[Christmas Key 01.0] There's Always a Catch

by Stephanie Taylor

  “Yeah, you are in a pickle there, sweetheart,” Bonnie agrees, chewing on the tip of a ballpoint pen. “I’d say your mom could stay with me, but that woman is so cold, I’m afraid she’d use my powder room and freeze the septic tank. I’m pretty sure Coco pisses icicles.” As awareness about what she’s saying dawns over her, Bonnie lets the pen drop to the desk with a clatter. “Oh my God!” Her hand flies to her mouth. “I’m sorry, honey—that’s your mother I’m talking about. I’m not myself this morning, Holly Jean, I swear. Forgive me.”

  “Oh, please. No offense taken.” Holly waves her off. It’s no secret that Bonnie and Coco aren’t huge fans of one another, and there’s really nothing that Bonnie can say about Coco that Holly hasn’t already thought herself.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do: I’m going to call Fiona and see if she can take a look at River, maybe give him some anti-nausea medicine or something. Then we’ll check out his room to see if it’s salvageable for the rest of his stay. I’ll deal with where to put my mother once we get him taken care of,” Holly says. She’s got to take this one step at a time, and conquer one crisis before moving on to the next.

  “Good plan. I’ll go check on breakfast to make sure that things are set for the rest of the guys. I haven’t seen a single one besides Bill, but I’m guessing they’ll be up and hungry before too long.”

  “Fabulous. Is there anything else?”

  Bonnie stops in the doorway. She turns back, one hand on the knob, and gives Holly an amused smile. “All of that wasn’t enough for you, sugar?”

  Holly takes a long sip of coffee, considering. “Yeah, unless the sky is falling, then I guess that’ll probably do for now.”

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Potts runs from room to room, checking on symptoms and making sure everyone has a Gatorade handy to stave off dehydration. She’s determined that what they’re dealing with is a raging case of food poisoning, most likely brought on by dinner the night before.

  “This is a total nightmare,” Holly says, her head planted on the front counter of the B&B, arms wrapped around her skull like a child trying to block out bad dreams. She’s popped four Advil already and they’ve barely put a dent in her headache.

  Fiona stops on her way through the lobby and sets a hand on her friend’s messy ponytail; she musses her hair gently. “I won’t lie, kid—this is pretty bad. But it seems relatively mild so far. Let’s just keep an eye on these guys and see what happens, okay?”

  Holly lifts her head and looks at Fiona from across the bamboo desk. “I haven’t even told you the worst part yet.”

  Fiona’s face falls. “You ate the shrimp, too?”

  “No. My mother is coming tonight.”

  “Wait—you mean I finally get to meet the infamous Coco?” Fiona holds on to both ends of the stethoscope around her neck as she eyes Holly.

  “Yeah, you will. Her broom lands around seven-thirty. You’ll know she’s here by the dark clouds that roll in with her.”

  “Come on, Hol—she can’t be that bad,” Fiona scoffs. “Nobody’s mother is perfect.”

  “I know, I know. She could have left me in a basket on the doorstep of strangers…so that’s something, I guess.” She tips her head from side to side, granting that her mother might possess at least a small kernel of human kindness. “I’m pretty sure she only comes down here to criticize me. She just sucks the air out of the room and leaves behind a gaping void. Wait and see.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll keep my hospital-grade oxygen tank handy in case the air gets too thin.” Fiona reaches across the desk and pats Holly’s hand before heading down the hall to check on her patients again.

  “And don’t believe anything she says about me, Fee,” Holly calls out to Fiona’s retreating back. “We’ve lived together for less than five years of my entire life!”

  Which is true: Coco popped in and out of her life intermittently during childhood, spending a few months on the island here and there, but always fleeing again when excitement beckoned. Oddly enough, the resentment between the women runs both ways; whenever they’re together, Holly and Coco react to one another like the south poles of two magnets.

  How can things have swung so wildly in the other direction in just twelve hours? Holly inhales deeply at the front counter, steeling herself for certain disaster.

