The Magnolia Inn

by Carolyn Brown

  “Not really. Aunt Sugar usually closed up the place a month or so in the winter to do some heavy cleaning. It was kind of slow right after Christmas anyway. We might have a decent year if we could have our grand reopening by mid-April.”

  “That sounds doable. Smells good in here. Can I wash up in the kitchen sink?”

  She shrugged. “The place belongs to you as much as to me.”

  He’d already removed his coat. Now he was rolling up the sleeves of his body-hugging knit shirt and heading toward the sink. When he finished, he glanced around the kitchen. “Paper towels?”

  “Real towels.” She tossed him the one from over her shoulder.

  “Faucet is dripping. I’ll get on that tomorrow after we draw up a plan. Once this place is fixed up, it’ll be a gold mine. Reuben is an idiot,” Tucker said.

  “That’s paying Reuben a compliment,” she said. “He’s worse.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m glad he didn’t want his half.” He dried his hands, rolled up his sleeves, and sat down at the table.

  “Hey, if this is a partnership, Mr. Malone . . .”

  “I told you it’s Tucker. Mr. Malone sounds like you’re talkin’ to my grandpa,” he reminded her.

  “Okay, then, Tucker. If I’m going to help you remodel, then the least you can do is get your own plate and fork and pour your own coffee,” she scolded.

  He might have agreed to save the inn, but by golly, he could damn sure help out. She pointed at the cabinet door above the coffeepot.

  “Aunt Sugar organized her cabinets. Coffee cups are up there above the pot. Plates are to the left of the sink. Glasses to the right. Mixing bowls under the bar. The big pots and pans, slow cookers, and food are in the pantry,” she said.

  He chuckled as he pushed the chair back. “Kind of a smart-ass, ain’t you?”

  “I am what I am. You’ve got until Friday to live with it or change your mind and pull that trailer off my property.” She started melting butter for the omelet.

  “And if I don’t like working with you and leave, are you going to sell me your half? God knows you ain’t goin’ to do much around here with a hundred bucks.” He poured a mug of coffee, got a plate and a fork, and carried it all to the table.

  “You ever go to church?” She stirred flour into the skillet with the sausage and then added milk.

  “Few times,” he said.

  “Ever hear that story about the widow woman who only had enough for one meal until the prophet came along? He wanted the bread she was about to fix, so she gave it to him, and”—she snapped her fingers—“they had enough food to last for months because the oil and flour never played out.”

  “I’m not a prophet,” Tucker chuckled. “You think God is going to keep the pantry full for you?”

  “Maybe. I went to church in the summers when I was here with Aunt Sugar. Mama wasn’t nearly as God-fearin’ as her older sister.” She stirred the gravy and set it aside while she made hash browns and started the omelet. When those were done, she made half a dozen pancakes and then carried everything to the table.

  “I hope you don’t intend for me to eat all this. I’m hungry, but that’s a lot of food,” he said.

  “Hey, you asked for it, so here it is. And besides, I haven’t had supper, either.” She went back to the cabinet for a plate and fork.

  He split two biscuits and covered them with gravy. “I’m not much of a morning person. Give me a bowl of cereal and two or three cups of coffee and I’m ready to work. But I do love this kind of food for supper.”

  “Comfort food.” She nodded. “That’s the best kind. So where do we start on this job and when?”

  “I’d say on the second floor,” he answered quickly. “Finish one room completely and go on to the next. I peeled back a corner of the carpet. Did you know there’s oak hardwood under it?”

  “Had no idea, but that would sure be easier to clean than carpet.” She flipped two pancakes onto her plate and poured hot buttered syrup over them.

  “I’ll get out my notepad, and we’ll set down a plan after we eat. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home-cooked meal like this, so I intend to enjoy it first.”

  “So exactly how much money are you willing to sink into this project?” she asked.

