Sharing Spaces (21 page)

Tomorrow. She would tell him how she felt about him first thing in the morning….

A
T
6:00
A.M
. S
ENNA WOKE
with a start, unsure of where she was. For a moment she thought she was in Jack's cabin, lying in his bunk, but then she realized she was in her own room at the lodge, with Chilkat curled at the foot of her bed, and disappointment washed over her. She vowed that the next time she and Jack treated themselves to long soak in the hot tub, there would be no talk of work or of selling the lodge, and with any luck she wouldn't pass out from a potent combination of hot water, wine and exhaustion.

The next time?

Senna sat up, not surprised by the dull headache at her temples, but very surprised to see a mug of coffee on her bedside table, holding down a note in Jack's unruly scrawl. “Left for Goose Bay with G. and W. at five o'clock. Should be back by nine or ten. Enjoy a lazy morning all to yourself. Charlie's at the cabin if you need anything. Jack.”

She threw back the coverlet and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Lazy morning? Was he out of his mind? Now that there were only the three of them, there would be even less time to sleep. Three of them to open up a lodge at full capacity in just one more day. Twelve guests to cook for, clean up after, entertain and guide.
Impossible! Even more impossible was the idea of enjoying a lazy morning.

Her mind raced as she dressed. Without Wavey or Gordina, she would have to revise the menu plan. She'd set up the meals buffet style on the sideboard, and the guests could help themselves. Daily room service would be minimal and would include fresh towels and making up the bed. Forget turn-down service in the evening and chocolates on the pillows. She'd barely be able to keep up with the cooking and cleaning. Maybe she could teach Charlie to do the laundry? Senna stifled a laugh at the thought. If Charlie could just keep the woodbox filled and help Jack with the guiding, he'd be doing all right.

Chilkat raised his head, regarded her steadily for a moment, then yawned hugely and flopped back onto his side. “Yeah, me too,” Senna agreed, “but unfortunately I'm not a dog. I just work like one.” She was still sore, but the long soak in the hot tub had helped enormously. Oh, if only the night had ended differently. If only she'd said what she wanted to say to Jack instead of mumbling incoherently. If only she hadn't been so exhausted, hadn't drunk that third glass of wine.

If only…

She pulled on a pair of jeans, clean wool socks, a T-shirt for when the day warmed up and a thick fleece pullover to thwart the early-morning chill. She tasted the coffee from the mug Jack had set beside her bed. Still vaguely warm. Bless him. Bless his enduring strength, his sense of humor, and his patience with her.

In the kitchen she reheated the coffee and poured herself another cup, sitting down at the work station to make out the list of things to do. She still had to create
and print up a mission statement to put into each guest room, a welcoming and informative one-page introduction to the lodge, including some rules regarding the fishing. Jack strongly believed that catch-and-release fishing was paramount, and the guests should be limited to one kill a week, a philosophy that Senna shared. The Wolf was an Atlantic salmon river, and the wild salmon fishery was in jeopardy. According to the lodge's rules, no salmon at all could be kept, only brook trout and pike.

Senna also wanted to give each of the guest rooms the name of a popular salmon fly to distinguish between them. She took a swallow of hot coffee and frowned. Forget all the frills for now. Rework the menu with a slant toward the sideboard buffet. Streamline the laundry. Get everything ready from the housekeeping perspective. Six guest rooms a day would take her about three hours to clean properly, prepping for and preparing three meals would take another five or six. The lodge itself, the grounds and gardens, doing the laundry, socializing with the guests…there would be little time for a luxury like sleep for the next two weeks, but in spite of the prospect of more grueling work, Senna was excited and glad she was staying.

Start-ups were hell, but they were the best kind of hell when the shake-down run went smoothly from the guest's perspective, even if the back of the house was involved in multiple crises. There was soul-deep satisfaction in pulling it all together and having the guest say, upon departure, “We had a wonderful time! Couldn't have been better. See you next year.”

That's what she was hoping for.

