Barefoot Season. Сьюзен Мэллери

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      Seven

      Michelle sat with her fingers on the keyboard. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to open the programs; it was that she didn’t want to.

       Reality was damned unpleasant. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be one of those people who could simply drift away. To be on another mental plane and not care about this world. Only not caring wouldn’t fix the problem. This was her inn. The one thing that had kept her going while she’d been away. The thought of coming home. If home was fucked-up, she was going to have to fix it herself.

       She typed purposefully, focusing only on gathering information. She was used to spreadsheets and charts and graphs. Her time in the army had been spent in and around supplies. Deciding what to order. Getting them where they needed to go. Getting the inn back on its financial feet was nothing compared with the logistics of housing, feeding and caring for thousands of soldiers on the other side of the world.

       She quickly sorted through the previous year’s tax returns, wincing when she saw the loss. Sure, avoiding taxes in every legal way possible was great fun, but seeing the amount of money the inn had lost made her heart sink. The only bright spot was that losses meant there weren’t overdue taxes.

       She printed out the tax return, then started printing out other reports. The checkbook register. Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. She found that her mother had purchased not one, not two, but three new cars in the ten years Michelle had been gone. The last one, a BMW convertible with the price tag well over $70,000, had been repossessed.

       She sorted through desk drawers and found unpaid bills under boxes of paper clips and staples. Then she added Carly’s neat list of deposits and bills paid.

       After opening a new spreadsheet, she began to enter the information. What came in and what went out. She balanced the checkbook, then did it again because the number couldn’t be right. She looked at reservations and saw there were many weeks when they weren’t even close to the number required by the bank.

       Two hours later, she stood and limped slowly around the room. Blood circulated, pouring into her hip and causing pain. She was stiff and sore. But the worst of it was on the inside.

       Growing up, she’d always been her father’s favorite. Even as a little kid, she’d known her dad preferred her to Brenda. She’d accepted his love, his devotion, and had known that he was the one who stood between her and her mother. Brenda had been indifferent at best, and critical and hurtful at worst.

       Sometimes she wondered if her father’s favoritism had hurt Brenda. If, in return, Brenda had taken that out on her daughter. There was no way to know how much of her mother’s actions were the result of circumstance and how many came from a sucky personality.

       Michelle couldn’t remember when she first learned that her parents had “had” to get married. She’d been born seven months after the wedding. While Michelle and her father had loved the inn, loved the island, Brenda had resented being trapped here. There were no trips to Europe—the inn couldn’t be left for that long. No summer vacations—that was the busiest time. No weekends anywhere. The inn came first.

       Michelle remembered her mother screaming that she and her father were so selfish. At seven, Michelle had been a small but determined opponent. “If we’re so selfish, why do you always get your way?”

       A question for which her mother never had an answer.

       Brenda had resented her husband’s abandonment more than she had mourned his absence. He’d left them both—devastating Michelle. The desertion had not only proved he didn’t love her best, it had left her at the mercy of her mother.

       At the time, Michelle had wondered if she would leave, too, but Brenda didn’t. Instead, Michelle had been the one to go away. Looking now at the financial math that was her family’s legacy, she thought that Brenda had won in subtle ways. A bad decision here, a foolish purchase there. Individually they were inconsequential. Taken in total, they were a disaster.

       She studied the payroll reports. Boeing didn’t need this many people working for them. The inn only had thirty rooms, but seven maids. And what the hell was a reception greeter? Just as confusing, some people seemed overpaid while others didn’t make enough. Damaris hadn’t had a raise in six years. That was bad enough, but Carly’s financial situation was worse.

       Michelle stared at the biweekly paycheck amount. Even taking into consideration the fact that she got free living quarters and a couple of meals a day, she wasn’t making close to minimum wage. She had a kid. The medical insurance sucked. There had to be out-of-pocket expenses for that, not to mention clothes and shoes and whatever else children needed.

       While she was aware she should probably be happy that the other woman was practically living in poverty, she mostly felt embarrassed and maybe a little guilty.

       Michelle wanted to put all the blame on her mother. The inn had been left to her in trust. She was supposed to take care of it. But Michelle knew she was the one responsible. She’d been the one to leave, the one who hadn’t come back, the one who had never asked. Now she had two mortgages, a pending foreclosure and a list of rules and demands that made her skin crawl.

       Someone knocked on the door.

       “Come in,” she barked without looking up.

       “You sound like you’re still in the army.”

       She saw Damaris step into the office. The cook had a tray in one hand.

       “I brought you lunch. I didn’t think you’d eat on your own.”

       Michelle glanced at the clock and was surprised to see it was nearly three. “Do you always work this late?”

       “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.” The cook put the tray on the desk, then sat in the empty chair. “I had to order my meat and produce.”

       “What time do you usually get out of here?”

       Damaris shrugged. “Two. Two-thirty.”

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