Now not only was Daniel going to be dinged on his star rating, it had cost him money to host us. And he needed that money.
I hated that I’d come here with them. I felt ashamed by association. Had they always been like this? Or was I just now starting to find it unacceptable?
Had I been like this once?
And the answer to that made me feel ashamed too.
I blew a calming breath through tight lips.
Gabby would never back down from this. The more I pushed her, the more she’d dig in. She was way too entitled.
But I had a different idea.
“Okay. You’re right. It’s your experience,” I said. And then, “Hey, do you guys want to see something cool?” I asked.
Jessica looked at her watch and blew out an impatient breath. “Fine. But can we make it quick?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Come on. Follow me.”
I walked them to the garage and held the door handle, turning to them. “I saw this yesterday while you were on your bike ride.” I knocked and then peeked inside. Daniel was at his workbench. “Can I show them those freestyle projects you have?”
He blinked at me. “Sure.”
I let them in and took them to the pieces he kept in the corner of the garage.
“Oh, wow…” Gabby breathed.
“Aren’t these cool?” I asked. “He’s a sixth-generation carpenter. His great-great-great-grandfather actually built the house we stayed in.”
“Does he sell these?” Gabby asked.
I nodded. “Yup.”
Jessica was examining the mirror. “This would be great in Marcus’s office at the cabin. I didn’t get him a birthday gift. How much?” she asked, looking over at Daniel.
“Three thousand,” I said before he could answer. “I asked him yesterday. This one took over a hundred hours to make. The wood’s—what did you say it was?” I asked him.
Daniel was blinking at me. “Black walnut?”
“Black walnut,” I said, turning back to her. “It’s one of a kind.”
“I’ll take it,” Jessica said, like an afterthought. “Do you take Venmo?”
“Uh, yeah?” Daniel said, looking shocked.
I pointed to the horse. “I thought that one would be cool for the den at your house,” I told Gabby. “This one is thirty-five hundred. It’s hand-wrought from a beam that was in a hundred-year-old barn. See the color? The ammonia from the animal’s urine stains the wood,” I said, repeating what he had told me. “That’s where the bracket used to be, this lighter spot?”
She crouched to look at it.
“Can he put it in the car?” she asked. “It looks heavy.”
A text pinged to my cell phone as we drove out of Wakan a half hour later. I was in the middle of writing the Grant House a five-star review.
Daniel: WTH???
I smiled.
Me: I’m sorry they were like that. You shouldn’t have comped their stay.
I could see him writing a text. The dots were bouncing.
Daniel: It was the right thing to do. Their visit wasn’t up to my standard. It was customer service.
And then: They paid way too much for those pieces. You shouldn’t have told them they cost so much.
I scoffed quietly. It was nothing for them. Just like it was nothing for me.
I’d played with a pig in a two-thousand-dollar dress. I stepped in dog poop in a shoe that cost as much as the weekend away for three that Daniel just comped, and I just left it there. It wasn’t even worth my time to clean it. I didn’t even think about these things. They were insignificant to me.
I was floating around in some universe that I was beginning to realize most people didn’t live in. Daniel certainly didn’t.
I didn’t like how easy it was for someone like Gabby, in her position of privilege, to punch down. At all.
It was such an unfair power dynamic. She was like a kid wielding her one-star reviews like a toy, for fun. Only it wasn’t a game. It was someone’s livelihood.
And here was Daniel, doing what he felt was the right thing, refunding the whole weekend. He was in the worst position to be generous, yet he was. And she was in the best position to show grace, and she didn’t. And doing it would have cost her nothing.
And that was the fundamental difference between them.
I typed my response.
Me: You deserved asshole tax. Trust me.
And then I paused, thinking about what I wanted to say.
Me: Know your worth, Daniel.
I wish it had always been as easy to know mine.
Chapter 21