Only time would tell what she and Jack would
achieve in the next two weeks. Meanwhile, she'd move out of the main lodge and into the cabin Gordina and Wavey had vacated, clean the room she'd been staying in, and put the finishing touches on all the guest rooms and public areas. Then she had to start prepping the food. Jack would be picking the first guests up tomorrow afternoon. She could do a lot of baking today. Sweets, mostly. Cookies and brownies. Get the sourdough starter working for the breads and pancakes. One of the guests was a diabetic with special dietary needs.

But the very first thing on the agenda was to call her aunt and tell her she wouldn't be back for another two weeks, something she wasn't looking forward to doing. The inn was in its busy season. Being short-staffed in the sales department would create a hardship for everyone else. But they'd get along. It was only for two more weeks. She took another sip of coffee and gazed down at the wild, lonely river tumbling over the rapids before dropping down into the pool in front of the lodge and felt a pang deep inside at the beauty of this place…and an even deeper pang at the thought of leaving it.

 

J
ACK WAS NOT HAVING
a good morning. Gordina and Wavey definitely had something to do with it, making him feel like the lowest creature in the universe when he deposited them back in Goose Bay. “I'll drive you home in Goody's car,” he said to Gordina.

“I'll walk. It ain't far and I don't want to put you out any. I suppose me and my poor sick sister will starve now, with you to thank,” Gordina said, starting up the dock with her little suitcase in hand. She stopped for one last parting shot over her shoulder. “And all because we
drank a bit of your bubbly, as if we didn't deserve it after all the work you made us do!”

“No, Gordina, that's not the entire reason, although you drank all of the bubbly, not just a bit of it, and it cost me dear. The real reason is because you stole that bottle of champagne and then you lied about it. I'm sorry it didn't work out, and I'm sorry if you and your sister starve, but what you did was wrong.”

Gordina dropped her suitcase, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, and lit up. Her eyes glittered through the blue smoke. “The hell with you, mister,” she said, then picked up her suitcase and stalked off.

Wavey was weeping quietly and had been all morning. “I don't know what I'll do, with Goody gone and no job,” she said, clinging to his arm as he walked her up the dock to the gravel path that led to Goody's house. “Me, all alone in that house.”

“You'll figure something out,” Jack said. “You can always go stay with Granville if you get too lonely. He's your grandfather. He'll take you in.”

“What'll I tell Goody when she asks why I left the lodge?”

“Tell her the truth,” Jack said, unlocking the door and handing Wavey the key, setting her suitcase just inside. He left immediately, ignoring Wavey's pleas for him to stay for a cup of tea, at least, and instead nabbing Goody's car for one last ride to the hospital to check on George Pilgrim.

George had been moved to a ward and was looking less than enchanted with hospital life. He was sitting up in bed and staring blankly at the television mounted high on the wall when Jack arrived. “Good to see you,
bye,” he said, his face brightening. “Have you ever seen the likes of what comes out of that box?” he said, indicating the television. “No wonder the world's gone crazy. If I watched for another day or two, I'd go crazy myself. Never seen such sorry, shameful trash.”

“How the hell are you, George?” Jack said, dropping into a chair beside the bed and shaking George's hand. For the first time in his life, George was looking his age. “You ready to come out to the lodge with me?”

“They tell me I got to have some treatments,” he said, “but I wonder if I shouldn't just go with you now, and to hell with modern medicine.”

“I'll take you out of here if that's what you really want, George, but if you need more work, maybe you should stay.”

“My daughter tells me the same thing, but she's not lying here in this bed, y'see, and you aren't either.” George sighed in defeat. “I told you about the steelworkers' strike in Lab City, then?” Jack nodded. “Well, she's shaping up bad. They say it'll be a long one, and times'll be tough. Even the women are on the picket line now, supporting their men, but soon they'll have to support them in other ways. My daughter told me she'd come out there, to your lodge. She'd work hard, that one. She'd do anything. Her little ones are all growed but she still has bills to pay and a husband who's out of work, so that's something for you to think about, bye, if you'd still be needin' help. And I've a grandson who'd help with the guidin'. He's in Gander now but he c'n be here in two weeks after he gives his notice at the gas station. He's missin' the woods.”

