by Nicole Bross
“Ran up a bit of a tab last night?” The corner of Cora’s mouth twitches. Busted. “Well…” She hesitates long enough for me to wonder if she’s trying to find some particularly tedious or unpleasant task. “Do you have any experience with bookkeeping?”
“Some. I was the treasurer for my university’s historical association for several years and do all my own bookkeeping and taxes as a contractor. I’m not an expert, but I know how to tell the difference between a payable and a receivable.”
“Perfect. We use an accountant, of course, but there’s half a year’s worth of invoices, expenses, receipts, and payments to sort through and organize before it gets sent off to her. Roz was perpetually behind on that stuff, and I don’t have a head for it at all. I was about to hire someone to take care of it for us, but if you’re willing to tackle it, that would be a tremendous help.”
I follow her up the staircase to Roz’s office, resolving to stay far away from the balcony with the view. I hadn’t thought about where I’d be working when I’d accepted Cora’s offer. She seems a bit more at ease in the room today, moving briskly into the office, travel mug in hand. I’m so glad I brought her the tea—we had started on the wrong foot with each other, but maybe things would warm up between us now.
Cora drops a heavy cardboard file box onto the table in the middle of the room. Inside is an unsorted pile of papers eight inches deep.
“Roz’s filing system,” she says, “was to throw it in here and worry about it later.”
Awesome. This should be nice and boring, the perfect thing to make me dread everything about the Soberly Inn and Public House. By the time I’m done sorting through this box, I’m never going to want to see the place again, much less own it.
Cora sets me up on Roz’s laptop, and I spend a few minutes picking through her files until I find the spreadsheets I need. “Don’t kill yourself over these,” she tells me. “If you make any headway at all, I’ll be grateful. Soberly is a nice little town. Don’t keep yourself cooped up in here all day.” With that, she leaves me to the box of papers. I resolutely move the chair so my back is to the window, keeping Roz’s prized view out of sight, and dive in.
***
A knock at the door makes me realize I’ve been at it for almost five hours. Piles of papers now surround me—one for each month. Cora’s estimate of half a year’s worth had been off by two months. Just getting it all organized chronologically has taken me the entire morning.
“Come in,” I call out. Cora wouldn’t knock, and no one else knows I’m even up here.
“It’s locked,” someone replies. It sounds like Drew. I open the door, but an empty staircase greets me.
“Drew?” I call out, confused.
“Other door,” he replies. There is indeed a second door going to the main hallway where the guest rooms are located. I hadn’t noticed earlier, half-hidden by the frame of a bookcase. I open it to find Drew carrying a cardboard takeout container in one hand, and a large glass of what looks like sweet tea in the other.
“Cora asked me to bring this up to you,” he tells me. I shift a pile of papers to the side to make room for it on the table. “What’s all this?”
“Bookkeeping. It was one of Roz’s jobs, and I asked Cora to keep me busy. This is what she found for me.”
“What are you doing? Organizing it?”
“Right now, yeah. Eventually, I’ll enter it all into some spreadsheets. Mr. Blackmoor, the lawyer—do you know him?” A nod from Drew. “He says all this has to be done and checked over by an accountant before I can sell the inn to Cora. I’d like that to happen sooner rather than later. Not that I don’t like this place,” I add, stammering. “I have a life to get back to.”
“Oh, totally, of course. Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot of responsibility, I don’t blame you.” He sets down the glass, some of the tea sloshes onto the Mastercard statement on top of the March pile. “Shit, sorry,” he says, blotting at it with his T-shirt.
“Don’t worry about it.” The ink looks a bit smeared, but it’s still legible. “I’m sure I can reprint it if I need to anyway. Credit card statements are archived for years online.”
“That’s true. Well, sorry anyway.”
