Darcy told Maxwell that she would sit with him until the people from the County outreach team could get there.
It took a long time for them to arrive after she made the call. It was nearly Christmas, after all, and for all that this was a time of cheer and hope, it was also a time when many people fell under a dark emotional cloud. Depression hit hardest for some when everyone around them was happy, and they couldn’t find a reason to feel the same. Darcy had to wonder what would have happened to Maxwell Bylow if she and Jon hadn’t been here. How much worse would things have gotten for him?
Thankfully, he would never have to find out. All because Darcy threw herself into a mystery that didn’t seem to matter.
Jon had offered to come and sit with them, but Darcy was worried that having too many people in the room might spook Maxwell into doing something. He was calm for her, sitting here with her now. That was the best they could hope for. No reason to push their luck.
She and Jon texted back and forth while she waited, letting him know how things were going. For the most part, Maxwell was silent the whole time. He was nearly catatonic, in fact, tears brimming out of his eyes, mouth slack, hands folded in his lap. She told Jon not to worry. She thanked him for being the wonderful, supporting husband that he was, and for allowing her to be who she was.
At one point, he texted her a message from Colby, reminding them both of something she’d said the first day they were here.
A house is made by the people who live there. It’s the people who make it what it is.
Darcy smiled. They hadn’t known what it meant at the time. It was obviously a message sent through Colby’s gift, and they knew it would mean something. Now Darcy could see how true those words were. This house that was now an Inn had been made into what it was by the tragedy and horror visited on it two centuries ago. That legacy would have continued unless someone changed things. That’s what Darcy was sitting here with Maxwell for. They were going to stop the cycle.
Another text came through to her phone while she sat there. This one was from Isabella McIntosh back in Misty Hollow. Darcy’s next-door neighbor was in a panic, because Cha Cha was still with her, but she’d lost Tiptoe. Somehow the cat Darcy had asked her to watch had gotten out of the house and was nowhere to be found.
Darcy sent her back a smiley face and told her that everything was fine, Tiptoe was with them, and she would explain later. It was way too much to write out over text.
Izzy was relieved but confused. Okay…Merry Christmas, she texted back to Darcy.
Merry Christmas, Darcy said in return.
Jon did come out of their room when the two outreach workers arrived. He identified himself as a police officer, explained the situation, and then stood back to let them do their work. They spoke quietly and calmly to Maxwell, getting one-word answers in return when he spoke at all. They finally decided that he had some sort of schizophrenic break, and with the additional information that Darcy and Jon were able to give them they came to a quick decision to take him to the local hospital for “an evaluation and medical treatment.”
Maxwell actually smiled at Darcy when they told them that. “Thank you,” he said to her, in an Australian’s vocal cadence. “This here…this here’s a good thing.” Southern twang. “Would you…would you mind locking the place up for me after I’m gone? I do so love the place.” British. “Keys are back behind the desk.” Hispanic? Well. That was new.
The outreach workers exchanged glances, coming to realize just how much he needed their help.
Darcy held her hand out to Maxwell, even though she could see Jon tense as she did. “It’s okay. We’ll take care of the Inn. Nothing bad will happen to it.”
He smiled, but it faded away quickly. Uncertainty crept into his eyes, and his voice was once again that of a little boy.
“Will I be all right?”
Darcy returned his smile in kind. “Yes. I think you will.”
Jon offered to walk out with the outreach workers. Darcy said she would wait for him in the room with the kids. They were probably wondering what was going on. He gave her a kiss on the side of her neck before going downstairs.
“I love you,” he told her.
“I love you, too,” she said in return.
For a moment as she walked down the hall and back to their room, she half expected to see Swanson tripping over his own feet, or Rupert peeking through a wall, maybe. They didn’t make an appearance, of course. They wouldn’t. Not anymore. They had all found their rest, and that was exactly how it should be. The Christmas decorations were still here—except for the mistletoe—but the ghosts that had haunted this place were gone.
In the room she found Colby and Zane running around in circles, over the side of one of the beds, down the other, and around again, playing some version of tag that seemed to involve neither one of them winning. They were more interested in laughing and having a good time than they were in the rules.
“Hi, Mom!” Colby blurted out quickly, clambering after her brother.
“Hi, Mom!” Zane echoed, laughing as he dodged his sister’s grab at his foot.
On the closer of the two beds, Tiptoe was curled up into a ball, her ears pricked back at all the noise and commotion. She opened one eye when Darcy came in, and twitched her whiskers, as if to ask how they could have left her alone with these two.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Darcy told the little gray ball of fur. She sat down next to her and stroked her from head to tail. “You’re safe with us, and you’re warm, and you look awfully comfortable on that blanket. We’re proud of you, little kitten. You did a pretty amazing thing coming to help me like that. Know what else? Your dad would be proud of you, too. You turned out to be just like him.”
Tiptoe’s other eye opened, and her ears relaxed. With her next breath, she started to purr.
“She was all scared last night,” Zane told Darcy. Their game of tag was done, and now he and Colby were sitting on the air mattress together. “She was worried about you but she don’t want you to know. It’s a secret.”