“Would you happen to have their phone numbers?” Jack said, seeing a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
Any relative of George Pilgrim would be worth their weight in gold. “I'll call them both right now. I just fired both my cook and my housekeeper. The cook couldn't boil water and the housekeeper couldn't do anything at all.”

George laughed, then winced with the pain of it. “Eh, bye. I'll give you both numbers. My daughter probably has friends, too, looking for work, but if the strike ends tomorrow, I don't know where that'd leave you.”

“No worse off than I am right now,” Jack said, as George scrawled the numbers on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to him.

“I told her I'd be going out to the admiral's lodge myself, so she'd have her old daddy to goad. Give her a call. And don't forget about me.”

Jack stood. “I won't, George. I'll be here an hour after you call for me, guaranteed. Here's the phone number to the lodge, in case you misplaced it. Keep it right by your phone.”

Jack shook George's hand one last time and felt bad leaving him behind in the hospital, even if it was just for a few more days. He phoned George's daughter from the pay phone in the hospital's lobby and was relieved when she answered. Her name was Mary and she was glad to hear from him. George had told her all about the admiral's remote fishing lodge, and she was very interested in the job.

“I'll be wanting to meet you,” she said. “I'm interested in the job. Me and a good friend, if you could use her help, too.”

“When?” Jack said.

“Negotiations between the mining company and the
union have come to a halt,” Mary said. “If you have work for us, we'll be needing it, and soon.”

“Can you meet me at Tanya Lake at noon?”

“We'll be there with bells on,” Mary promised.

Jack then called George's grandson, who assured him that he could be there in less than a week and that George had taught him a lot about guiding. He left the hospital feeling hopeful that George's daughter and grandson might bail him and Senna out of an almost impossible scenario. He climbed into the plane, and moments later had shaken free of the water and was heading for Labrador City, where members of the Steelworkers' Union were on strike and their wives were desperate for work.

 

N
OON
,
AND
J
ACK STILL
hadn't returned. Senna took a break from cleaning and baking and walked down to the guides' cabin, Chilkat at her heels. Charlie was splitting wood and had made surprisingly good progress on the pile. He was happy to accept the sandwich she'd brought, and the cold lemonade. She gave the crackie a pat on the head and a piece of beef left over from supper the night before. “Charlie, did Jack tell you when he'd be back?”

“He left early,” Charlie said around a mouthful of chicken sandwich, “but the note on the table said nine or ten o'clock, and to keep splitting wood until the job was done then wheel it up to the lodge and stack it on the porch.”

Senna felt a coil of fear tighten in the pit of her stomach as she walked back to the lodge, determined not to let herself dwell on the worst-case scenario. No doubt there would be some reasonable explanation why Jack
was late getting back, and it wouldn't have anything to do with that old plane crashing. She continued baking an assortment of sweets, enough to last out the week, and in between mixing and baking she worked on the in-room booklet and kept thinking about that old plane going down somewhere between the lodge and Goose Bay. She kept imagining that Jack was hurt and needed help. She had a very bad habit of always imagining the worst.

Twelve dozen cookies and three batches of brownies later, Senna shut down the big oven, moved out of the warm kitchen and into the registration area, and began inputting the lodge's mission statement into the computer. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and her eyes never left the computer screen, but she was seeing the twisted wreckage of a plane and remembering her father's funeral. At 5:00 p.m. she walked down to feed the sled dogs, and while she scooped out the food, Charlie watered. By the time she'd finished, Senna's anxiety level had reached an all-time high.

“Charlie, I'm a little worried that Jack's so late. He was due back seven hours ago. Does this happen often?”

Charlie shrugged. “Sometimes. Once, he was gone for two days. When he came back, the admiral hollered at him. Hanson told him he went to the big city to see the tall buildings and visit a friend.”

“Terrific,” Senna muttered. “Then I guess we'll just hope he shows up for opening day.”