South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [128]
As far as Madeline knew, Gladys hadn’t written so much as her name in the journal she’d given her, but she kept prodding anyway.
She sank down onto the sofa. Done. The registration desk gleamed and the guest register—a massive book—lay open on top of it, the hunters’ names penciled in.
There were probably a thousand things she’d missed. She sprawled out, exhausted but still thinking, ticking things off in her head. Clean towels—thick and plush, in eggplant and sage and periwinkle and rose—hung from the bars in the rooms. The sheets and blankets smelled of fresh air, and the iron bedsteads shone with new black paint. Extra blankets were folded at the foot of each bed, crisp paper lined the dresser drawers, and a balsam sachet lay in each. She had coffee beans in the hopper, cocoa mix and tea bags in tins on the kitchen counter, fresh cardamom cake in the cupboard. The issue of what to do with the impossible old kitchen and how to serve breakfast—Madeline thought she wanted to do this—were yet to be dealt with, but for this winter she wouldn’t worry about it.
Madeline pushed herself Up from the couch and headed toward the stairs. All kinds of things would have to be enough to start: the little bit of money she had left, her patchy knowledge of what she was getting into, the time and energy she was splitting in so many different directions. But there was time. She told herself not to panic. On her way out of the lobby she straightened the picture she’d hung near the front door. The study of the lake out the attic window. She’d framed it and hung it with a discreet tag advertising that it was for sale. She bit her bottom lip, studying it for the thousandth time. Good, bad? She wasn’t sure, but she left it hanging.
The hunters came, and were both a delight and a letdown. For the duration of their stay Madeline felt like a real innkeeper, smiling her welcome, handing out keys, changing sheets. The men were affable, but Gladys was right, they were only looking for a room. They weren’t interested in the ambiance of the hotel, or traditional Potawatomi baskets woven by Naomi, or woolen Hudson’s Bay blankets. She did sell one of them half a gallon of Mary’s syrup. She let them hang the deer they shot from the limbs of the maple in the side lot, as they always had when Gladys was the owner, and told herself she would get Used to the sight.
Only a few scattered visitors, walk-ins, stayed in December. Madeline tried not to worry about that. She was just getting started. There was time to figure things out. The entire winter. She felt a rush of glee each time this thought came. It was as if she was embarking on an epic adventure, a trek to the Arctic by dogsled. And at the same time, a voice inside her nagged: Look at the money the place is already eating. How’re you ever going to keep up? Gladys was right.
She couldn’t worry about it. Not yet. Not Until she’d had her winter.
Madeline went to 26 Bessel one morning, a week before Christmas, to return a casserole dish. She tapped at the door but when there was no answer she went in. Banging came from the direction of Arbutus’s old room, and Madeline headed that way. Gladys was just coming down the hall, her hair covered with a printed scarf, an apron over her slacks and sweater. “Oh, Madeline, it’s you. I was Up on a ladder—”
“A ladder? Are you nuts, you could fall and break your neck.”
“Oh, fizzle. I’m not falling anywhere. Come in the kitchen, I’ll put coffee on.”
Just then a small form darted down the hall, skidded on the linoleum, circled the kitchen at high speed, and slammed into Gladys’s ankles.
“Don’t be a pest, Edmund.”
“Edmund?”
Edmund had a tan body and chocolate ears, feet, and tail. He gazed at Madeline with slightly crossed blue eyes. Madeline squatted down and held a finger out toward him, and he trotted over and rubbed his face along it. Madeline looked Up