“Thanks for bringing me lunch,” I say as he backs out of the room. The aroma of grease has been filling the room since he came in, and my stomach has been audibly calling out to the contents of the cardboard container. I peek inside with near reverence, wondering if whatever’s inside can possibly be as good as it smells. A mound of diced hash browns, covered in pieces of bacon, sautéed onions, melted cheese, and on top of it all, two soft poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. My mouth fills with saliva in anticipation. It’s all my favorite things in one dish, and I attack it with relish.
“No problem,” Drew replies with a salute, and disappears back out the same door he entered.
***
By the end of my self-imposed work day, my head is pounding, but I finally have an organizational system that will work to quickly input the data into the spreadsheets. I’m sure the accountant will still check over every statement and bill line by line, but this should make that work easier.
Satisfied, I close the laptop and put it back in its drawer, and then put each month’s pile of papers in a folder, label them, and stack them neatly back in their cardboard box. The historian in me knows never to assume one-of-a-kind items will be safe, unprotected, and exposed, and while it’s true they could all be reprinted, it would involve a tremendous amount of work to do so. Even one of the balcony doors blowing open in the night and scattering the papers around could mean an entire day’s labor lost.
“Do you have a safe place to store this until tomorrow?” I ask Cora as I emerge from the staircase behind her at the front desk. She and the girl from yesterday evening look like they’re changing off.
“I suppose I could bring it home with me,” she says with little enthusiasm. Cora’s probably never lost a week’s worth of research and a set of priceless hand-drawn maps to a sprinkler malfunction.
“What about the safe?” Jana says. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but it should fit.”
“That’s a much better idea, thank you, Jana.” Cora takes the box from me and disappears around the corner, returning in a few minutes empty-handed.
“You haven’t eaten supper yet, have you,” she asks, and I shake my head in reply. “Why don’t you take a key, then, so you can let yourself in as you please. I should have left one for you last night.”
The sun beat down on the young girl’s back as she meandered down the beach, harvesting mussels and spiny urchins for their tender meat. She avoided her reflection in the still pools of water, not wanting to see the freckles that were no doubt appearing on her nose and cheeks. Trinh and Kim-Ly, her two best friends from school, didn’t have a single freckle between them. You’d never see them gathering food for the family pot. Their fathers didn’t labor all day in the rice paddies.
“You’re a lucky girl, Hao,” her mother told her every time she complained. “Lucky to go to school at all. I never got to go to school, and neither did your father.” And so on until Hao wanted to scream at her to be quiet. Her mother’s list of grievances was long, but she didn’t seem to understand how difficult it was to go to school with people above your station. Trinh and Kim-Ly took pity upon her, she knew, calling her their pet, their little doll, telling her how quaint she was. Their fathers were merchants. Trinh’s father owned three ships that sailed up and down the coast, carrying goods back and forth.
Hao held up her net bag, decided it was full enough, and turned to go back, grateful that the sun would at least be behind her for the journey home. She tilted the hat her mother had woven back so it protected her neck and trudged onward.
“Thanks. I think I’m going to take a walk down the beach. I’m still stuffed from lunch,” I tell her. “Maybe I’ll catch the sunset over the water.”
“Funny, I was going to suggest you do the same thing. You’ve been
up in that room all day. I meant it when I said I didn’t want you to spend all your time up there. That paperwork has sat around for all these months with no harm done. It’ll get done in good time.”
“There wasn’t a logical time to stop sorting it all out until now, but it’ll be easier to work at it in shorter stretches now that it’s organized. Anyway, I’ll be quiet as a mouse when I come in,” I promise. It feels like being back in high school, staying with Cora. “Oh, is there any place I can get a slushie before my walk?” I ask as we both step out the door. I definitely don’t have room for supper right now, but a cold treat would be nice. Cora tells me the cafe does frappes and Italian ice and points me to the south. Her house is several blocks north, so we part ways.
