Margot Dalton - A Family Likeness

“Oh, they were a charming group, all right,” Gina said dryly. “That’s my point.” She put the wire down and turned to look at her caretaker. “What if these two are horrible like the Kimmers and turn out to be really disruptive? We’ve never had somebody here for two whole months, Roger.”

“I’m not worried,” he said calmly. “I met Alex Colton and had a talk with him that day he booked the rooms. He struck me as a decent sort of fellow. I liked him.”

Gina was silent, idly flexing her pliers.

“His daughter sounded nice, too,” Roger went on. “In fact, Colton told me she’s a real outdoors type. I was wondering,” he added almost shyly, “if maybe she’d want to go fishing with us sometime. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid along, Gina? Somebody young and enthusiastic?”

Gina considered this, startled by the idea. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “I don’t know much about teenage girls.”

“Didn’t you grow up with a little sister?”

“Sure,” Gina said. “But Claudia’s ten years younger than I am, Roger. She was eight when I left home, and I’ve hardly seen her at all since. It’s too expensive to travel between here and the Maritimes.”

“How long ago was it that time she came out here? Five or six years ago?”

Gina considered. “It would have been eight years, I guess. That trip was my gift to Claudia the year she graduated from high school, when she was eighteen. My goodness—” Gina sighed “—I can’t get over the way the years fly past.”

“Does she still have that trouble with her leg?”

“Not much. She hardly limps at all anymore.” Gina turned to stare out the window. “But it’s taken years of hard work and therapy.”

“What happened exactly?” Roger asked. “I don’t think you ever told me the whole story, just that she’d been in some kind of an accident.”

“It was after I’d been out West a couple of years, when Claudia was ten. I was in Vancouver when I heard.” Gina shuddered. “My mother decided to take Claudia with her for a summer holiday in New England. She’d been driving all day and was exhausted, but I guess she didn’t realize how exhausted. She dozed off on the freeway in Maine and drove under a semitrailer parked by an off-ramp.”

Roger took another sip of his coffee and listened in sympathy.

“It was so awful,” Gina went on. “Mom’s injuries were mostly superficial, but Claudia’s right leg was almost severed just above the knee. They rushed her to the hospital and used all kinds of microsurgery techniques to reattach the nerves and tendons, then did bone grafts to restructure the leg.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Roger said. “What they can do with medical science these days.”

“Oh, it’s wonderful, all right,” Gina said gloomily. “Really wonderful.”

“Gina?” he asked, puzzled.

She met Roger’s gaze, thinking about the nightmare her family had been forced to endure. “My mother’s kind of an absentminded professor, Roger. Not practical at all. She didn’t think to buy medical insurance for herself or Claudia before traveling out of the country.”

His eyes widened. “My God,” he breathed. “So how much did a procedure like that cost?”

Gina brushed a hand across her forehead. “Some of the surgeons donated their time, and we had Claudia transferred back to the Maritimes as soon as she could travel. But the bill for her treatment was already over forty thousand dollars by the time she was moved.”

“Could your mother afford that?”

“My mother could hardly afford to put meals on the table,” Gina said bleakly. “She was about to lose her little house, her teaching job, and any possibility of earning enough in the future to pay for the years of extended therapy that Claudia was going to need.”

“So what did you do?”

“We managed.” Gina stared at the lake. The sun had completely retreated behind the mountains now, and the black still depths of the lake seemed to echo the void in her heart, the aching sorrow and yearning that never went away. “We managed somehow. We all made some…pretty big sacrifices.”

Roger studied her thoughtfully for a moment. “Your sister is a real stunner, as I recall,” he said at last.

“She certainly is.” Gina gathered herself together. “Claudia looks a lot like our mother. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the red hair or the peaches-and-cream complexion.”

“Well, you’re a beauty in your own way, Gina,” he said gallantly. “Red hair or not.”

She smiled at him. “And you’re a sweetie. But I’m realistic about myself, Roger. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are.”

“I’m not sure you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been fully aware of your strengths.”

Gina shook her bead. She and Roger had been friends for almost twelve years, but except for some casual teasing, they usually tended to avoid this kind of personal discussion.

“Speaking of strengths and weaknesses,” she said, removing the completed fly from her vise and picking up another bit of wire, “do you ever regret moving .here, Roger? Do you miss having a desk and an expense account and a brass nameplate on your door?”

“Not a bit. I live alone, and I’m sixty-two years old. Why would I want to sit behind a desk all day? I want to enjoy my days, because if I can’t, what’s the sense in living?”

“But do you really enjoy it here?” she asked, suddenly anxious to hear his answer. “I mean, looking after the hotel for me and keeping things running smoothly, is that enough of a challenge for you?”

“At my age, I don’t want challenges anymore, Gina. What I want is comfort. And I find my life here very comfortable.”

“Good,” she said in relief. “Sometimes I’m afraid you’re getting restless.”

“You’re supposed to quit saying things like that,” he reminded her, then pushed his chair back and got up to open a cupboard door. “What happened to the banana loaf Mary baked this morning?”

“The guests gobbled every last crumb with afternoon tea.”

“Too bad,” he muttered, still peering moodily into the cupboard. “Where is the woman, anyhow?”

“She’s at choir practice. You’ll get as fat as Annabel if you keep eating Mary’s baking,” Gina warned him, though from the look of his long angular body she doubted there was much fear of that.

She paused suddenly and narrowed her eyes. There was something different about Roger tonight.

“Why are you here now?” she asked. “You don’t usually come over after supper.”

“I needed to pick up something.”

“What?”

“Just some tools,” he said evasively.

“Why?” Gina asked.

“I’m working on something.”

“But you don’t even have a workbench at your house, do you? I thought you did all your woodwork here at the hotel.”

“What is this?” Roger asked mildly. “An inquisition? Am I not free to drop by the hotel after hours if I want to?”

“Of course you are,” Gina said. “But you look…different tonight, that’s all.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know.” She studied him. “Maybe you’ve changed your hairstyle.”

He chuckled. “And you, young lady, are becoming far too impertinent.”

Gina smiled and returned to her task, while Roger poured himself a second cup of coffee. For a while there was a companionable silence in the kitchen.

But after a few minutes the peace was broken by the closing of a door, a noisy storm of barking and a gentle tread in the hallway. Mary entered the room, laden with books. Annabel tumbled at her heels and yelped hysterically.

“For God’s sake,” Roger said. “Feed that animal, won’t you? She’s being even more annoying than usual.”