroll…but a smile came with it.
Zane was trying, unsuccessfully, to get himself unbuckled from his booster seat. “I hope we have the same room from last time. That room was good. Um. Mommy, can you get me out? I want to undone this, and it doesn’t want to get undone.”
Once all of them were out of the car they went right up to the front doors. There was no need to knock, just go right through. With the sun beating down, and a good feeling in her heart, Darcy led them all right inside.
And into a scene of complete chaos.
The doors opened into a large room with hardwood floors and dark paneling on the walls. Once upon a time when this was a manor house, this most likely would have been the reception hall. Now, it was the lobby of the Hideaway Inn. Evenly spaced electric sconces made everything bright and welcoming. A fireplace off to the side was swept clean and unused in the heat of summer. Straight ahead was a waist-high counter with a little plaque that read “Welcome Friends” next to a computer monitor. Beside that was a metal bell, the kind with the clapper on top, meant for people who needed to get the attention of the staff for their assistance. A door in the wall directly behind the service counter was labelled “Office—Private.”
Darcy remembered the quaint mix of the old and the new from their last visit here. A grand old home, turned into a modern Inn that had kept the feel of its historic roots.
What she hadn’t seen last time, was the crush of people milling about uncertainly, unsure of where to go or what to do.
The person who should have been helping everyone figure that out was standing behind the service counter, doing nothing but adding to the confusion. Questions were flying from everywhere and the answers were few and far between. Darcy stood and watched the train wreck unfolding in front of her, unable to do anything more than stare.
“Your room is up the stairs to your left,” said the woman behind the counter. Then she shook her head. “No, to your right. Wait. Yes, the right… — Are you sure you made a reservation? — I don’t see one here for Stratton. — Oh, it was Jackson? Hold on let me look again… — Hold on I need to get the phone… — No, the breakfast is only in the morning. I think. I’ll have to check and get back to you… — Yes, there’s going to be fireworks on the fourth. Um. No, I’m not sure when exactly. After sunset, maybe…?”
Darcy sighed heavily. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
Jon cleared his throat with a sigh.
“It’s a complete disaster.”
“I was using the phrase ‘train wreck’ in my head.”
“Yeah, that just about covers it.”
“I suppose we should go save her.”
“Well,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “it is what we came here to do. Besides. I have a feeling half of these people will be sleeping here in the lobby if we don’t step in now.”
Zane’s eyes went wide. “Are we gonna have to sleep in the low-bee?”
“No, buddy,” Jon told him. “We’ll have a room to sleep in.”
The little boy reached up to hold his dad’s hand. “Oh, okay. Good. Um, what’s a low-bee?”
Colby took her brother’s other hand. “It’s okay, guys. I’ll explain it to him. You two can go do that helping thing you do so well. Come on, Zane.”
Darcy gave her daughter a quick kiss on the head. She was really proud of what a good big sister she was. Family was always important. It was good to know that she’d been able to pass that on to her children.
The woman behind the counter was whipcord slender, and the way she swayed back and forth trying to take care of several different guests all at once made it look like she was a twig blowing in the breeze. Her blonde hair swung with her, streaks of blue on one side framing a long, narrow face. Her pink blouse and pinstriped black khakis were very out of place in what was supposed to be a casual but classy vacation destination. Her skin was tanned like she’d already spent every day of the summer thus far sitting out on a beach somewhere. Her long fingernails were professionally painted with white lines crisscrossing over a deep blue backing.
In short, she looked like she belonged in a perfume ad, not working at an Inn. This must be Maxwell’s cousin, Darcy thought. Sharlene Latham. Everything about her said she was out of her element. She was the type of woman who was more used to being waited on than working with her hands.
Which begged a question. Why was she so interested in owning the Hideaway Inn?
Darcy had plenty of experience in working around a crowd of people who all wanted your attention at once. Sale days at the bookstore were often like that, especially in the summertime when the tourists came to town. It was a matter of prioritizing and promising, and then actually delivering the customer what they wanted, or as near to it as you were able to get. Not everyone would be satisfied even with your best efforts, but most people would be happy to know you tried. There was a way to talk to people, and you were either born knowing how to do it or you learned real fast if you wanted to work in the service industry.
It took Darcy exactly thirty seconds to realize Sharlene wasn’t born with that particular skill, and she certainly had a lot to learn.
Slipping through the knot of people crowding around the middle of the lobby, she and Jon put themselves behind the counter, smiled, and started greeting the guests one at a time.
“Hello, welcome to the Hideaway Inn,” Darcy told a young couple trying to check in. “If you have your reservation number or a form of identification we can get you right up to your room.”