  By six o’clock, most of the men have stopped puking up their stomach lining. Holly, Fiona, the triplets, and Maria Agnelli are emptying buckets and pans, handing out more Gatorade, and making sure everyone is comfortable for the evening. They drag the throw rug out of the Seashell Suite and leave it behind the B&B, and with about a gallon of bleach, the bathroom cleans up well enough for River to stay in his room.

  Holly is exhausted after a day of sick men and weather reports. She sits on the edge of the bed in the Lemon Tree Loft—the sole empty room, and the only one with a second-floor view of the small lemon grove next door to the hotel—and mentally berates herself for serving the fishermen tainted shrimp. Logically she knows it isn’t her fault, but there’s really no one else to blame. The lemons outside of the window are waxy and bright yellow against the darkening sky, and Holly stares at them for a minute, imagining their crisp, clean, citrusy scent. With a sigh, she gets up and starts arranging the room for her mom and Alan. She snaps the top sheet in the air over the bed, letting it drift to the mattress like a falling feather. There are bathroom towels to re-stock, and a vacuum to run, and she’s just plumping the pillows on the bed when her phone buzzes in the back pocket of her cut-off shorts.

  “We’re at the dock waiting for yooooou!” Coco calls out in a sing-song voice. “Come on down!”

  The sound of her mother’s voice grates on her instantly. “Hey, Coco. I’ll be down there in five minutes.”

  Holly slips her feet into her flip-flops in the lobby and exits through the side door that leads to the pool deck. The underwater lights glimmer like blue topaz in the near-darkness. Waves of refracted light hit her face as she passes the deep end of the pool, glancing in to make sure that there are no fallen leaves to skim. The deck chairs sit still and empty like ghosts, and the tall palm trees around the pool give it the feel of a secluded oasis, though Main Street is just on the other side of the fence. Holly straightens a few chairs, then lets the metal gate to the deck fall shut with a soft clink behind her. The sound of the pool filter’s steady hum fades into the distance, giving way to night sounds as she leaves the B&B. Old-fashioned lantern streetlights cast a dim glow on Main Street, and in the quiet of evening, the soothing sound of the ocean crashing onto the beaches reaches the B&B.

  At the dock, Coco waits next to three expensive looking suitcases. A large purse dangles from her shoulder. “Hi, baby!” she calls out, making her way over to Holly with careful steps on her thick wedge heels. She claps the palms of her hands together excitedly; it reminds Holly of a seal.

  Coco’s skirt is only an inch or two longer than Holly’s shorts, and her hair is cut into a sharp, flattering, chin-length bob. As always, she looks like Holly’s sultrier, more worldly, slightly older sister, and her youthful body only adds to the illusion.

  “Can you believe I’m a mother to a thirty-year-old?” she asks Alan in a stage whisper, pulling Holly in for an airy hug. “Look at her—she’s a grown-up!” Coco eyeballs her the way a farmer might assess his livestock before taking it to auction. She runs a hand over Holly’s sweat-dampened, flyaway hair, her lips pressed together tightly as she concentrates on the details of her adult daughter. She turns back to Alan. “She’s a grown-up who needs a shower and a little concealer, but just look at her!”

  Holly rolls her eyes.

  “Yes, she is a lovely woman, Coco,” Alan says, a hint of exhaustion in his voice. He lifts the first of his wife’s suitcases and carries it over to Holly’s cart. “How are you, kiddo?” he says to Holly quietly.

  “I’m okay. How was the trip?”

  “Long,” Alan admits, heaving their bags onto the g
olf cart.

  Coco slides into the front seat of the cart and gets settled with her purse in her lap. She waits for Alan to load the luggage. “Why are you just okay?” Coco’s forehead creases ever-so-slightly. Her frowns have diminished to mere furrows of the brow with repeated deliveries of Botox to her nerve endings, and her changes of expression are now no more than light twitches. “Aren’t you happy that I’m here?”

  “No, it’s got nothing to do with you, Mom. I’m happy that you’re here,” she says. She knows that this is what Coco wants to hear.

  “Alan! Did you hear that? She called me Mom!” Coco crows, turning around in her seat to look at her husband.

  “I heard.” Alan slides onto the back seat of the golf cart—the one that faces out—and holds two bags on his lap, the other two wedged onto the seat next to him. The back of his balding head nearly meets the back of his wife’s perfectly dyed and styled hair.

