The Albright Hotel (A Frosty Season #4)

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Last Summer

T he Maine trip of early July had been life-changing. That was what Olivia called it when Phoebe came to visit after they returned, hashing out what had happened on the coast for a new audience.

Olivia, Maya, and Phoebe were out on the back veranda of the Albright Hotel—where, next summer, they wouldn’t be able to grab a seat if they tried because all the seats would belong to guests. They hoped guests would fill them. It still seemed unbelievable that people would come all the way to Hollygrove to stay there.

Phoebe looked a little better than she had a couple of months ago. Brighter. More optimistic. She put her chin on her hands. “Life-changing, huh?” She wanted more details. “You’re really falling in love, Aunt Olivia.”

Olivia blushed and sipped her glass of rosé. How could she explain what she was feeling? How could she explain that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel quite like this ever in her life?

“He told me he loved me, and I burst into tears.” Olivia put her face in her hands.

“Oh my gosh!” Phoebe cried.

“You didn’t tell me that,” Maya said.

“It’s embarrassing,” Olivia admitted.

“It’s not,” Maya said. “I think it’s an honest response to something so enormous.”

“I’ve never had anyone say it to me first before,” Olivia said. “I always had to say it and wait and wait for them to say it back. I always put myself on the line first. My therapist says it’s because I was adopted when I was a baby or something. I’m always putting my love out there and praying for someone to take it.”

“But he put his love out there first!” Phoebe breathed.

Olivia sighed. “I don’t know what to think.”

“You’re in love! You don’t have to think!” Phoebe said.

Olivia laughed. “He wants to take me away at the start of autumn. There’s an adorable little inn in Vermont. I’ve never been to Vermont.” She pressed her lips together as expectation rolled through her chest.

“You have to go!” Maya chimed in. “You can spy on the inn and figure out how we can make the Albright Hotel great.”

“I’ll get some tricks of the trade,” Olivia promised.

After that, as Maya filled a glass of wine for her, Phoebe told them about a terrible first and only date she went on with a guy from her office. “Now it’s going to be so awkward at work!” she cried. “But Henry sent me an email the other day. It didn’t even sound like him. He’s in California somewhere, starting his own business or something. He wears button-down shirts that he only buttons halfway. He said he even picked up surfing!”

Maya laughed and wrinkled her nose. “People can change on you.”

“Maybe he was always like that deep down,” Phoebe said. “He was a California boy born in an East Coaster’s body.” Phoebe shook her head. “How do we ever trust anyone?”

“We can only really trust one another,” Maya agreed, gesturing to Olivia and Phoebe.

“And Aunt Veronica,” Phoebe affirmed.

“What about Brad?” Olivia asked.

Maya blushed and looked down at her shoes. “It’s difficult for me to imagine not trusting Brad. That’s true. But falling in love is always a risk. I never want to forget that. I’ve been through a lot.” She made eye contact with Olivia. “I know you have, too.”

Olivia agreed to run away to Vermont with Robby. How could she not? She would have followed him to the ends of the earth if he’d asked.

Robby decided on the fourth and final week of September. “The leaves will be sensational. The brightest reds and yellows and oranges you’ve ever seen.”

Olivia pointed out the window of Robby’s place. “They’re pretty dang beautiful here!” She couldn’t imagine them being any better, in fact. Hollygrove had exploded in color.

“It’s different in Vermont,” he said dreamily, then kissed her.

For not the first time, Olivia wondered if he would ask her to marry him in Vermont. Already! They’d only been dating since February. But when you know, you know.

And Olivia knew.

She hadn’t told anyone that, of course. Not even her therapist. But her heart pulsed with recognition of the enormity of what she felt.

The day before their departure, Olivia packed a bag, demanding Maya and Aunt Veronica help her pick out outfits for hiking, dinners out, and the drive.

“The drive?” Aunt Veronica asked, shaking her head. Her eyes glinted with laughter, proof that she felt a thousand times better than she had last Christmas. “How ridiculous! It’s only Robby!”

“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.

“I mean, he’ll love you even if you wear a paper bag on your head for the drive to Vermont,” Aunt Veronica said.

It was true what Aunt Veronica had said early on. To be with Robby, you had to prove to him you were serious. And Olivia had been nothing but open with him since the beginning.

It was the healthiest and most adult relationship she’d ever been in. And she was in her mid-forties!

When she told Teresa this, Teresa said, “It’s finally time to let yourself be comfortable in love.”

Robby picked her up for their trip to Vermont at ten in the morning. He’d packed freshly baked croissants and coffee. They kissed in the front seat, then buckled themselves in and headed into the divine light of the east. It wasn’t their first road trip—they’d gone to Maine with Brad and Maya, after all—but it was their first time on a road trip by themselves as a couple. They made the most of it, playing their favorite songs, eating snacks, and stopping whenever they wanted to. They didn’t reach their inn until that afternoon at four. By then, the sky was different, dimming because they were so far north. Olivia wanted to bundle up and snuggle against Robby as a fire crackled in front of them. And that early evening, she got her wish.

Robby had booked the suite at the inn, meaning they had their own room, fireplace, and kitchenette. A rain picked up outside, and the wind howled against the inn’s windows. Robby got chili from downstairs—covered in cheese—and they sat on the sofa, ate, talked, and stared into the fire. Olivia was grateful that there wasn’t a television. She didn’t want ordinary distractions. She wanted to live in the moment completely.