When the man smiled in relief to see someone was finally taking charge, Darcy caught Sharlene’s eye and then pointed to the computer. The woman blinked in confusion but then took the hint. With the man’s driver’s license in hand, they were able to find the reservation easily, and in just a few moments they had them headed up the West Wing stairs to their room.
Jon proved that he might not have the same background in customer service that Darcy did, but he was still good at helping people. His simple and honest way of relating to people made everyone he talked to want to open up to him. On his end of the counter, an older woman with long gray hair and sparkly pink glasses was asking about the history of the Hideaway. Not ten minutes ago Sharlene had told her she didn’t know much about the building’s background but there must be a brochure somewhere. Basically, she’d been blowing the woman off to keep from exposing her own ignorance.
Now, listening to Jon, the woman knew all about how this used to be a manor house full of servants, owned by the Bylow family’s ancestors. How some of the land owned by the family patriarch, Orson Bylow, had been granted by him to establish the town of Pittsfield. Farm fields and forests had been cleared away to be replaced by houses and business, streets and churches. Over time, the Bylow’s gave up being workers of the land altogether. They kept most of the servants to maintain the house until they couldn’t afford it anymore and soon after that, the house was retrofitted into individual rooms for vacationing tourists. Thus, the Hideaway Inn was born.
“However, there are still two rooms down that hallway,” Jon told her, pointing off toward the West Wing, “both of them have been kept in their original state. They’re open for public viewing so you can really get a feel for what life was like back then. There’s also the Family Plot out on the walking trail, where the graves of Orson Bylow and his immediate household are on display.”
Darcy gave him a quick smile, and he gave her a wink. ‘The Graves of Orson Bylow and his immediate household…’ Well, that was as close to the truth as they needed to get for anyone, now that those ghosts from the winter had moved on. That part of the Inn’s story was over. Now it was time for new stories to be told.
Sharlene looked back and forth between them as guests continue to shuffle up to the counter. Her thin, plucked eyebrows drew themselves down together. “Who are you people?”
“Right now,” Darcy told her, “we’re the people who are saving you from an angry mob. Watch, and learn.”
She scoffed like she’d been truly insulted, but she didn’t argue.
In a half hour, Jon and Darcy had the lobby cleared. They showed Sharlene how to work the reservation system in the process. Hopefully, Darcy thought to herself, they’d showed her how much happier people could be when you treated them with respect. The new guests were checked in, yesterday’s guests were checked out, questions were answered and everything was sorted. Darcy felt like she’d just run a marathon, but she felt good about it, too. This was going to work. This was going to be a good break for her and Jon while they helped Maxwell Bylow make sure the family business that he loved so much was taken care of. There was absolutely nothing that could go wrong that they couldn’t make right, here in the Hideaway Inn—
The front doors slammed open before the thought was even finished. Someone stormed in, and as he did Darcy couldn’t help feeling this was the universe telling her things never went exactly as they planned.
“I warned you!” he shouted. “I know you got my letter, Sharlene Latham, because I sent it registered mail and you signed for it! The next time you want to pretend to ignore someone, don’t sign for things yourself, you ignorant, gold-digging little—! Who in the devil are these two?”
The man was halfway across the floor when he suddenly stopped, one beefy hand raised in a fist, the other churning circles like the very air was offensive to him. There was no need to ask who it was that had caught his attention. His pale brown eyes were shifting between Darcy and Jon, warily sizing them up as he tried to decide what it meant that they were standing behind the service counter with Sharlene.
Darcy had the same question about him. He was built like a bulldozer, all blocky and square, muscles on muscles filling out faded jeans and a cotton button-up shirt. She supposed this was his version of ‘business casual,’ or at least as close as he ever got to business attire. The cuffs of the shirt were rolled back, no doubt because they were too tight to close around the man’s massive wrists. His ebony skin was weathered, lined not from age but from exposure to the sun and the elements. He had the look of a man who had worked for everything he had ever earned.
He made quite the contrast to Sharlene, a woman who Darcy had already decided had been given everything she ever needed or wanted. Probably on a literal silver platter.
Confronted with the man’s tirade, Sharlene leaned over the front counter, accidentally slapping her hand against the little service bell and raising a discordant CLANG! as she did.
“Neil Perkins,” she shouted, “I fired you! This hotel is mine now, and there’s not a single thing you can do about it! Get out! Get out!”
“This is not a hotel, you spoiled brat,” the man growled back at her. “This is an Inn, and just the fact that you can’t tell the difference lets me know you have no business being here. You don’t know the first thing about this grand old building or its history or its troubles!”
“Yes I do! I’ve seen the same paperwork you have and I know all about it and I know you’re fired! Now go away before I call the police!”
“I’ll leave when I’m ready. Not before.”
Off to the side, one arm wrapped protectively around her brother, Colby cleared her throat uncertainly. “Mom?”