  “Anyway, I’ve got you set up in the Lemon Tree Loft.” Holly releases the parking brake.

  “Now, why didn’t Grandma and Grandpa name all of those rooms after Christmas things, too?” Coco asks, her face disapproving. This line of questioning comes up during every one of her visits. She always finds things to pick apart and suggestions to make, and she seems deeply troubled whenever she encounters something on the island that doesn’t fit with the holiday theme. It’s like she’s reading a novel and keeps stumbling on plot holes that she just can’t overlook.

  “The B&B is mine, Coco. Remember? I opened it when I came home from college.”

  “Right. With your degree, of course.” Coco looks out into the darkness, holding her purse tighter on her lap. Holly’s college education has always been a point of contention between them because Coco never liked that her parents were paying for it out of what she saw as her own future inheritance. “But the B&B belongs to the family, Holly,” she says firmly. “Your grandfather bankrolled your every whim, including college and a whole hotel,” she says in a lower voice, almost as if she’s thinking it in her head and doesn’t meant to utter the words aloud.

  Holly drives in silence, refusing to take the bait. She hangs a hard right into the parking lot, purposely hitting the pothole in the driveway and jostling her mother, who gives a yelp.

  “Sorry,” she says with a shrug, not sorry at all.

  They park and unload the bags at the back door of the B&B.

  “Is this a rug out here?” Coco stands in the parking lot, her long, bare legs holding an aggressive stance as she stares at the rolled-up carpet from the Seashell Suite. She points at it like she’s pointing at a dead bird in a cage, or at a rancid, maggot-infested piece of meat.

  “That’s a long story,” Holly says, hoisting one of her mother’s bags. “But basically the B&B is at full capacity and we had an incident in one of the rooms.” In the darkness, the rug looks like it’s been rolled up to hide a body, and Holly briefly imagines Coco’s dark hair spilling out one end, her wedge heels poking out from the other. She blinks fast a few times, erasing the vision from her mind.

  “Are you kidding?” Coco’s manicured hands fly to her face. “Full capacity? How did you manage that? We must be making a pretty penny with all of these guests. Or at least enough to cover the overhead—for once,” she says with a snort, flinging out a hand and whacking her husband on the chest conspiratorially.

  Holly ignores all of it. “I booked a weeklong stay for a group of fishermen from Oregon. We’re providing the food, lodging, and entertainment for the week.” She ticks the items off on her fingers. “We’re branching out into eco-tourism and a few other things,” she adds, some small part of her secretly hoping to impress her mother with her business acumen.

  “That’s great, Hol,” Alan says, one bag in each hand. He smiles kindly from behind his rimless glasses, the light breeze lifting his thin, sandy blonde hair and ruffling it.

  “Yeah, it’s exciting for us.” Holly opens the back door to the B&B, holding it open for her mom and her stepdad. “Except that they arrived yesterday, and in their first eight hours on the island, I managed to give all but one a really excellent case of food poisoning.”

  Coco pauses in the doorway, giving a hard laugh. “No you didn’t.”

  “I mean, I didn’t do it personally, but they all ate the shrimp last night, and…well, it does add up.”

  “Okay, as long as it isn’t something contagious, then we can stay here, right Alan? But the first whiff I get of the flu, we’re packing up and moving over to your place, Holly.” Coco brushes past her, making her way through the darkened hallway with Alan on her heels. “Got it?”

  “Yeah, Mom. I’ve got it.” She rolls her eyes behind her mother’s back for what feels like the fortieth time in the last fifteen minutes. “If anyone is sick, you’re taking over my place.”

  Alan reaches out and touches her shoulder reassuringly as she leads them up the stairs to their room, and the look he gives her as she helps them get their bags into the Lemon Tree Loft tells her that they’re on the same page: she and Coco will share a house when hell freezes over.

  Chapter 13

  Holly tosses and turns all night, worrying about her B&B full of sick guests. The fact that Coco is on the island for an undetermined length of time doesn’t help her fall into an easy slumber, either. She gets up early, makes a cup of strong coffee with a splash of cream and two sugars, puts on her Yankees hat, and takes Pucci down to Pinecone Path for a stroll.

