Forbidden Guest House novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Room Nine

He hung up and turned around and saw me.

He didn't pretend he hadn't been talking.

"How much of that did you hear?" he said.

"The first. Duluth. The barn."

"That's most of it."

I went back inside.

I didn't slam the screen door. I wanted credit for that.

I went behind the front desk and started counting the breakfast slips for the morning, which I'd already counted.

Ten minutes later I heard him on the stairs.

He came down with his duffel bag on his shoulder.

He set it on the floor in front of the desk, the way he had on opening night.

Then he put the brass key on its faded red ribbon on the blotter between us.

"I'd like to check out of Room Nine," he said.

I looked at the key.

I'd known it was coming since the porch, and it still went through me.

"Fine," I said. "Checkout's at eleven. It's ten fifteen. You're early."

"Kari."

"No charge for the summer. You built a dock."

"Kari. Look at me."

I looked at him.

"My dad's been holding my shop in Duluth since March," he said. "The old barn on the edge of town."

"A man wants to buy it. Dad keeps asking me what to tell him."

"And you keep saying it's still yours."

"Because nobody asked me to stay past the summer."

He said it very plainly.

"You asked me what I was staying for. You never asked me how long."

I opened my mouth.

He wasn't done.

"I'm not checking out because I'm leaving. I'm checking out because that's his room."

He looked up the stairs.

"I've been sleeping in my grandfather's reservation for six weeks."

"I'm done being a guest in your house. If I stay, I want to stay as something else."

The house was quiet around us.

A guest's radio was playing low somewhere upstairs.

Over his shoulder, Gran's chalkboard hung where it had hung my whole life.

Breakfast 7 to 9. Canoes at your own risk. Quiet after ten.

And at the bottom, in the paint.

I came around the desk.

I opened the drawer under the register where Gran kept the tools for guests who locked themselves out.

A screwdriver. A flashlight. A putty knife with a wooden handle.

I took the putty knife.

I dragged the desk stool under the chalkboard and climbed up.

"Kari," Leif said. "What are you doing?"

"Asking."

I set the blade against the R in Room.

The paint had been there forty-five years. It came off hard, in small white flakes that fell on my hair and on the reservation book.

I scraped the whole line.

Room Nine is not for rent.

Letter by letter, until the board under it was just a darker square of green.

My arm was aching when I finished.

I blew the last dust off and climbed down.

Leif hadn't moved.

His face was doing something I'd never seen it do.

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