“It’s okay,” Darcy assured her, stepping around to the front side of the service counter. “Whatever’s going on here I’m sure we can clear it up. Isn’t that right, mister…?”
“I’m Neil Perkins,” the man growled, at Darcy this time.
This time, the name clicked in her head. She hadn’t picked up on it when Sharlene had been shouting it, but now she remembered reading Neil’s name in the letter Maxwell had sent them. This was the man who ran the Inn’s staff and kept the place going. ‘The glue that kept it all together,’ was how Maxwell had put it.
At least, he used to be. From what Sharlene had just said, she’d terminated his position here. As of now, Neil Perkins had nothing to do with the Hideaway Inn.
No wonder he was so angry.
“You fired him?” she whispered over her shoulder to Sharlene.
“I’m in charge,” was the snappy reply. Unlike Darcy, she didn’t bother keeping her voice down. “I made an executive decision that his services were no longer needed.”
“No longer needed!” Neil roared back. “I’ve worked at the Hideaway Inn for all of my adult life! Just like my father, and his father before him. My family is a part of this place. You know that, and you know you can’t just fire me!”
“Well, I did! It’s done. You’re gone. I don’t want you here anymore!”
“Ahem,” Jon said dramatically. “Just a little tip, Sharlene? Yelling at people in your lobby is probably not the best way to keep your guests happy.”
“Oh? Is that the great advice Maxwell sent you here to tell me?”
“Actually, yeah. This isn’t the way to do things.”
“Maybe not,” she pouted, crossing her arms and glaring at Neil. “But it makes me feel better.”
“There’s better ways of handling this,” Darcy pointed out.
“Oh, really? Like what?”
“Well for instance,” Neil said, standing close enough to hear the whole conversation. “How about giving me my job back?”
“You don’t work here anymore!” Sharlene shrieked at him.
From the corner of her eye, Darcy could see a few guests creeping down the stairs of the East Wing, stopped halfway down, staring and listening. This was getting out of control in a hurry. These two would be at each other’s throats any second, if they weren’t stopped.
Putting a friendly smile on her face she held a hand out toward both of them. “Neil, I know you don’t know me, but I’m going to ask you to trust me. Maxwell Bylow sent for me and Jon to help run the Hideaway Inn this summer in his absence. He trusts us, so I’m asking you to do it, too. I don’t know if you heard what happened this past winter, but we were here for all of that. We helped Maxwell get to a place where he could get help and get better.”
She saw something change in Neil’s demeanor. The lines around his big, round eyes softened. “I did hear about that. That was you two? You helped the Boss out right well. Er, that’s what we always called Maxwell. ‘The Boss.’ Kind of a throwback to when Orson Bylow ran this place and my ancestors were the first servants here.” He shook his head. “Lot of things happened back then that nobody has any idea about. Things were changing, though. Maxwell knew about it, and he was going to set it all straight. Now he’s not here and Little Miss over there thinks she can just ignore me when I talk!”
“I can ignore you all day long,” Sharlene barked at him, “because you don’t work here anymore!”
“Okay, okay,” Darcy said, trying to sound soothing and rational. “Let’s all take a breather. Neil, I want to hear what you have to say, but now is not the time, okay? From what Maxwell told me there’s a nice restaurant in town. The Pinecone Café? Why don’t we meet there tomorrow for breakfast? That will give us the chance to get settled in here first, and after that you’ll have our full attention. You, me, and my family. My kids are young, but they’re smarter than most adults I know. The five of us together can work out a solution to all this, don’t you think?”
Over past Neil, Darcy caught sight of Colby in time to see her cheeks blush. Apparently she was embarrassed by the praise her mother was heaping on her.
Neil was listening to her. The big man stuffed his hands deep into his pockets, pushing out his bottom lip in thought. He looked back at Sharlene. After a long moment, he nodded his head.
“Seems to me you guys will be good for this place,” he said. “All right. If the Boss sent you guys here, must’ve been some reason for it. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning. It’s a long story I have to tell you anyway. Might as well do it over some bacon and eggs.”
“I’m more of a pancake guy myself,” Jon told him. “Either way, we’ll be glad to hear you out. Eight o’clock?”
“All right. See you then, I guess.” He shot Sharlene one last glare and then he turned and walked out. He even closed the doors behind him.
Darcy sighed in relief. One problem solved, at least for now, and all the guests sorted into their rooms. So far, this had been a good day.
She went back to Jon, and gave him a big hug from the side, welcoming the way he hugged her back. Sharlene just stared at them both.
“Seriously,” she said, “who are you guys?”
”It’s like my wife told you,” Jon answered her. “I’m Jon Tinker, and this is Darcy Sweet, and we’re here to help.”
“Yeah!” Zane chimed in, pumping his fist in the air. “Here to help! Um. When’s lunch?”