My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) (40 page)

“It is.”

“Well, we’d like to plan a visit to the island and The Lake Lodge sounds perfect.”

“It’s not fancy. And we’re not downtown.”

“I know. I read that in your ad. We’ve looked at the pictures, and it’s just our sort of thing.”

“Okay then, when would you like to visit?”

“I have a break in my touring schedule at the end of the month. We’d like to make reservations for the last week in July.”

The last week in July was The Cherry Festival and I knew we were completely booked. “Beverly, I’m sorry, but we have no vacancies during that time. Are you set on those dates?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I have had one unexpected commitment after the other this year. That’s our window.”

“Beverly, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I would have loved to have you and your family as our guests. And I would try to help you find something else on the island but that will be the week of the Annual Cherry Festival, and I’m afraid everything will be booked.”

“I understand. It was worth a go though.”

“Thank you for thinking of us.”

“Maybe it will work out another time.”

“I hope so, Beverly.”

“Take care, Cammy.”

“You too.”

When I went back to the kitchen, Marni asked, “What did she want?”

“She wanted to book a week at the lodge for her and her family.”

“Cool, our first celebrity,” said Sara.

“Afraid not. She wanted to book the last week of July.”

Sara and I looked at each other and said, “The Cherry Festival.”

“They could stay in Rhubarb Cottage,” offered Marni.

“With you two?”

“No we could get a room in town.”

“If there was a room to be had in town, which I’m quite sure there is not, I would have booked it for the Rivers. I called a few places when I got off the phone. Nothing’s available. Besides, it would be silly for you two to go back and forth to town every day, and I need you here at my beck and call.”

“The attic,” Sara said.

“What about it?” I asked.

“We could stay up there. And the Rivers family could have the cottage for the week.”

“You’ve seen the attic?” I asked her.

“Yes.” Sara made a silly face. “We’d need to move stuff to one end, but you have extra beds, and I’ve heard it said that the best views on the island are to be had up there.”

“There’s no bathroom,” I reminded her.

“We’ll use the ladies room in the lobby and we can shower at your place. We’ll be covert. The guests won’t even know.”

“It would make more sense for the two of you to sleep in the cottage with Race and me, in the living room and in the study.”

Sara grimaced and said, “Me and the neatnik, Race Coleman, under the same roof. I don’t think so. I’d rather stay in the attic.”

So it was settled. I called Beverly Rivers back and told her we were able to work out making one of the cottages available. Then Sara, Marni, and I took to the task of cleaning and organizing the attic.

The day the Rivers family arrived, oops, I mean the Timmons family, I felt as if I was waiting for our first guests. Rhubarb Cottage was all dressed up and Sara and I had planned a breakfast menu for the week with some
clean
choices—egg white frittatas, oven roasted potatoes and vegetables, steel cut oatmeal, sprouted grain toast and fresh fruit.

“Are you going back on the plan while Beverly Rivers is here?” Sara teased.

“No, I just want her and her family to have the kind of food they like to eat.”

“So, she knows you’re not eating
clean
anymore.”

“Not exactly, but I’ll tell her.”

Beverly Rivers was everything I had imagined
but more impressive. She was two years older than me, but she looked ten years younger and had the energy to match. I don’t know how someone without an ounce of caffeine or sugar in their system could have that much energy, but it was a good thing she did.

Beverly didn’t have her first child until she was in her forties. At the age of fifty-two, she had two children, a girl and a boy, both under ten who had their mother’s vitality, and she kept up with them all week.

The family rode their bikes downtown and back more than once a day. They kayaked and saw every St. Gabriel attraction that I recommended. Beverly kept a Cherry Festival calendar on her at all times and ran her family’s daily schedule according to the events they wanted to participate in. Her husband followed along quite willingly and her children were delightful. The whole Timmons Family ate
clean
and was the picture of health, a perfect little unit. Who says you can’t have it all?

One night in the lobby, Beverly gave an impromptu talk about the benefits of cherries. “Cherries have more antioxidants than most other fruits and contain beta carotene, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber.” The talk included what all those things do for your body, short and long term. The Cherry Festival committee got wind of the presentation, and Beverly was asked to give an encore downtown at the Trillium Playhouse.

St. Gabriel was a big hit with the Timmons family, and they were a big hit with the island.

The night before Beverly and her family left, I was making my nightly walk through the lodge, picking up any leavings of the day and straightening furniture and pillows, when I heard something in the kitchen. At the table in a pair of sweat pants and a man’s t-shirt with her hair up in a ponytail was Beverly Rivers. She was crying and eating some of Race’s ice cream right out of the containers.

Beverly had just put a spoonful of Rhubarb Cinnamon in her mouth and was going for a scoop of Crumbled Cherry Pie when she looked up and saw me standing there with my mouth open.

“Cammy, hello, you’ve caught me being terribly stroppy. I hope this is okay. That I helped myself, I mean.”

“It’s fine. Beverly, are you okay?”

There were more tears and Beverly Rivers proceeded to tell me about how her busy schedule was causing a strain in her marriage, and there were financial pressures. Her book sales were waning as was her recording career. And that beautiful, energetic beacon of success suffered from feelings of inadequacy as a mother. She was guilt ridden for the time she was working and away from her children, and she struggled with a compulsive need to live up to her fan’s expectations of her.

I confessed to Beverly that I was not the devout follower of
Eat Clean, Be Clean
that she may have thought. I shared what Race and I had been through and my own struggles with keeping our life from becoming a dawn-to-dusk frenzy of work.

