by Nicole Ellis
“Why thank you.” Celia preened, patting the snow-white curls pinned tightly against her scalp. “You look wonderful, yourself.”
“Thanks.” Tia beamed at the compliment. She’d had a hard time deciding what to wear, but had settled on a sleeveless, fiery red dress in a simple drop-waist style, with a gold sash that tied just under her natural waist. She swirled the skirt, loving the way the fabric swished around her legs and fell just below the knees. She’d bought a new pair of period-appropriate heels for the party, but had returned them to the store. Her own comfortable black pumps may not have been as authentic, but she’d be walking around all day over uneven ground. The grand opening had enough going on as it was—they didn’t need to be rushing her to the emergency room with a broken ankle. “Are you ready for the crowds?”
“I’ve never been more ready,” Celia said. “I can’t wait for the whole town to see all of the hard work everyone has put into the renovations.” She leaned on the top of the railing for support and scanned the grounds with pride. Workers scurried around the neatly manicured lawn, rolling round tables into place. Zoe stood near the newly remodeled gazebo, supervising the setup. “It’s been so long since everything looked like this. After my husband died, I couldn’t keep up with all of the maintenance. I hated seeing how bad things got.” A far-off look appeared in her eyes, as though she was reliving memories from long ago. She stood a little straighter and grabbed hold of her walker. “The Olsen family would be so delighted to see how the resort looks now.”
“I’m sure they would. Is anyone from their family attending the party today?” The Olsen family had owned the Inn before Celia took over, but Tia didn’t know much about them. With the grandeur of the Inn and the lovely grounds overlooking the bay, the resort must have been extremely popular back in its day. It would be fascinating to locate some old photographs of weddings here to see how they compared to modern-day events. Once things settled down, she hoped to learn more about the Inn’s history, either from Celia or by digging through records at the local historical society.
Although she’d grown up halfway across the United States, the history of Willa Bay and the Inn, itself, intrigued Tia. The town had enjoyed so much prosperity in the early 1900s, but fell from popularity as air travel became more prevalent. Without a campaign from the Willa Bay Chamber of Commerce in the 1970s, it would have become just another town that was a ghost of its former self. Instead, it had undergone a renaissance, and now thrived on tourism and the wedding industry. The Inn’s grand opening was its own chance for rebirth, and Tia intended to help ensure its success.
A wave of uncertainty swept over her. Reporters from the local papers would be in attendance and Zoe had sent invitations to some of the national bridal magazines. This afternoon was a big deal that could make or break the Inn’s future, and as one of two people coordinating the event, some of that responsibility fell on Tia’s shoulders.
Her mother’s words echoed in her head. You’ve never been the responsible type. Was she right? Could Tia handle this much pressure?
Celia smiled sadly and shook her head, drawing Tia’s attention back to the present. “No, the Olsens didn’t have any children, which is why they left the Inn to me. They knew I’d take care of it for them.” She glanced back at the hectic scene on the lawn. “I may have let them down in that regard after Charlie died, but I think I’ve redeemed myself now.”
Tia wrapped an arm around Celia’s shoulders. “I think they would be very happy with how everything has turned out.” A movement caught Tia’s eye. Zoe was beckoning for her. “I’ve got to get to work, but I’ll see you later, okay?”
Celia nodded, then gestured to her walker. “I may not be able to buzz around here anymore as quickly as you girls do, but if there’s anything I can help with, please let me know.”
Tia laughed. “You’ve got the most important job at all. We need someone to greet the guests as they arrive to keep things from getting too chaotic. Make sure they sign the memory book too.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo.” Celia grinned. “I’ll make sure all of the guests are taken care of.” Celia, who would continue to reside in the owner’s suite of the Inn, was tasked with putting her engaging personality and true love for the business to work as a guest liaison once the Inn opened for overnight stays.
“I know you will.” Tia looked over at Zoe. “I’d better go before Zoe has a conniption fit.”
