The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,37
enjoyed your stay.”
“I did. Very much. But my plans have changed.” I glanced at his name tag. “Josh, could I possibly extend for a few more days?”
His cheery expression turned regretful. “We’ve been completely booked up for weeks, every hotel in the city is. There are several big conventions in town.”
He paused, waiting for me to draw the obvious conclusion. I said nothing and blinked my eyes. Sometimes silence is the best persuasion. “But . . . let me see if there’s anything I can do.”
Josh looked at his computer, typed and tapped through several screens, frowning and taking his sweet time. I slipped my phone from my purse and surreptitiously checked Expedia. Josh was right: there were no rooms at the inns within a fifty-mile radius. Nothing on Vrbo either, at least nothing I could afford. There was a four-bedroom South of Broad town house with a private courtyard, on-call concierge, and stunning view of the harbor, but one night was equal to a month’s rent on my apartment. Things were not looking good. But then, miracle of miracles, Josh’s handsome face lit up.
“Good news. We’ve just had a cancellation.”
“Great!”
“But it is a smaller room,” he said.
“That’s all right. As long as it’s got a bed and bathroom, I’ll be fine.”
“Very good.”
He printed out some papers and pushed them across the desk for me to sign. I read them and felt the blood drain from my face.
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh . . . yes. I didn’t realize it would be so much. It’s double what I was paying.”
Josh pulled an apologetic face. “Yes, I think you and Mr. LaGuardia were offered a special rate, professional courtesy. But now, with the conventions in town and the hotels all being full, I’m afraid that I can’t . . .”
I pulled out my phone again and refreshed Expedia. Still no rooms, so I signed my name, handed Josh a credit card, and moved on. What choice did I have? It was Monday, exactly twelve weeks and five days before the home visit, and I had a million things to do.
MY FIRST CALL was to Anne Dowling.
I told her the truth about what was going on. Well, mostly. She didn’t need to know the details of why I wasn’t going to be Calpurnia anymore, only that I was retiring from the column and had inherited a lovely home in Charleston which I intended to make my permanent residence. It was a historic house in need of restoration, I explained without spelling out the full extent of the project, and would be a perfect family home once the work was completed.
Anne accepted all this without too many questions. We had a brief discussion about finances; I told her I’d be sending information about my net worth soon. Owning a home outright, with no mortgage, would be a big plus. And having a year’s salary in the bank, once the severance came in, would display my financial stability, at least on paper. She wanted to know if the renovations would be completed in time for the home visit. I assured her they would, which, while not an outright lie, was a wildly optimistic guess. I hadn’t even talked to a contractor yet.
Anne said that living in a smaller city and in a house instead of an apartment might be a mark in my favor, so that was encouraging. But she did pose one question I wasn’t quite prepared to answer.
“I think the birth mother will be happy that you’re planning to take time off to focus on the baby, but what are you planning to do after that? I imagine you’ll want to keep writing,” she said. “But are you planning to do another column? Or maybe a book?”
“Well. Uh . . . yes. I have started working on something recently.” The journal qualified as “something,” didn’t it? After all, it had pages and a cover so, technically, it was a book. And I was writing in it.
“Really? That’s great,” Anne said, sounding genuinely impressed. “What sort of book? Self-help? Novel? Nonfiction?”
“Umm . . . I really can’t talk about it right now.”
“Sure, sure,” she said quickly. “I understand. I have a cousin who writes mysteries. She won’t discuss a book before it’s finished, says that talking about it saps her creative juices. Or maybe . . .” She paused as another possibility occurred to her. “Maybe you really can’t talk about it yet? Maybe your publisher wants you to keep it under wraps?”