She sips her tea without making a sound. She has yet to look at me.

I take a seat and scan the dining room at the country club. It is octagonal and lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the first hole of the golf course. It’s old-school—parquet floors and white linen tablecloths—and the tables are filled with distinguished silver-haired couples in plaid golf sweaters.

My parents were not country club people. My dad liked a beer on his boat. My mom socialized with women who baked, and cleaned their own houses. New-and old-money locals referred to families like ours as “the ones whose parents bought their cottage when property was cheap.”

A waiter approaches as quietly as a whisper.

“What may I offer you, ma’am?”

I glance at Iris, who has yet to look me in the eye. For some reason, I think of when Trish and I dined this winter at RL in Chicago.

“I’ll have a manhattan, please. Thank you.”

There’s my reinforcement, I think. A stiff drink.

For the first time, Iris looks at me. The waiter shoots me a bemused smile and disappears.

“It’s awfully early for a drink,” the Dragoon Lady says.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” I say for some reason, sounding like a total Jimmy Buffett Parrot Head.

The Dragoon Lady checks her watch. “Where?” she asks pointedly.

She makes me feel like a kid who constantly gets busted by a teacher for not having done her homework. Thankfully, the waiter brings me my drink, and I take a healthy slug.

“Why am I here?” the Dragoon Lady asks, staring at me before glancing around the club.

She’s embarrassed to be here with me, I think.

I take another gulp of my manhattan. “I have a proposition,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of her tea. I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t utter a word.

“Well, okay, then...” I fumble my words and reach for my bag. I pull out the requirements the Preservation Committee has provided for the fish house, and then the proposal Frank and I have for it. “I’d like to...” I stop and rephrase my request. “I need to renovate the fish house into a honeymoon suite,” I say.

“That’s not possible,” the Dragoon Lady says, cutting me off. “It’s historic.”

“I realize that, and we plan to keep the structure’s original look, but I need the flexibility to turn that space into a guest cottage.” I stop and pull out more papers. “As you can see, it’s vital to the inn’s success. It has the potential to be my biggest moneymaking room.”

“I don’t care.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I don’t care,” she continues. “You should have considered all of this before embarking on this endeavor.”