“Me too,” Celia snickered. “I love that girl, but she can be scarily efficient at times.” She pointed her walker at the gently sloped ramp leading to the lawn, where a table and chair waited for her near the entrance.
Tia watched her for a few seconds, then hurried down the short flight of stairs and over to where Zoe was waiting for her at the gazebo.
“Hey.” Zoe looked up from her iPad. Unlike Tia and Celia, she was still dressed casually, wearing a pair of blue jeans and a sleeveless button-down blouse that tied just below the waist. Not exactly a vision of the 1920s. “How are you doing?”
Tia smiled. “I’m doing fine.” She may have been a bundle of nerves inside, but she wasn’t going to let her boss know that. This event was too important to everyone involved with the Inn to let a little self-doubt get in her way. “What’s up?”
“I need you to supervise the setup while I change into my dress. I left it in one of the guest rooms so I could save a few minutes by getting dressed there rather than running back to my cottage to change.” Zoe scanned the grounds, her expression imperceptible behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses. “Everything seems to be on track here, so I think this is a good time for me to slip away.”
Tia checked her watch. “The guests are due to arrive in thirty minutes and there are always early birds. You’d better get going. I’ve got this.” Her nerves were starting to subside and the negative thoughts in her head had cleared. Managing events put her into a state of calm focus that she hadn’t experienced in school or any other part of her life.
Zoe removed her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, revealing dark circles under them. “Okay.” She replaced her sunglasses and looked directly at Tia. “There’s so much riding on today.” Her voice wobbled uncharacteristically, and Tia feared her boss was about to break into tears.
She looked at Zoe more closely. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
Zoe shrugged. “Maybe an hour?” Her shoulders slumped. “I couldn’t fall asleep. All of these scenarios of things that could go wrong kept running through my head.”
Tia touched her arm to make sure she had Zoe’s attention. “You’ve got this. The Inn is amazing, and everyone is going to absolutely love it. Now go get dressed!”
Zoe swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay.” She walked a few steps toward the Inn, then rushed back to hand Tia the iPad. “I forgot to give you this.” She paused, and her voice wavered again. “And Tia?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” She smiled at Tia. “I don’t know if I could have managed all of this without you.”
“No problem.” As her boss walked away, Tia tapped on the iPad screen to wake it up but didn’t look at it immediately. Usually, Zoe was the most put-together, Type-A person that Tia had ever met. If even the unflappable Zoe could fall apart sometimes, maybe there was hope for Tia yet.
She’d managed to tick off a few more boxes on Zoe’s checklist when one of the event staff, dressed in black pants and a white shirt, burst into her line of sight.
The young woman was out of breath and had to compose herself before speaking. “Zoe needs you. She’s freaking out.”
Tia’s alert level shot up to a Code Red. When Zoe left twenty minutes ago, she’d been rattled, but not anywhere near a panicked state. “What’s wrong?”
The woman took another deep breath, then let her words pour out. “There’s a leak in one of the bathrooms upstairs. I was making coffee in those big urns in the kitchen and I heard her calling out. I tried to get Shawn, but I can’t find him anywhere.”
Shawn may have gone back to his cottage to change into his party clothes. Tia gave her a reassuring smile. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go check on her.”
The woman nodded and scurried off, happy to be relieved of her burden. Tia jogged over to the Inn, took the stairs two at a time, and flung open the door. Days like this were why sensible shoes were a necessity.
“Zoe?” she called up the staircase to the second floor.
“I’m up here!”
Tia ran up the long flight of stairs and stepped directly into a stream of water snaking its way along the non-carpeted portion of the hardwood-lined hallway. Her heart sank. This wasn’t good.
She followed the trail of water to the room at the end of the hallway. In the attached bath, Zoe knelt in a puddle, frantically attempting to mop up the mess with their brand-new, fluffy white guest towels. She’d wrapped another towel around a pipe linking to the pedestal sink, but it hadn’t done much to stem the flow of water.