Together we emptied both containers of ice cream and talked into the wee hours of the morning. I like Beverly Rivers, and I learned that night she was even more impressive than I thought. I was also reminded that no one’s life is perfect, no matter how it looks from the outside. Let’s try to remember that, shall we?

The Cellar

The Lake Lodge has had its share of interesting people come and go. We’ve had politicians, celebrities and Olympic athletes, but it has been mostly just plain old folks, who are my favorite guests.

I love the women who come for scrapbooking retreats and fill the meeting room with paper and photos. We can hear them late at night as they work away, giggling when they get punchy from lack of sleep. I love the older couples that are seeing St. Gabriel for the first time and bubble over like children from their wonder of the place. And I love the newlyweds. They are possibly my most favorite guests.

But that visit from Beverly Rivers and her family sure stirred up the place. After they checked out, The Lake Lodge got back to a calmer flurry of activity. Sara and Marni moved back into Rhubarb Cottage, and I made plans to remodel the attic into two suites with bathrooms. When we closed for the season, we would dig into the project until winter put a stop to it, and then we would finish in the spring.

In addition to the attic there was only one more room at The Lake Lodge that needed attention. Just like my house in Texas, I loved every room on the property, good bones. But at the lodge, there was an exception, the cellar. And so far, there had been no attempt to change that. Sara and I decided we were going to brighten up the place. Give it the respect it deserved. After all, it was home to some of our most prominent guests.

The entire room and everything in it was cleaned, and we painted all of the walls and oiled all of the oak shelving. We found a little crystal boudoir chandelier at a boutique on the mainland, and Ralph Cummings installed it in place of the plain light bulb that had been hanging from the ceiling.

We organized everything on the shelves into baskets and bins, and we brought an old Swiss trestle table and chairs down from the attic. Surely the ghosts needed a place to sit, and we would use it for a work surface when we were down there.

Sara and I stood at the bottom of the stairs admiring our work. I threw my arm over her shoulder and said, “I hope the ghosts appreciate this.”

“How could they not?”

The fruits of our labor were enjoyed for about twenty-four hours. Sara and I were sitting in the dining room planning the breakfast menu for the following week. The smoke alarms began to go off just as Race came running through the front door of the lodge yelling, “Fire, get everyone out!”

We followed him into the kitchen and he had already grabbed a fire extinguisher and was running down the cellar stairs. Smoke was billowing out the door.

I was frantic when I said, “Sara, go make sure everyone is out on the front lawn.” Then I grabbed another extinguisher from the pantry and ran down the stairs after Race. I couldn’t see him through the smoke. What I could see was a burst of flames shooting out from the shelves on the left side of the cellar. I aimed and held down on the extinguisher lever and shouted, “Race, where are you?”

“Cammy, get out of here!”

I felt Race’s body slam into me and he caught me before I fell back. Water streamed in from the cellar window and was splashing around our feet.

“Go, go!” he yelled and pushed me back up the stairs where we crashed into Marni. She was pulling a spewing hose through the kitchen. Race threw the empty extinguisher on the floor and grabbed the hose and a towel from the counter. He soaked the towel with water, covered his mouth and ordered, “Cammy, Marni, go outside, now!” And then he ran back down the stairs.

“Race, don’t go down there!” I tried to grab his arm, but he was gone.

Marni yelled, “I’m going to check on George!”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s outside with a hose at the window.”

Marni ran outside and I stood there staring at the cellar door. Race came back up the stairs, coughing. As he pushed me out the back door, all I could think of was what the smoke was doing to his pneumonia-ravaged lungs.

By the time the fire trucks got there, which was only minutes from the time Race had run though the front door, the flames that had been no bigger than a modest campfire were shooting out the cellar window, up the staircase, and through the laundry room floor.

Everyone who wasn’t out exploring the island was out on the front lawn. Still, two of the firemen checked every nook and cranny while the others put out the fire. An hour later we were waiting to get the all clear to go inside and see the damage, when two of the View Point Hotel carriages pulled up to the front gate and James was driving one of them. He jumped down from the driver’s seat and came walking up the hill.

“Is everyone okay?” James asked.

“Yes,” said Race who couldn’t speak without coughing.

“Not everyone.” I grabbed Race’s hand.

All of The Lake Lodge guests and their luggage were loaded into the carriages and James took them back to the View Point Hotel. Then the fire crew took Race and me into the lodge to show us the damage. There was a hole burned through the laundry room floor, and the kitchen stairs to the second floor were burnt to the frame.

The cellar was a shell with only the remains of the charred shelving that held blackened canning jars that hadn’t fallen to the floor and broken into the carpet of glass with the others. The dry sinks and wardrobes had crashed into the cellar from the laundry room above. In the center of the room was a pile of ash and debris. And in that pile was the pretty little chandelier, crushed and black.

Smoke and water damage in the kitchen rendered the space virtually unrecognizable. Upstairs in the hall off the kitchen stair landing was more smoke damage. Soot coated the walls and the ceiling.

One of the firemen held up a blackened coffee can. “Here’s your culprit. We found it on the floor below one of the burned up shelves in the cellar. Whatever was in here is what started the fire.”

I knew immediately it was the can that I had placed the rags in that Sara and I had used to oil the cellar shelves. I had set it on a shelf and forgotten about it. The window was hinged at the bottom of the frame, and we had left it tilted open to air the room out after we painted the walls and oiled the shelves.

With the window ajar, the rays of the sun radiated through the glass, which was at just the right angle to beat on the metal of the can, heating it and the rags inside. The rags combusted and caught the oak shelving on fire. I never knew that could happen.