Twenty minutes later, with every bit of exposed skin liberally slathered with sunscreen from the drugstore and carrying a mango Italian ice, I’m picking my way north up the coast toward the lighthouse. The smell of salt and seaweed drying in the sun is one I’ve always loved, and one I miss when I’m not living near the coast. Without the burden of my duffle bag like my last walk, I’m free to venture onto the slippery rocks cropped up near the tideline to explore tidal pools for signs of life. The sight of starfish, anemones, and tiny crabs scuttling away from my shadow fills me with endless delight for some reason. I scoop up a hermit crab whose spiral shell is no bigger than my thumbnail and let it wander over my palm for a few minutes, talking to it like a pet before depositing it back in the same pool I found it in.
An hour and a half later, my pocket full of shells and bits of sea glass, I settle into the sand with an enormous driftwood log behind my back to watch the sun dip below the horizon. The lighthouse appears as far away as when I started. It must be a good ten miles from Soberly instead of the two or three I’d estimated. There aren’t too many people on the beach this far from the town with me, but I’m not alone by any means. Most people are doing the same as I am, pausing to take in the fire-red sky, although a couple of kids are too busy trying to whip each other with long strands of seaweed to pay any attention. When the last sliver of the sun’s orb has slipped below the horizon, I haul myself up to head back the way I came, quicker now so I won’t end up walking in complete darkness.
When I reach the town, the lights in all the main street windows are out. Most businesses close by six or seven, other than the cafe, which is open until eight for supper, and the inn’s pub, where last call is eleven p.m. on weekdays. I’m torn about stopping in at the latter, even though it will likely mean waking up tomorrow morning with another hangover. My pace slows as I walk past, and one foot hangs off the curb, ready to cross the empty street. The cold voice of reason, the one that governs my decision to never settle in one place too long, butts in.
Don’t let these people like you too much. It’ll be all the harder when you leave.
It’s a familiar caution, but for the first time in memory, I find myself resenting it.
It’ll be all the harder for you too, Audrey. The one person who might have made this place home for you is gone.
My heart squeezes tight inside my chest, and I square my shoulders with a deep breath, pushing all the feelings back down inside before they can take root too deeply. Reversing course back onto the sidewalk, I quicken my pace, eyes resolutely ahead.
7
The next morning, I head straight for the inn, travel mug of tea for Cora in hand. It’s more than a gesture to stay on her good side; I’d seen from her expression yesterday how much that small reminder of Roz’s love for her meant. As soon as I hand it over, however, she shoos me back out the door, admonishing me again not to spend my entire day cooped up with Roz’s papers. I decide to stop in at the little antique store I’d briefly examined two days ago.
Sheena is behind the counter again and greets me with a friendly hello.
“I was hoping you’d be back soon,” she says. “How are things over at the inn?”
“All right, all things considered,” I tell her. “There’s a lot of paperwork and stuff.”
“Hey, you were right about that inkwell,” she tells me, pulling it out from a glass display under the counter. A new price tag on it reads $189. “It’s late eighteenth century, according to a couple reliable Internet sources. I’ve got it up on eBay right no. Hopefully, it’ll sell soon.”
“You said someone found it when they pulled up their old porch?” Soberly would have been nothing but grassy dunes back then.
“Yeah, along with the usual under-the-porch detritus. A few milk bottles, mason jars, a wooden pipe. I confess after researching the first few things a little more rigorously, I assumed this was from the same time frame. Corb Maxwell’s house is only around a hundred years old.”
“It’s a reasonable assumption.” I find myself unusually eager to browse Sheena’s shelves, not because I expect to find more under-priced treasures, but because this is my area of expertise. After spending months researching and dating the same style of sturdy, functional, but utterly bland pottery crocks, mixing bowls, and simple vases, I’m itching to dive into a good jumble of items from all kinds of different eras and see what catches my eye. Call it exercise for my brain.
“So, you’re a historian, I hear,” she says as I peer into the display case. I snort in reply.
“There’s nothing like a small town for word to get around. You must know a thing or two yourself, to be in this business.”
