South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [112]
Her next Undertaking was the lobby, though Gladys assured her the hunters were only looking for a bed, nothing fancy, that they would just troop through on their way Upstairs and she shouldn’t drive herself crazy worrying. Still, she couldn’t have it dusty and dirty and didn’t want them to see it as it was now—a jumble of boxes and furniture.
She wanted the hotel to be a landmark, charming and warm, historic, the kind of place people fell in love with. She couldn’t let it be forgettable, didn’t want it to be just a cheap room for the night. (And it wasn’t going to be cheap like it had been in Gladys’s day, it couldn’t be. She wondered how that would go over with the old customers. She was giving the hunters an opening-week, returning-customers break, but after that, things had to change.) She planned to fill the lobby with comfortable furniture, good rugs, a brand-new airtight woodstove with a glass door to watch the fire through. She’d ordered the stove and the men were coming next week to install it. She’d already sent the check: four thousand thirty-seven dollars and sixteen cents.
Gladys had declared she was out of her mind, spending that kind of money when there was a potbelly there already. But Pete and Madeline had played with the pretty little parlor stove and discovered that not only did it smoke—a long crack ran Up one side of it—but even when it did get burning hot it didn’t throw out much heat, though it sucked wood like a freight train.
She reassured herself it was the right decision. The fire would make people feel they were really in the north; the new stove—a powerhouse of heat—would be the centerpiece of the room. She could Use it most of the year because even in May and September the weather was often cold enough for a fire. It would be cozy, irresistible. And once she’d made people comfortable, she was going to provide tempting things for them to buy, everything from candles to comforters. She’d Use the parlor stove as a prop, stack something for sale on it: pints of Mary’s syrup, maybe.
The whole project was going to cost so much that frequently she couldn’t sleep at night. Sometimes she wished she had a partner to hash things out with. But she had only herself, and had to hope her choices would work. The truth was, they had to work, there was no margin for error. The hotel had to make her a living or she wouldn’t have one.
“Madeline, I’m hungry, can we stop at the Trackside?” Greyson asked. He sounded bored and cranky. It was usually this way after a visit to Randi.
“I don’t think so, kiddo. Not this trip.”
“But I want to see Andrea, I haven’t seen her in forever.”
Madeline was tempted to give in, but she couldn’t always be feeling sorry for him and getting guilted into things. “Not today. We’ve got chicken soup to eat, Gladys and Arbutus will be waiting.”
“I hate chicken soup.”
Yesterday he had loved chicken soup. “Poor you.”
He slumped into a sullen slouch.
“I’m thinking we can move into the hotel this weekend, what do you think about that?” Madeline said after a few moments.
He stared out the window.
“Won’t that be fun?”
More silence.
“Well, I know I for one am excited. It’s going to be neat, you’ll see.”
“I want to go home,” he said in a tiny voice. “I don’t want to live at the hotel. I want to live with my mom in our house.”
They passed a stretch of pointed fir trees mixed with birch, a stand of feathery tamaracks that had turned golden with autumn, a bog with