  “Enough to finish it,” he said and changed the subject. “If you do cook like this every morning when we have guests, they’ll be booking for another visit before they ever leave.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “But this is just a sample of what Aunt Sugar did for breakfast. I’ve got her menus and recipes for fancy muffins, waffles, and all kinds of things to vary it.”

  “So she was your mother’s sister?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Her older sister by a different mother. Aunt Sugar’s mama died when she was a teenager, and her dad remarried a woman named Victoria that next year. They had my mother about the time that Aunt Sugar and Uncle Jasper got married. There’s a picture of my aunt in her wedding dress holding my mother.”

  What was she doing? He didn’t need to know about her personal life. Besides, he could easily change his mind and take his trailer and cat away by Friday. Then she’d be back to square one, needing someone to buy half a bed-and-breakfast.

  Usually folks told Tucker what they wanted done, and he gave them two or three options. He’d start at the high end and go down to the bare-bones price that the job would cost. But that evening after they’d had supper, he knew he didn’t have to figure in labor, and that was at least two-thirds of the cost of any job.

  “Okay, this is what I’ve got in mind,” he said. “The bedrooms are big enough that we can easily take a few feet off each for private bathrooms. People want more privacy now than just two bathrooms at the end of the hall. If we want to keep the plantation feel to the place, then I’ve got a contact down near Tyler that refurbishes old claw-foot tubs. We could probably get a real good deal on half a dozen.”

  “That will take a lot of money. It would involve new plumbing and more than one year to pay back,” she said. “I was thinkin’ new drapes and maybe updating the linens, and hopefully the carpet.”

  “You got to spend money to make money,” he said. “It’s a long-term investment. We’ll get repeat customers by giving them privacy, comfort, and good food. Maybe when we get rolling we can think about buying half a dozen canoes for the clients to use. The bayou is right behind us. We could also furnish the equipment for fishing.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” Jolene said.

  “I see a lot of potential in this place. I can even see offering the huge dining room for small weddings. The bride could have one of the upstairs rooms for dressing and the groom could have another. We could call in a photographer and a caterer and give it to them as a package deal.” Walking through the rooms had fueled him with ideas that he couldn’t wait to share.

  “Good grief! That’s really ambitious,” Jolene gasped.

  “The sky is the limit, so why keep our feet on the ground?” He quoted one of Melanie’s favorite sayings.

  Sassy hopped up on the table and curled up next to the sugar bowl. Jolene reached over and stroked her long white fur until she started to purr. That gesture went a long way in Tucker’s books. Any woman who didn’t pitch a bitchy fit because the cat got on the table was an okay partner as far as he was concerned.

  While she was paying attention to the cat, he stole sideways glances at her. Something stirred in his heart. He hadn’t felt anything for a woman since Melanie died. Feelings like he had for his wife came along only once in a lifetime, and they sure didn’t happen at first glance. This was probably just excitement.

  He must have overwhelmed Jolene enough—showing up unannounced the way he had and then going on and on about the potential he could see in the place. So he picked up his notepad and carried it and a tape measure upstairs.

  “What are you doing now?” She’d followed him—an unexpected choice. “Planning on building another wing on the inn so
we can turn it into a hotel?” Her tone twined jealousy and sarcasm.

  “No, ma’am. This place is just the right size for a bed-and-breakfast. Keeps the cozy feeling. Besides, you probably don’t want to make breakfast for more than twelve people, do you?” he asked.

  “Aunt Sugar offered a rollaway bed if a couple wanted to stay with a child or if three ladies came down to go to the antique stores for a weekend,” she said. “But three to a room was her limit.”

  “Then eighteen at the most. Any more than that and we might have to call the place the Magnolia Hotel.” He opened the door to the first bedroom, dropped down on his knees, and removed the tape measure from his belt. He pulled the tab out and then handed it to her. “Stretch this to the other side of the room.”

  “My first job as a carpenter’s helper,” she said.

  “It’s not any worse than my first one as a B&B owner. I had to set the table for supper,” he shot back.

  “I guess we’ve both got a lot to learn.” She pulled the metal tape to the other side of the room. “Twenty feet, and it looks to be square to me.”

