“It sounds amazing.” Her description of work at Winding Way didn’t surprise me. It was a big part of why I’d always seemed so enchanted by the place. Everyone I ever saw working at the inn always seemed so happy. My child eyes hadn’t seen everything by any stretch, but I’d felt the spirit of the place. That said a lot.

She nodded. “It was. It is,” she amended. “And that’s why we have to do something.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, footsteps sounded down the hall. We turned and watched as Gaspard filled the doorway. He looked exactly like his photo. Tall, bearded, forearms the size of watermelons, imposing as all get-out.

April introduced us, and he grunted a brief hello. “Nice to meet you. Now. We go to find Ida, yes?”

“Slow down,” April said. “We’ve got to get Lane up to speed before we do.”

“Fine,” Gaspard said. “I’ll summarize. If my staff does not start working again, they are going to find other jobs.” His voice was deep, and his accent very . . . French? It sounded French. “No cooks, no food. No food? No Inn.”

“So wait. The shutdown isn’t permanent?” I said.

“We don’t want it to be,” April said. “But Ida still claims she isn’t ready.” She stood up, pacing back and forth in front of the window. “We were all willing to let her take some time after the funeral. It was hard canceling reservations and closing the doors, but Ida’s the boss now. She wanted things shut down, so we made it happen. But it can’t go on any longer. The wait staff, the housekeeping staff, they’re all paid hourly. If we don’t open back up, they won’t stick around. Plus, there’s a wedding this weekend. We can’t cancel on them less than a week out.”

This was all news I wanted to hear. Mostly because it meant I still had a job. But also, Winding Way was too great a place to shut its doors. At least, not without a fight.

I nodded. “I understand. So what’s the plan?”

“We have to convince Ida that opening back up is the right thing to do,” Gaspard said.

“How confident are we that she’s going to agree?”

“It’ll be easier now that you’re here,” April said. “With Glenda gone, Ida was afraid she’d be running that side of things on her own. Now you can do it, which strengthens our argument.”

“Wait, Glenda’s gone? Isn’t she supposed to train me?”

April grimaced. “Yeah. She’s gone. It’s not her fault. She was moving anyway, but her mother fell and injured her hip, so she ended up moving a week earlier than she expected.”

“So I’m on my own? With a boss who doesn’t want to be involved?” It’s not like I didn’t have any experience. I’d worked in hotels for three years in California before making the move back to NC. But every hotel had its own set of idiosyncrasies. Not fun to imagine figuring them all out without any guidance.