“Where’s Shawn?” Zoe swiped her hand over her head to smooth back all of the hair that had fallen out of her once-neat ponytail. “I need him.” She might have been mostly fine earlier, but now she was now in a full-on panic. Tears streamed down her face, dripping onto her soaked blouse and jeans like little tributaries leading to the river.
Tia shook her head. “I don’t know.” She whipped out her cell phone and called the number for the emergency plumber that she’d programmed into her contacts. After getting their assurance that they’d be there within fifteen minutes, she stopped to assess the situation.
“Did you try the shut-off valve?”
“It’s stuck.” Zoe uttered a harsh laugh. “I came in here to get dressed, but discovered a flood instead. Of course this would happen on the most important day of my life.”
Tia’s heart hammered in her chest as she reached forward to try her luck with the handle on the valve. It refused to budge. “It’ll be okay.” She wasn’t sure she believed that herself, but Zoe needed the reassurance. Think, Tia! Water sprayed out of the pipe, and she winced at the dark splotches forming on the skirt of her dress. It’s only water. It will dry. However, dry seemed a far-off concept at the moment.
Tia snapped her fingers. “Hold on.” She exited the bathroom and tried the handle on the door to the supply closet. It was supposed to be locked, but it turned easily. Luckily, Zoe hadn’t done her final walkthrough yet to make sure the second floor was ready for the partygoers to explore.
The party. She checked her watch again. Less than five minutes until the guests were scheduled to arrive.
She yanked on the doorknob and the door swung open on well-greased hinges. Shawn’s toolbag lay open on the floor, right where it had been last week when he’d asked her to fetch him a flathead screwdriver to tighten up a chair in the living room.
She grabbed a pair of pliers from the jumble of tools and ran back to the bathroom. Zoe hadn’t moved and her face had taken on an air of sad acceptance. Tia clenched the jaws of the pliers around the shut off valve and applied downward pressure, jiggling it a little. Finally, it gave. She dropped the pliers and turned the valve handle until it met resistance.
They stared at the leak. The jet of water slowed and became a mere trickle. They both uttered loud sighs of relief, then looked at each other and laughed. It was a scene straight out of a comedy, but Tia was having a hard time finding the rest of the situation humorous. Even with Zoe’s best attempts to keep the water at bay with towels, she’d only captured about a third of it.
“What are we going to do?” Zoe whispered, her eyes wide as she absorbed the scene in front of her.
Tia took charge. She helped Zoe up off of the floor. “This is your big day. You are going to put on your pretty dress, then go out there and greet everyone who’s come to celebrate with you. I’ll wait for the plumber and see if I can get this mess taken care of.”
Zoe looked like she was about to protest, but had a change of heart. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Okay.” She shut the bathroom door halfway and reached for a garment bag hanging on the door. “Thank you, Tia.” She smiled slightly. “I feel like I’m already saying that a lot today. You’ve been a big help here at the Inn, and an even better friend. So, thank you—for everything.”
Tia had been about to duck out of the room to retrieve more towels from the linen closet, but Zoe’s words stopped her in her tracks. They meant a lot to her. She’d been in Willa Bay for almost half a year, but hadn’t made many friends. Her cheeks burned from the praise and she stared down at the floor. “Of course.”
“I’d give you a hug, but I don’t think you’d want that.” Zoe glanced down ruefully at her sodden clothing. “Your dress is gorgeous. I hope it’ll be okay.”
“It’ll be fine. For real, though, go get dressed. Someone has to mingle with the guests.” She gave Zoe a nudge, and followed her out the door.
Zoe ducked into one of the rooms to change while Tia hurried to the linen closet at the end of the hall. The spotless, fluffy white towels they’d purchased to create a spa experience at the Inn weren’t ideal for mopping up water, but they were nearby. Right now, availability counted the most. They had to get everything as dry as possible before the water leaked through the floorboards. An image of water dripping onto partygoers in the living room below flashed across her mind and she sped up her work.
