Summer was officially over, and even though all the families who spent their vacation at the Inn had packed up and gone home, the dining room was crowded for our famous homemade breakfast buffet. Thirty-six guests, all excited for a week-long wilderness retreat. It was our first corporate booking, and I was feeling pretty impressed with myself, since they found us through the new Britannia Beach Inn website I developed for my granddad. He originally hadn’t wanted the Inn to have an online presence because he didn’t have the staff to handle more guests. We needed the extra revenue to afford repairs on the hundred-and-thirty-year-old building, though. When I made the decision to move back to Britannia and promised to help out before and after school, he finally gave me the go-ahead.
Fully aware of how late it was getting, I sped to restock the pastry basket with warm cinnamon buns and poured fresh-brewed coffee for a table of non-outdoorsy-looking women, decked out in expensive hiking gear. It was already seven-thirty. The only bus from Britannia Beach to Squamish in the morning stopped in front of the Inn at seven forty-two. I needed to catch it if I wanted to make it to school. As I rushed to clear another stack of dirty dishes from a table, my granddad stepped up to the buffet table and scooped fresh scrambled eggs into a warming tray. “You better get going, sweetheart. You don’t want to miss the bus.”
“You mean, you don’t want me to miss the bus.”
He chuckled. “True. I am a little too busy to drive you into Squamish today.”
I kissed his cheek and removed my apron. “I’m going.”
“Don’t forget the meeting with the real-estate agent is at five o’clock today if you want to be here.”
“Oh.” I stopped and spun around, surprised. “I thought you were going to cancel that.”
As he stirred the pot of oatmeal with more attention than it needed, he glanced up to gauge my reaction, which he likely knew wasn’t going to be supportive. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Why? If I can keep attracting corporate retreat bookings, you’ll start making a profit again.”
“That’s a big if, Derian. I appreciate all the work you’ve done on the website, and I couldn’t have run things around here all summer if you hadn’t moved back, but you only have two more years of high school. I need to plan for when you leave for university. There’s no harm in hearing what he has to say.”
No harm? Except that living with my mom in Vancouver had been a disaster, and I had nowhere else to live, and selling the only place that still held good memories of my dad was something I couldn’t deal with on top of all that. “What if it gets bought by a company that just tears it down and redevelops the entire village?”
“There might be a buyer who will renovate the Inn and keep the heritage houses in the village.”
I glanced at the yellowed antique clock again. I needed to leave, but I also desperately wanted to talk him out of the meeting before I left. “We can renovate it just as easily as someone else.”
He sighed and seemed hesitant to break it to me, “It’s too expensive.”
I swept my arm through the air for emphasis. “Look at how busy we are. Our corporate retreat clients will generate extra income in the off season.”
“This is the one and only corporate booking we’ve had. We have to explore our options. Sorry, sweetheart.” He turned, holding the empty pancake tray, and retreated into the kitchen.
He was right, but I wished he wasn’t. Deflated, I turned and headed through the lobby. My bedroom was on the first floor at the end of the hall. I zig-zagged past the guest rooms, trying to avoid the floorboards that creaked—not that it mattered since my door squeaked loudly enough to be heard back in the dining room.
To be perfectly honest, my bedroom was one of the many rooms that needed to be renovated, or torn down. Only one of the outlets worked, the window didn’t stay open without something propping it up, and the wallpaper was faded and curled at the seams. My bathroom was in even worse shape than my bedroom. The toilet handle didn’t work and could only be flushed by pulling on the rusted chain. The tiles on the wall occasionally fell off the plaster and smashed into the rusted claw-foot tub. And the hot water was only hot about thirty percent of the time. Everything was the same as it had been when my mom was growing up. It was hard to imagine it any other way. But when I actually took notice, it was kind of impossible to ignore the fact that it was run down.
Trying to forget about the potential sale, I scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth. Unfortunately, my hair had to stay hanging boringly down my back in waves since there wasn’t enough time to straighten it. After tossing my yoga pants and Britannia Beach Inn polo shirt into the hamper, I dressed in a skirt, sweater and boots, and grabbed my canvas school bag. Without pausing to look in the mirror, I left out of the side emergency exit door next to my bedroom and jogged across the parking lot towards the highway and the bus stop.
Before I reached the shoulder of the highway, the bus blew by. I raced along the gravel, arms waving. But the driver didn’t see me, or didn’t care.
“Great,” I mumbled. There was nobody to cover for my granddad during the time it would take to drive me into town. School wasn’t going to happen. Not a good start to starting over. Maybe there was no point in going back, period. If the Inn went up for sale, it didn’t make sense to go back to school after a year away, only to move again.
My eighteen-year-old next-door neighbour Trevor stepped off his porch and leaned against the side of his 4Runner, watching my mopey walk with an amused look on his face. We hadn’t seen each other since the end of June because he’d been away travelling in South America on a motorbike all summer. He looked extra rugged, but still like himself in his standard white T-shirt and dark jeans. “Need a ride?”
I honestly wanted to go back to my room and curl up under the covers. My granddad would probably insist on leaving the guests unattended and driving me himself, though, so I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” I walked across the lot to where he was parked and reached up to hug him. “Welcome home.”
“You too.” He squeezed his arms and wrapped me in a warmth that did feel like home, but it reminded me that Britannia Beach might not be my home for long. I stepped back and tucked my hair behind my ears as I glanced at our tiny old mining village—twelve heritage houses, a small diner, a church, and a couple of tourist shops—backed up against the base of the forested mountain and across the highway from the beach. It was quaint, but old and easy to miss.
Not wanting to think about the fate of the village, I focused back on the immediate problem. “I don’t want you to make a special trip into town just for me. Were you headed into Squamish anyway?”
“Yup. I picked up a shift at the docks. And Kailyn needs a ride to her program.” He reached over to take my school bag and placed it in the back of the truck.
“Thank you. My granddad thanks you, too.”
“No problem.”
“How was your motorcycle trip?”
He eyed my outfit with an expression that was difficult to read. A skirt and boots were a change for me compared to the tomboyish ponytail, jeans, and bulky sweaters I normally wore. I wanted to make a statement at school that I wasn’t the same quiet, boring Derian they had known before I moved away. Based on Trevor’s reaction, it wasn’t producing the statement I had hoped for. “The trip was good,” he finally answered.
“Why are you looking at me funny?”