“I don’t want to, Dad. But I don’t see what the alternative is. We can’t all fit in the cabin.”
Mr. Clark senior—my new personal hero—smiles benevolently from under his crispy mustache. “I believe this gracious lady”—he gestures toward Kelly Anne—“was telling us she could do some creative bed-shuffling if we let her.”
Kelly Anne jumps at the opportunity and nods. “Thank you, Mr. Clark.” From her messenger bag, she takes out a large A3 blueprint of a building and places the sheet of paper on the table with the blank side facing up. “Let’s make a headcount first. Wendy, could you please tell me again your names?”
On the right-hand side of the sheet, she writes a list starting with my name. “There’s you?”
“My sister, Amy, her husband, Trevor.”
Kelly Anne writes their names underneath mine.
“The twins,” I continue. “Her two younger kids, my mom—”
“Emily,” my mom interrupts. “Nice to meet you all.”
“And my brother, Joshua,” I conclude.
Kelly Anne writes the last name and stares up at Riven expectantly. “And on your side?” she asks, already writing his name down.
“There’s me, my father Grant, my sister Tess, and her husband, Noah, her two kids, and my brother Skeeter.”
“All right.” Kelly Anne stares at the list and draws four square boxes next to it, saying, “We have one master bedroom, two singles, and the small room with the bunk bed.” She adds another box. “Then there’s the sofa bed that can sleep two.”
“That’s five beds for fourteen people,” Riven points out sourly.
“Patience, Mr. Clark,” Kelly Anne says. “We could put Amy and Trevor in the master bedroom with the twins. I already have the traveling cribs in my car.”
“Fine by me,” Amy yells from the couch while Trevor nods in front of me.
“All my stuff is in that room,” Riven protests.
“We can help you move everything,” Kelly Anne replies, nonplussed, while pragmatically crossing four names off the list. “Now, Grant and Emily, I thought you could both get one of the single bedrooms. One has a twin bed and one a full.”
“The lady can have the full bed,” Grant says with a jovial smile.
And is my mom blushing as she thanks him in response?
Kelly Anne writes Grant and Emily in the boxes representing the single rooms and, with two efficient slashes of the pen, removes them from the column of people awaiting sorting. She looks up and studies my brother and Riven’s brother who have their heads bent together as they stare at something on their phones—probably some secret, young-people app the rest of us have never heard about.
“You two,” the real estate agent addresses them directly. “Would you have a problem sharing the sofa bed?”
Joshua and—I spy the name from the column—Skeeter look at each other and shrug.
“Cool by me,” Joshua says.
“Yeah, dope, man.”
They bump fists while Kelly Anne strikes out two more names and sighs. “Now the tricky part.”
Riven sulks. “You mean the part where four adults and four kids share a bunk bed?”
Kelly Anne bites the end of her pen, thinking, then turns toward the crew of maids still sitting on the stairs. “Molly, can you please have a look at the attic and tell me if there’s any way we can turn it into an extra bedroom?”
“Come on, girls,” the oldest woman stands up. “Let’s go check what’s up there.”
The maids disappear up the stairs and Kelly Anne goes back to staring at her “house map.”
“The kids,” she says. “We’re never going to find beds for them.” And while Riven scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest in a satisfied told-you-so attitude, Kelly Anne adds, “We’ll need to get creative… The basement is small but cozy and, most importantly, dry and warm. What if we had the kids sleep on the carpet on cots or sleeping bags… we could even make it an indoor camping experience, I could have a few teepees brought in. What do you say?” She addresses the question at Riven’s sister.
But before she can answer, one of the Clark kids, a girl not older than eight with dark, straight hair, pulls on her mother’s sweater, pleading, “Mom, I want to do the indoor camping. Can we? Pretty please?”
Riven’s sister bends and kisses the girl on top of her head. “Sure, honey.”
“And, Mom?”
“Yes?”
“When are we eating? I’m getting hungry.”
Grant stands up and looks at my mom. “Emily, since we two old foxes are already settled, what do you say we make lunch for the whole crew? See what my son has stashed in the fridge that we can work with.”
“What a wonderful idea.” My mom stands up, smiling in a way I haven’t seen her smile since Dad passed.
From across the room, I shoot a look at Amy to check if she’s noticing something as well. My sister raises an eyebrow at me and shrugs, meaning: I saw, but I’m as clueless as you as what to make of it.
In the meantime, the crew of maids comes back, and the leader delivers her report. “The space upstairs is good. Ample enough to fit a double bed and a small closet. But it hasn’t been cleaned in a while, it’s going to be a hard job. It’ll take my crew all day to finish and I’ll have to call in a second crew to do the rest.”
Kelly Anne smiles brightly. “Thank you, Molly. Please call in the reinforcements and I’ll have the movers come with the furniture tonight.”
Molly nods. “I’ll start right away.”
Kelly Anne thanks her again and goes back to her paper, her pen striking six lines on the list in quick succession while she mutters, “The kids go in the basement… and Tess and Noah take the attic.”
Only my name and Riven’s remain in the columns. He stares at the list, probably thinking the same thing, and his frown deepens as he does the math a heartbeat faster than me.
My mouth is already gaping in horror when Kelly Anne unleashes her most dazzling, killer smile on us and asks, “Riven, Wendy, would you mind sharing the bunk bed?”
Seven
Riven
All eyes turn on me, and I don’t see how it’s fair since the question is technically addressed to two people. Guess everyone assumes I’m going to be the difficult one.
Shaking my head, resigned, I say, “I’m okay with that if I can take the lower bed.” When I was eight, I fell off the top bed once and I’ve done my best to avoid bunk beds ever since. I guess after twenty-five years of success, my luck has run out.
All eyes now turn to the other half of this arrangement.
Wendy blinks at me. “I don’t mind staying on top,” she says with total innocence.
Pity, a vivid image of what she’d look like staying on top in a very different situation invades my mind, making my eyes widen. I’m not quick enough to hide the shock, and Wendy catches me. She frowns at my reaction, then her eyes narrow.