South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [105]
She wondered how they could face the conflict over and over. She thought she would have folded Up her tables and gone away with much less fight. But she was learning. She’d have to, if she was going to stay, because it appeared that a great part of victory—or at least survival—was simply a dogged hanging on.
Madeline sighed, content for the moment to do nothing at all. The lake rolled into shore, the sun shone hot on the top of her head, and Greyson lounged heavy in her lap, a small parcel of person with whom she was inexorably connected. The flies buzzed, lazy and indolent, and time seemed suspended. McAllaster seemed ageless, infinite, eternal. It was a hard feeling to pin down with words, but it was a good feeling, a big feeling.
Then the sheriff arrived and the small battle waged itself again and Madeline thought how paradoxical this place was: the best place, the worst place, all at once.
Pete was puttering Under the hood of the Buick when Madeline and Greyson got to Bessel Street that evening. (Pete was invited to dinner often, and Gladys made a point of inviting Madeline and Greyson too. It was all part of making Grey feel secure, that his entire world hadn’t evaporated with Randi’s accident, nothing to do with Gladys forgiving Madeline, sadly.) Arbutus sat in a lawnchair on the sidewalk, her ankles crossed, a sun hat with a wide ribbon tipped back on her head, the walker nearby. She was wearing a flowered dress and had her book in her lap, but Madeline didn’t think she’d been reading. Smitten, she thought. It was sweet. Also inspirational. Maybe someday, some far-off day, she might have this too, for as much as she liked to deny it, at heart she was a romantic. And what was this, after all, but hope, a declaration that life did not end at seventy or eighty, that anything could happen.
Greyson ran Up the walk into the house and Madeline followed. She smiled at Arbutus, who gave her a merry look in return. Pete didn’t have a chance, he was snagged. Lucky Pete.
“You know that hotel is one in a million,” he said after dinner.
“It is,” Madeline said. She was tired and felt less certain than she did sometimes, but grateful for the encouragement.
“You’re a big help,” Gladys said. “I keep telling her to give Up before she’s put anything more than elbow grease into it.”
“Ah, now, don’t say that. A certain kind of person’s going to flock to it. People will come. They’ll pay more than you think, too.”
“But it’s just a few months of the year that people like that come here,” Arbutus said, and Madeline heard in her voice that she found them well-meaning but naïve. “Those busy months have to stretch out over the quiet ones, and they stretch thin. You can’t imagine how thin.”
“She doesn’t want a big living. Do you, Madeline?”
“No.”
Gladys leaned forward. “Do you have any idea what it’ll take to get open? Really? To keep it all going? I still say the place’ll do you in.”
Madeline wondered if that was what Gladys hoped for.
“I’m pretty handy,” Pete said. “And that building looks sound, it’s standing straight. Wouldn’t do that if it had been built shoddy. Might not be so bad as you think.”
“Oh, fizzle. You two are not listening.”
“Learned it from you,” Madeline said, hoping to make her smile, but Gladys frowned instead.
“I thought maybe you’d come to your senses once you’d spent a little time in there. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’ve said it all before, but I don’t want you to waltz into this without warning you. Do you know how long it will take to make your first dollar? I mean, make it over and above the cost of keeping it all going, if you can even manage that?”
“Oh, fifteen or twenty years, probably. Maybe longer, maybe never.”
Arbutus was studying Madeline, her expression solemn and anxious.
“Do you know you