“Oh. Yeah. I am.” His tone is slightly less abrasive, but still wary. Like I might be trying to scam him into buying an extended warranty for his car.
“My name is Rachel Beck. I’m interested in the job.”
“I’ll text you my email address. Send me your résumé.”
“Right now?”
“You can wait until the Fourth of July if you want, but I can’t guarantee the job will still be available.”
“Um … okay.” I hang up without saying goodbye, though I highly doubt Mason Brown cares. What a bizarre conversation. Is he having a bad day or is he always kind of a jerk? As I head inside the house, I’m tempted to ask Cecily if Mason’s personality is the reason that he’s someone’s ex-husband, but she wouldn’t have given me his number if she thought it was a waste of my time. Now I’m as curious about this prickly hotel owner as I am about the job. I send my résumé before I completely lose my nerve.
Five minutes later, my phone rings.
“The job is yours if you want it,” Mason says without preamble.
I laugh. He can’t be serious. “Just like that? You don’t want to call my references or ask me about my experience?”
“Are you lying?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then I’m not sure what you expect me to ask,” he says. “Your qualifications look great.”
“Thanks, but … could you maybe tell me about the hotel?” I say. “The only thing Cecily mentioned is that it’s in Ohio.”
“It’s called the Limestone Inn and Public House, and—”
“That’s a lot of name,” I say.
“Well, not every hotel can be called Aquamarine,” Mason says dryly, and heat flares in my cheeks as I realize I’ve interrupted a potential employer to question his choice of names. For the hotel. That he owns. During an interview, albeit an unorthodox one.
“Good point. Sorry.”
“Anyway, the brewery is incorporated into the ruins of an old winery, with ten individual cabin plots among the surrounding trees,” he says. “It’s a pretty small operation, so the manager position basically includes running the reservation desk, arranging transportation, scheduling staff, and overseeing housekeeping. Salary is forty grand, along with benefits and furnished housing, if you need it.”
“This all sounds … pretty perfect,” I say. “So please forgive my asking: Why haven’t you filled the position already?”
“Because the hotel is on an island in Lake Erie called Kelleys,” Mason says. “And for three, sometimes four months out of the year we can get socked in by ice. We’ll get small planes, but no ferries. Most everything shuts down. I don’t know what your life is like in Fort Lauderdale, but even when the island is at its busiest in the summer, there’s no fancy supermarket or movie theater, and if you want sushi, you’d better have a boat.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Which is why I haven’t filled the position.”
On nights I don’t have to work, I’m usually curled up on the couch with a book or watching a movie with Maisie, so I’m hardly the wildest twenty-eight-year-old on the planet. I don’t even remember the last time I went out to a club with friends. But I like going to the beach, and occasionally I get a craving for shawarma. Kelleys Island might be too isolated—even for a homebody like me.
“Did you offer me the job because you’re looking for someone with my qualifications?” I ask. “Or will any warm body do?”
Mason gives a short, humorless laugh. “Fair question. But frankly, you’re overqualified. I’d be a fool if I didn’t at least try to hire you.”
“Well, you’ve managed to make this job sound as unattractive as possible,” I say, and this time he surprises me with genuine laughter. “Can I take some time to think about it?”
“The ferry starts running next week, so I’ll need an answer fairly soon.”
As I disconnect the call, I don’t know how to feel about this opportunity. The hotel sounds incredible. The weather sounds potentially terrible. And Mason Brown … well, he’s one big question mark of a human being.
I pour myself a glass of wine, plop down on the couch with my laptop, and pull up the hotel website. The page is under construction. Weird, but it’s possible their bookings are done over the phone, especially if the island is small. Or maybe the hotel was closed for the winter. If I were running the place, I’d at least upload a few high-quality photos and some contact information.
Next, I google Kelleys Island.
It’s a heavily forested, incredibly green island, with a tiny downtown and a few fun-looking restaurants and bars. Visitors can rent bikes and golf carts to tour the island, and paddle kayaks along the shore. There’s even a beach. It’s not so hard to imagine myself there, checking guests into their cabins, or maybe sending one of my employees to the ferry dock in a golf cart to transport guests to the hotel.
But when I add winter to the search, the trees are skeletal and brown, and there’s snow everywhere. I find a photo of a man showing off his ice-fishing catch, the bloody fish lined up in a row on the frozen lake. I was born in South Florida, so I’ve never seen real snow. When temperatures drop, I may have to wear jeans or pull on a sweatshirt—occasionally socks if my toes get cold—but I’ve never worn gloves or a winter scarf. I don’t even own a proper coat. The thing is, even surrounded by ice and covered in snow, Kelleys Island is starkly beautiful. And I find myself tempted in a way I could have never imagined.
I do a Google search for Mason Brown. There are dozens of results, including a Scottish soccer player, a high school baseball coach, and an Ivy League professor of anthropology. I’m about to include the word brewery in the search when Maisie comes out of the bedroom wearing a Notorious RBG T-shirt and a pink tutu that she wasn’t wearing before her nap.
“Hi, Mama. Whatcha doin’？”
“Hey there, sweet girl.” I close the laptop and set it aside as she climbs up beside me. “I was waiting for you to wake up.”
“Do you have to go to work?”
“No, I get to stay home with you tonight.”
Her face lights up and she claps. “Can we watch Star Wars?”
“How do you know about Star Wars?”
“Daddy let me watch it on the baby ’puter,” she says. It kills me in the best way that she still thinks tablets are baby computers, so I never correct her. And I let the questionable parenting on Brian’s part slide. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“I like the princess and the robots, but the guy with the black thing on his face is scary,” Maisie says, adding quickly, “but I didn’t have any bad dreams.”
“We can watch until Oma gets home from work,” I say, switching on the TV. “But if you get scared, we’ll stop to talk about it, okay?”
As we snuggle on the couch, watching the Star Wars opening crawl, I let myself imagine what working at a brew hotel on an island in Lake Erie might be like. Without pictures on the website, I don’t know what the individual cabins look like, but in my head, they’re minimalist with nature-hued textiles—like Aquamarine, only woodsier. My dream of owning a hotel has always been one that takes place in a hazy future. After Maisie starts school, so I don’t have to work nights. After paying off my student loans. After moving out of my mom’s house. After—