Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) by Rachel Schurig

Author:Rachel Schurig [Schurig, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

They let Pops come home on Friday. By that time, we had nearly transformed the dusty, long-neglected lower dining room at Rose’s. I would have rather used the second floor, with its views of the lake, but a quick inspection had shown the paneling to be suffering from water damage. It would take weeks to replace it all.

But a private dining room on the lower level had been cleaned—hours of sweeping, dusting, mopping, and scrubbing. And that was just to get the place clean enough to bring in polish for the wood paneling. Andrew polished and polished the mahogany until it gleamed. Or it would have, if the lights weren’t giving us such a hard time. The bulbs were all burned out, naturally, but even after they’d been replaced, half the sconces didn’t work and the grand chandelier was flickering weakly. So we’d had to bring in an electrician—a real one, from the mainland, not Jerry who it turned out had a side job as something of a handyman on the island.

Once the lighting was figured out and the place was clean enough for Zane’s exacting standards, we brought furniture down from storage on the third floor. The tables and chairs were in good shape once we got them polished up. But moths had gotten into the linens, which had been brought back from France by my grandmother forty years ago. Posey had bawled the day we found those holey tablecloths, but that may have been as much to do with how exhausted she was, working at the school all day, pulling her shifts at the café, and spending her free time at Rose’s.

I couldn’t help but notice that Paul never came by to help. The tone Mimi and Andrew had used when saying his name was making more sense to me.

Then there was the piano. There had always been live music at Rose’s, and it seemed impossible to reopen, even for a night, without it. But that required bringing in a piano tuner, also from the mainland. As I soon learned, northern Michigan’s piano-tuning needs greatly outpaced their supply of tuners. In the end, I had to bring someone up from all the way down in Grand Rapids. Not cheap. But I was happy to pull the money from my savings. After all, I was saving a bundle living here instead of expensive Chicago.

The hardest part of the entire endeavor was keeping it a surprise. Ever since they’d announced that Pops could come home on Friday, Mimi had been spending every day on the mainland, wanting to make sure she knew his care procedures backward and forward. Of course, a nurse would be visiting the house daily, and he’d be getting his outpatient physical and occupational therapy several times a week right here on the island. But if anyone thought Mimi was going to sit back and leave the next phase of his recovery to the professionals, they obviously didn’t know my grandmother.

Even with Mimi out of the way during the day, the secret had nearly been ruined several times.

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