If cats could roll their eyes, then Darcy was pretty sure that was what she just saw Tiptoe doing. She snuggled into the blankets further, though, and stretched, like it was no concern of hers if Darcy knew she cared.
“Hey, Mom?” Colby asked. “Are we going to go home now?”
Her brother had the remote control, flipping through the channels on the television, looking for a cartoon to watch. Colby was pretending not to care what he watched.
“We’re going to go home today, honey. I know we were going to open presents here, but we’ll do it at home instead. Things have gotten, well, a little complicated here. So we can’t stay.”
“Yeah. I noticed Rupert wasn’t in the mirror anymore. They’re all gone?”
“Yes. They all left the Inn.”
Colby nodded. In her pink unicorn pajamas, she folded her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs.
“Sometimes,” she said, “the ghosts you see are the ones that want to be seen.”
“Hmm,” her mother said. “Is that so?”
“Uh, yes. I think so.”
They both knew those words were spoken through her gift. What they meant, well that would be revealed in time.
Tiptoe was asleep now, but Darcy kept petting her for a while. It reminded her of something, though. “Hey, Zane? Did our brave little feline here say anything about Cha Cha? Does she know why he didn’t come too?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He’d found a channel playing old Bugs Bunny cartoons and it took him a second to pull his attention away from Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner. “She said that Cha Cha’s still back home. He’s guarding Misty Hollow like a good guard dog should. Tiptoe said that’s dog’s work. This is cat’s work. That’s what she said. We’re gonna go see Cha Cha today, right?”
“Yes, buddy. Later today we’ll be back home. I talked to Izzy earlier and she said she’s taking good care of Cha Cha. He’ll be fine.”
“I know,” Zane answered before going back to his cartoon. “Cha Cha’s a big boy. Like me.”
Colby started to say something funny in response to that, but instead she kept it to herself. Leaning a little closer to her brother, she put her arm around his shoulders instead, and gave him a hug.
Darcy’s heart was so full in that moment it felt like it was going to burst.
She wasn’t sure how long it was before Jon came back. It felt like forever, but in reality it probably wasn’t more than a few minutes. He crept in through the door quietly, almost walking on his toes as he did. When the kids didn’t notice him right away, he caught Darcy’s eye, and nodded toward the door, crooking his finger for her to follow.
Out in the hallway, he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her tight. She yelped and laughed, and held onto this man that she loved so very, very much while he spun her around. When he stopped, he was holding his hand up over their heads, dangling a little something in his fingers.
“It turns out,” he said to her, “there was only one sprig of mistletoe left anywhere in the house. It was hanging way up high in one of the doorways. I take it you and Tiptoe had something to do with that?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured, leaving the whole story for later. They were going to have a lot to talk about.
Instead of saying anything now, they kissed, long and slow, under the mistletoe.
When it was over, he still held her loosely in his arms, swaying back and forth to music only he was hearing. The mistletoe was still in his hand. “So…I have something to ask you,” he said, talking low into her ear.
“Oh?” she whispered back. “What’s that?”
“You know how I’ve been talking about retiring?”
“Um. Yeah, we’ve talked about it. I don’t think there’s any rush. You’ll know when the time is right. I figure if you find something else you want to do, that will be the time to get serious about it.”
“Hmm,” he said in a vague way. “What if I found something else to do?”
She studied his face. “Something else? Like what?”
“Like…running an Inn.”
Darcy stopped moving within the circle of his arms. “Running an Inn? You mean, like this Inn? This Inn that we’re standing in?”
“Yeah, well. Here’s the thing.” He seemed to be having trouble finding the words to explain himself. Darcy took a step back from him, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised as she waited. “Look. On the way out Maxwell was saying there really isn’t anyone else in his family who wants to run the Inn. He’s going to be getting help for his condition, and who knows how long that will take. He might not want to come back to this place ever, all things considered. This is a really nice Inn. It has a history. It’s in a beautiful area. I can only imagine how pretty this town is in the summertime. This could be a really nice investment for us.”
Darcy was surprised to hear Jon Tinker, career law enforcement officer that he was, sound so eager to take on a career change like this. Neither of them had any experience running an Inn. She had no idea what went into it or what it would cost. She supposed they could actually run the place from Misty Hollow, if it came to that, since it was only two hours away, and hire some people they trusted to take on the responsibilities of the day-to-day work.
Actually, it sounded like a nice idea.
At the same time, she loved Jon for who he was, and part of that was his role as a police officer. It was who he had always been. He’d been a cop the first time they met. Through good time and bad, sad and happy, their marriage and the birth of their children and…everything. It was a vital piece of him, but she supposed he would still be Jon—loving husband, amazing father, her best friend in the world—if he gave up his badge.
“I’ve already got my twenty years in the system,” he went on, “so I’ll have my retirement for income. We’ll be fine, in terms of money. If running the Hideaway Inn didn’t work out, we could give it up and move on to something else, but I really think…yeah. I really think this would be fun.”
Darcy felt that same surge of happiness in her heart that she had earlier while watching her kids play. Her husband was looking toward the future, but not without asking her what she thought first. In this, as with all things, they were in it together.
She smiled and fell into his arms again. Whatever the future held, they would always be Darcy Sweet, and Jon Tinker.
Always.
