Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,42

have a town grant. It sounds like you have a great plan. Everyone in town is going to be thrilled.”

He was kind of embarrassed. But why? Because everyone was going to be happy with his new venture? Why would that embarrass him? He was being stupid.

“This town is getting fancy!” she added.

“I do sort of worry about that,” he admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Am I a gentrifying force for evil?”

“No! Why would you say that?”

“Well, the bar has been around a long time. I’ve made some changes, but I’ve tried to balance that with keeping the core of it the same. But sometimes I’ll be pouring a summer cocktail for a tourist, and I’ll think, Why am I messing with what works? Am I getting too pretentious?”

“Well, your fancy pizza aside, I don’t think I’d call the bar pretentious.”

“And probably no one has noticed, but even though I’ve futzed with the wine and beer lists, I’ve kept several taps the same, along with their accompanying prices. A pint of Labatt’s has been five bucks for a decade. I do that on purpose. And I haven’t changed anything about the decor. I want the bar to be a place where everyone is welcome.” He needed to stop talking. He sounded like he was making a case in court, but no one had accused him of anything.

“Why do I feel like you’re talking to me, but you’re really talking to someone else?”

Yep. She’d hit the nail on the head, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. Maya was as smart as they came. It stung a little that he was so transparent, but he huffed a sigh of acknowledgment.

“Who?” she asked. “Your dad?”

“It’s more like the idea of my dad. And my grandfather.”

“A legacy.”

“Yes.” It was the exact word he’d been using in his head. “The bar opened in 1943. It’s been through some serious milestones with this town. And my parents almost lost it in the 1990s. I remember that a little bit. I was just a kid, but…I remember it.” That day he’d seen his stoic father cry—something he’d never seen before or since. “They laid off the employees, and my parents started doing everything themselves.”

“Is that why your family moved to the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if they ever thought of closing it. Just giving up and doing something else.”

“I never asked them, but my dad wouldn’t have. They’d have had to drag his cold, dead body out of there. He has this idea of Lawson’s as a kind of community center. A place where anyone can come and sit for a while, even without having to order anything. You remember when we did frozen pizza in that toaster oven behind the bar? Before I put in the wood-burning oven?” He expected some sass from her about the oven, but she just nodded. “You might be too young to remember this, but Sawyer worked at the hardware store across the street when he was a teenager. He was still living at home with his dad, technically, but really, he and Clara were fending for themselves. On the days he was at the store, my dad used to heat up a pizza and run it across to the store, all low-key like. It wasn’t a big deal, but Sawyer told me years later how much they relied on those pizzas.”

“This is a good town,” she said quietly.

“I feel the same way about the restaurant,” he went on, because now that he had started running his mouth, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I want it to have good food but not fancy food, you know? Tables but also counter seating, so it’s less of a big deal for someone to pop in and eat on their own. I was even thinking…” He was getting carried away. He’d spouted off long enough about his anxieties. He didn’t need to have a monologue about his business plan, too.

“What?” she prompted, with seemingly genuine interest.

“I read about this restaurant in Toronto called the Ladybug Café that does this thing with tokens. Anyone can buy a token, and it goes into a bin by the cash register. Then anyone who needs a token can take one and use it toward an order. That way, people—” He cut himself off. He sounded like Pollyanna.

“That’s a really good idea. I could imagine someone like, say, Sawyer’s dad taking advantage of that.”

That’s exactly who he’d been thinking of. Sawyer’s dad had had a long battle with addiction and unemployment