Before Zoe left, she stopped in the bathroom to check on Tia. “I’m heading downstairs, but I’m going to put one of those quilt racks in the hallway to block off this part of the Inn. That way, people can still go in some of the rooms up here and get a feel for the place.” Her gaze swept over the bathroom. “Wow. You’re almost done. I mopped up the water in the hall, so I think we’ve managed to avert a bigger crisis. I hope the plumber comes soon.”
Tia eyed her watch. “They should be here in a few minutes.” She smiled at Zoe. “You look fantastic. I love all of these 1920s dresses.”
“Me too.” Zoe peered at herself in the bathroom mirror, adjusted the sleeves on her mauve wrap dress, then smoothed the top of three tiers on the skirt that fell just below the knee. “I could get used to dressing like this every day. I feel like a princess.”
Tia laughed and looked at her own reflection. The damp splotches on her red dress had paled now, and even in the harsh light, the bright fabric set off her dark hair nicely. Although she diligently applied sunscreen on a daily basis, her naturally brown skin glowed with an added layer of richness from the summer sun. She dabbed at a tiny smear of mascara next to her eyelid, then grinned at Zoe in the mirror. “This party is going to be amazing.”
Zoe put her hands on Tia’s shoulders from behind and leaned in, beaming. “We need a photo of us.”
Tia looked around. “Here? In the bathroom?”
Zoe laughed. “Yeah, why not? We’ll have formal photos later with Celia, Meg, and Shawn, but this is definitely something to remember.” She pulled out her phone and they carefully maneuvered around the soggy towels strewn about the floor to stand against the white subway-tiled wall. Zoe held her arm out long enough to take a picture of both of them, and said, “Say flooding!”
“Flooding!” Tia snickered, composed herself, and smiled at the phone.
Zoe snapped the shot, then gathered up all of her belongings. “I’d better get going before they wonder what happened to me! I’ll send someone up to take care of the towels and finish cleaning up. I don’t want you to ruin your dress. You’ve put as much work into this party as any of us.”
Tia nodded, warming with gratitude that her efforts had been recognized. “I’ll stay here until the plumber comes, okay?”
“Okay, but make sure you leave as soon as he gets here!” Zoe waggled her finger at Tia. “I don’t want you to miss out.”
Tia smothered a grin. Zoe had made a full recovery from her brief mental breakdown and was back to her old, bossy self. “Yes, ma’am.”
Zoe hurried out of the room, clutching her wet clothes which she’d wra
pped up in the plastic garment bag. Tia picked up the soggy towels and dumped them in the bathtub so the plumber would have room to work.
“I can do that,” a man from the event staff said from behind her. “I’ll just take these down to the laundry.” He grabbed a huge armload of used towels and disappeared.
With most of the evidence of a water leak gone, the bathroom looked almost normal. Tia let herself lean against the tiled wall and close her eyes for a moment. This could have been a lot worse than it was, but they’d managed to keep things fairly under control. See, Mom, she thought. I can handle responsibility.
Her eyes popped open. Even after being away from her family for half a year, she still couldn’t get her mom’s voice out of her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents, but constantly being around their judgmental treatment of her hadn’t been good for her mental health. Although there were things she missed about living in Texas, including her family, she was better off in Willa Bay.
The plumber arrived and made short work of the leak. With the quilt rack barricading the rooms at the end of the hall and her dress now completely dried, it was as if nothing had happened. Tia went downstairs, smiling at the women perched on the living room sofas. Some wore period dresses, others were just wearing their Sunday best. All of them appeared to be having the time of their lives.
Over at the catering tent, she found Meg hiding near the canvas side flaps. Unsurprisingly, Meg had chosen a simple, unadorned dress in a brilliant shade of emerald green that draped at the waist and flowed to mid-calf. It looked comfortable, yet functional, while still being thematically appropriate.
“Hey,” Tia whispered. “What are you doing?”
Meg peered intently at the guests sitting at the tables covered with blue-checkered tablecloths, her face pale. “Do you think they like the food?”