  “We’ll measure for sure, but I agree with you. We can take six feet off the side of this one and have a nice-sized bathroom and a closet to put the rollaway bed in as well as give the guests a place to hang clothing. Do you realize not a single room has a closet?” He reeled in the tape measure and drew out a rough plan for the two bathrooms.

  She peered over his shoulder. “That’s what the armoires are for, and there’s two rollaways in the closet under the stairs.”

  “The armoires are pretty beat-up. Let’s get rid of them. That’ll give us more room for something like a rocking chair by the window. How in the world did two old folks ever get those rollaways up the stairs?”

  “Growing up, I always thought Uncle Jasper was the strongest man in the world, but now that I think about it, I bet getting those things up and down has been a chore for him for a while. Maybe they didn’t use them very often.” She smiled just thinking of her aunt and uncle.

  “Or maybe those beds were the reason they decided to retire.” His eyes left the notes and focused on her. She was downright beautiful, especially when she smiled.

  “I told Aunt Sugar the reason she left after Christmas was so she wouldn’t have to do the spring cleaning on this place.”

  “Guess the remodel will take care of a lot of the cleaning business. Hey, do you ever do much shoppin’ in the antique stores in Jefferson?” he asked.

  “Two of Aunt Sugar’s closest friends run a couple of them. Lucy has Attic Treasures, and Flossie owns Mama’s Place. Why?”

  “See that oak washstand over there in the corner? Two bedrooms have those, and we could use one as a vanity in each bathroom. I kind of pictured this place with an old plantation home flavor,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Tara from Gone With the Wind.” There was that smile again.

  “Isn’t there already a place called that in Jefferson?”

  “It’s still a museum, restaurant, and gift store, but it’s no longer a bed-and-breakfast. I meant the aura. It should always have that old-world magnolia charm,” she said.

  “Want to plant some magnolia trees?” he asked.

  “Aunt Sugar tried that, but they didn’t survive.”

  He sat down on the top step and patted the floor beside him. “She ever tell you why it’s named the Magnolia Inn?”

  “Aunt Sugar’s mama came from southern Louisiana, where magnolias are everywhere. So when her parents rented rooms, she named the place that. Please don’t tell me you were thinking of changing it. That’s one area we’d have to fight about,” she said.

  “No, I kind of like the image of peace that it brings,” he answered.

  Tucker hadn’t figured on being comfortable in the house, or that he and Jolene would hit it off. He’d thought he’d plug into the electricity and live in his trailer, but now he was entertaining notions of moving all the way indoors. He shut his eyes and brought up a visual of Melanie.

  What do you think, darlin’?

  It’s been time to leave the trailer for a long, long time. Her voice was loud and clear in his head.

  When he opened them, Jolene was watching Sassy pick her way up the stairs, one at a time. “She’s never been in a two-story house?”

  “Nope. Only step she has had to deal with is the one to get inside my trailer,” he answered. “So back to those washstands. You didn’t state an opinion.”

  She threw up her palms. “Hey, you’re the one with the money.”

  “But you are my partner, so we’re going to share things, right?”

  “I never thought something like this would even be possible. I know you paid a lot for your half, but you really need to tell me what our budget is, Tucker. I’m willing to take a small salary out of what we bring in and put the rest of the profits toward paying you back, but I need to know. As it stands, it’s pulling in a low six-figure gross a year, before taxes, insurance, and utilities. Like you said, we’re partners.”

  Tucker’s eyebrows drew down into a solid dark line. He didn’t want to tell her how much money the insurance company had given him when Melanie died, but she was right. They were partners. He did a rough estimate of what it would take to put the bathrooms in and to do some cosmetic work on the downstairs and added several thousand dollars to that. It wouldn’t deplete the money in the savings account by any means, but it was a rough budget.

  He quoted her the amount, and she gasped. “Good Lord, did you rob a bank? Why are you working odd jobs?”