“I grew up in this store—it was my mama’s before she retired to Florida and handed it over to me. I used to write my high school papers on things like how to date a glass buoy, and the influence of smugglers on the town’s architecture, stuff like that.” Sheena laughs at the memory, and I’m intrigued.
“Architecture? What do you mean?”
“Oh, almost every building more than eighty years old has a secret basement, a false wall, or something to hide contraband in. They stopped being used after Prohibition times, but for a while, this was a pretty popular place for the rum runners to put into shore from Canada. The one in my house is small, just a space about this big.” She mimes a box the size of a dishwasher with her hands. “Behind one of my kitchen cabinets. It’s big enough for a couple cases of liquor, but about fifteen years ago, TJ Wachowski almost broke his leg when he stepped through a rotting board in his own backyard. It was overgrown with grass, but when they pulled up the wood, there was a small cellar underneath that still had some liquor in it. It made the paper in Portland and everything. He hasn’t shut up about it since,” she adds with a roll of her eyes.
“That’s pretty cool,” I say. “Is there one at the inn?”
Sheena raises her eyebrows knowingly. “The inn was the center of activity. It hasn’t been dry for a single day since it opened in 1916. Everyone for miles around knew you could always get a drink at the Soberly Inn and Public House. I haven’t been down there myself, but there has to be a secret room in the basement, or was, once. It’s been so long, maybe it’s just a regular storage room or something now.”
I’ve forgotten all about the bits of history in Sheena’s shop as I mull over the story she’s spinning. An idea is starting to form in the back of my mind, but it will require some fleshing out, and a lot of time spent wherever the town’s records are kept. Still, I file the information away for later. Once I’m finished with Roz’s bookkeeping, it could turn out to be a nice little project to keep me occupied, if I still have time to kill in Soberly. Roz’s letter, where she’d told me the history of the area could keep me occupied for a lifetime, pops up in my mind. Looks like she wasn’t wrong. I smile ruefully. If I wanted to—and could find someone to pay me for it—I could find plenty to study and investigate here.
A family wanders through the door, the father already admonishing the three children not to touch anything, “or else.” The mother’s eyes are darting in all directions in delight, but I see her hold herself back, her attention half on the children who don’t seem inclined to mind their father’s warning. Sheena’s on it, however.
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br /> “Come on kids, we’ve got a corner over here where you can play with some real, old-fashioned toys, like your grandma or grandpa might have had,” she says, beckoning to them.
“Or you?” The middle child, a boy around six or seven, pipes up, and I bite the inside of my cheek hard to keep from laughing. Sheena catches me and her glare shoots lasers in my direction. I wave goodbye and step out the door, mouthing I’ll come back tomorrow to her.
Other than Sheena’s antique shop, there isn’t much else for me to explore on Soberly’s four blocks of main street. I’ve been to the pharmacy, the cafe, the small supermarket, and Rooster’s, the general store, and they don’t look like they have anything out of the ordinary to catch my attention. There’s an office offering whale watching tours, a souvenir shop, and a clothing boutique. I might have browsed the bookstore at the end of the street, but the hours posted indicate it’s closed on Mondays, so I turn back to the inn.
Cora retrieves the box of papers from the safe for me, and I lug it back up the stairs, ready to get into the meat of the work. With one month’s worth of papers spread out across the table, I get down to entering them into my spreadsheet by date and type.
It’s unbelievably boring work, and I find myself often staring off into space, usually out the French doors to take in Roz’s favorite view, or pausing to browse her bookshelves, which are overstuffed and in no system of organization I can comprehend. Roz’s interests were extremely varied if her library was any indication. I find contemporary Hispanic literary fiction alongside a recipe book on pit barbecuing, which is next to an anthology of Norse mythology. I wonder if she sourced all these titles from the Soberly bookstore, collected them during her travels, or if they’d all appeared on her doorstep in an Amazon box like most of my books.
I’m startled out of my musings by a rapid, sustained knocking on the door leading out into the hall, which doesn’t stop until I open it. It’s Kellen.