  She’s alone on the beach, as she knew she would be, and the sun is just barely rising over the horizon to the east. Pucci gallops towards the water like a horse racing through a forest while his mistress sips her coffee from a travel mug. Holly dips her toes into the cool surf, watching as her dog stops romping in the waves every so often to make sure she’s still following close behind. He shakes his wet body from head to tail, sending a shower of water droplets shimmering into the morning light. They round the bend in the sand that leads to the Ho Ho Hideaway, and Pucci runs ahead, bounding up the steps to the bar. He disappears from Holly’s sight, leaving his paw prints in the sand.

  “Pooch! Here boy!” She whistles for him.

  “He’s up here, Mayor. Just saying good morning.” Joe Sacamano’s deep voice comes from the bar’s beachside porch.

  “Oh, hey, Joe.” Holly stops at the bottom step and leans against a wooden post. “I figured I’d be alone out here.”

  “No such luck, kid.” Joe sits in a tall chair with his bare feet up on the railing, watching the waves. “You’re up and at ‘em early.”

  “So are you. In fact,” Holly says, consulting her watch, “did you even go to bed, or did you pull an all-nighter for old times’ sake? You’ll pay for that later, you know.”

  Joe chuckles. “Her dog attacks me with affection at six-thirty in the morning, and then she attacks me with jabs about my age!” Pucci sits on his hind end next to Joe’s chair, looking up at him expectantly. “All right, I’ll scratch you under the chin, you old mutt,” Joe says, eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “What are you doing here this early?” Holly asks, giving Pucci a low whistle so that he’ll leave Joe alone; the dog completely ignores her.

  Joe lifts his own mug of coffee and sips it, smacking his lips together a few times. “Oh, I’ve been awake for hours. Just wait till you’re old, girl—the days get longer and the nights get shorter, but the real pisser is that you have less and less to do with your waking hours.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought.” Holly sits on the bottom step and watches as Joe pets her pup.

  “It’s life. It beats the alternative.”

  “Which is?” Holly takes a swig of her coffee.

  “Which is not being alive.”

  “Oh. Good point.” The dog ambles down the stairs, finally settling at her feet in the sand.

  “So Coco’s on the island,” Joe says. It sounds more like a statement than a question.

  “As always, I’m amazed how quickly information spreads. Do you all
have some secret Facebook page or something where you update each other in real time?” Holly takes off her hat and lets the early morning breeze blow through her uncombed hair.

  Joe smiles, his eyes searching hers. “No, there’s no top-secret Facebook page for old timers. I’m sorry to disappoint.” He runs a hand through his white curls. “I could just see it on your face.”

  “Great. She’s been here less than twelve hours, and it’s already destroying my face.”

  “It’ll take more than twelve hours and a flighty mother to destroy such a pretty mug,” Joe says, standing up. “Want me to top off your coffee?” He reaches for her cup. “I just brewed another pot.” Holly hands her half-empty travel cup over to Joe and waits while he goes inside and pours her more coffee, his bare feet scuffing across the smooth wooden planks of the open bar.

  “Thanks.” Holly takes the fresh coffee from him. “Hey, Joe? Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course you can,” he says, sitting back in his chair and propping his feet on the railing again. Steam rises from the hot liquid in his mug and he blows on it.

  “When I was a kid, did you guys think it was weird that my mom wasn’t around much?”

  Joe considers her question, watching the waves in the distance. “I don’t know if we thought it was weird so much as we thought it was just life. But keep in mind that you’re asking for advice from a man who spent his twenties and thirties traveling the world with musicians who did hard drugs for breakfast. Most of them had their accountants send money home to support wives and kids they barely spoke to, so my view on family life might be a bit more skewed than most.”

  “Yeah, but those were men. I’m talking about a woman who hated being a mother so much that—”

  “Now hold on there,” Joe says, putting up a hand to stop her. “Are you holding her to a different standard just because she’s a woman? A parent is a parent. And you can be a good one or a terrible one whether you’re a man or a woman. I should know.” He wraps both hands around his coffee mug, leveling his gaze at her.