  He shrugged. “Even when I was on the Dallas police force, I flipped houses, so I had a nice nest egg, but there was insurance money after my wife was killed in a car accident.” It pained him still to think of profiting from her death. He drew out his tape measure and figured the size of the armoire. That kept his hands busy while he regained his composure and swallowed the lump in his throat. “We’ve got the finances to do this job right. Now, if we take this thing out, it’ll give us quite a bit more room. Washstands could be an old sideboard or buffet—they’d fit in. But they couldn’t be much bigger than what’s up there in the first room we’ll start working on,” he said. “Anyway, I thought maybe you could do some lookin’ around to see what you could find.”

  “I’ll check in with Lucy and Flossie,” she answered and then abruptly changed the subject. “Were you even in this house before tonight?”

  “Nope, but . . .” The story about Melanie’s senior tea was his private memory, and he cherished it too much to share. “I’ve remodeled a lot of these old places, and I kind of figured it looked the same.” He straightened up and started down the stairs. “Lucy and Flossie sound like what you’d name kittens.”

  “There’s also Dotty, but she doesn’t have an antique shop. Those are their nicknames.” Jolene followed him.

  That evening was the longest one-on-one visit Tucker had spent with anyone in a long time. It usually took about an hour to work up a rough estimate for a job, and most of the time that involved a guy, not a woman. The walls had begun to close in on him. His chest tightened. “I’m going out to my trailer now.” He laid his yellow pad on one of the four round tables in the dining room, twisting his torso as if to release a breath.

  “Aunt Sugar left two sets of keys. Yours is on the foyer table. See you tomorrow. When it’s just us, breakfast is at seven. But for guests, it’s on the bar from six thirty to nine.”

  He grabbed his coat. “I’ll be here.”

  He picked up the keys and hurried outside into the bitter cold wind whistling through the tall pines. With no electricity to keep the tiny space heater going, the trailer wasn’t much warmer than outside. He jerked the chenille bedspread from the bed and wrapped it around his body as he fell back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling.

  “What have I done, Melanie? I wanted to buy this property for you, to fix it up in your honor, but now I’m having second thoughts.” He shook off the bedspread, and
in two strides, he opened the refrigerator. He fumbled around in the dark until his hand closed around a bottle of beer, but then he changed his mind and left it there.

  “I need something stronger.” He opened the cabinet above the stove and carefully felt around until he recognized the shape of the whiskey bottle. Using the light of the moon flowing in from the kitchen window, he poured about two fingers into one water glass. He sat on the sofa and drew the spread over him.

  Even though he couldn’t see Melanie’s face clearly in the dark, he held her picture to his chest. “Talk to me. I’ve got a couple of days to back out of this deal. I can always drag this trailer back to Marshall and go on with my life.”

  The whiskey warmed his insides, but it didn’t do much for the outside, which continued to get colder by the minute. “Are you tellin’ me to go back to the house?” he asked. “I don’t know if I can. You’re here with me in the trailer.”

  You got a choice. You can get up off your butt and go get into a warm bed or freeze to death. Her voice sounded so real that he looked over his shoulder.

  He tossed back the last sip of whiskey and threw the bedspread on the sofa. It only took a minute to pack a small duffel bag with a change of clothing and his toiletries. He hoped that the two socks he’d found matched, but if they didn’t, he could always come back for more when it was light.

  The house was dark when he opened the door and slipped inside. Stumbling over furniture, he tried to find the light switch, but no amount of running his hands across the walls turned one up. Finally, he decided to make his way to the kitchen, and that’s when a spiderweb hit him smack in the face. Tucker Malone would do battle with a burglar hopped up on drugs quicker than a spider, so he did some fancy footwork trying to brush it away.

  It wasn’t until a string got tangled in his fingers that he realized it wasn’t a spiderweb after all. With a nervous chuckle he gave it a jerk, and presto, the foyer lit up. Glaring at the wooden thread spool hanging from the end of the string, he said, “Enjoy this, because you will be rewired to a switch by the end of next week.”