Sometimes they didn’t even have to talk. There was such comfort between them. There was such love.

That night, Olivia apologized for bursting into tears when he’d first told her he loved her.

“It was terrifying because I realized I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and I don’t want to lose you,” she explained softly.

Robby held her deep into the night. They played records on the record player in the suite—David Bowie and The Beatles and The Beach Boys, songs Robby said his father had loved before he died. His mother died when he was very young, and his stories broke Olivia’s heart. Olivia hadn’t ever known her mother. Robby said that broke his heart, too.

But we found each other. We’re safe now.

Olivia wondered what she’d done right. She’d gotten Maya and Robby in the span of just a few months.

Did she trust it to last?

Eventually, that night, they got ready for bed and tucked themselves beneath the warmth of the comforter. They were snuggled in and cozy. They slept till after nine—a rarity for both of them since they often had to wake up early for work.

Thus began their first full day in Vermont.

They began the day with breakfast.

“It’s the best and only way to start the day at an inn like this, don’t you think?” Robby asked. He wore a boyish smile, and his hair was tousled from sleep. He led her downstairs to a quaint little breakfast nook, where a woman with a frilly apron served them fried eggs, crispy bacon, scones, fried potatoes, biscuits—whatever they wanted. Ten other people were down there that morning, mostly older couples who eyed Robby and Olivia curiously. It was clear everyone else down there had been married for decades.

Olivia excused herself to the bathroom, where she fixed her lipstick and made eye contact in the mirror with a woman in her sixties or seventies. The woman smiled in that secret way—a way that suggested she wanted to have girl talk. Olivia remembered it from high school. She might have laughed. Real life wasn’t so different from high school, after all.

“Tell me,” the woman begged. “How long have you been together? Are you going to get married?”

Olivia’s heart nearly leaped out of her chest. “We just met this year,” she confessed, capping her lipstick. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The woman gave her a look. “Everyone in that breakfast nook knows what’s going to happen! You’re in love!” She sighed. “I remember when my Alex and I were like that. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We’re still in love, of course. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But ours is a deeper and quieter love now. You’re in the good bit. You’re in the fiery bit.”

Olivia blushed and stared at the ground. Was her romance with Robby so apparent to everyone? Did everyone see the future so clearly?

“Enjoy yourself, sweetheart,” the woman urged. “Tell him how much you love him as many times as you can stand it. Stay up all night talking. Live!”

Olivia promised she would.

The woman left the bathroom first. Olivia took several deep breaths, telling herself not to panic. It’s all right. And then she stepped into the bright light of the hall and met Robby’s gaze. He was finishing the last dregs of his coffee, chatting with the inn owner about a bit of handiwork he could do for him later that week—between walks in the forest, of course. Olivia laughed.

“You already found some work to do?” she asked.

Robby blushed. “I don’t have as much time as I’d like,” he told the inn owner. “We have a big weekend of eating and relaxing and exploring planned.”

The owner of the inn waved his hand. “I’d be happy to let you stay another couple of days on the house. Take as much time as you’d like.”

Suddenly, Olivia and Robby’s world together ballooned. They were given more time to spend together in this world that neither of them really knew.

Robby agreed, and Olivia messaged Maya immediately, saying she’d be back as soon as she could.

MAYA: Take your time! We’re ahead of schedule for the Thanksgiving opening.

Olivia beamed.

That morning after breakfast, she and Robby went for their first walk through the woods surrounding the inn—countless trails laced through the ancient woods, dropping into glittering clearings along lakes like turquoise jewels. Olivia had packed trail mix and sandwiches, and after they’d hiked six miles, they sat on a large rock by a lake and feasted. Olivia wanted to ask Robby more about his life and his youth, and they ended up on the topic of Addison, Stan, and Adam.

It was clear that Robby didn’t talk about this very much.

Maybe he didn’t talk about it at all.

But for the first time, he opened up to Olivia, telling her what it had really been like after Addison had left. “I couldn’t get the smell of burnt turkey out of the house for ages. There was a snowstorm shortly after Thanksgiving that year, and the boys and I were trapped inside. They couldn’t stop crying, asking where their mother was. I was too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it. Because she’d left the boys with the neighbor, everyone in Hollygrove knew she was gone. I tried to pass it off like she was visiting her sister, but everyone knew how she was. Calvin said to me, ‘She always had one foot out the door.’ I haven’t been able to make sense of that. Did I always want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with me?”

Olivia’s heart broke. She held his hands gently in hers.

“Addison and I had always had a mostly even partnership when raising the boys,” he said. “I had been there for the feedings and the diaper changes and the late nights. I had been there for the nightmares and the vomiting. But not having someone else there to pick up that fifty percent was jarring. I struggled to make ends meet for a while because the boys needed me a lot after their mother left, so I just couldn’t take as many jobs. Hollygrove residents helped here and there, babysitting and allowing me to bring the boys around for jobs and stuff. But there was a time when I thought I would lose the house.”

Olivia watched as sunlight danced across Robby’s cheeks. He took a bite of a ham-and-cheese sandwich and raised his chin. Overhead, a flock of birds swept past, headed south for the winter.

“They’re good boys,” Robby said. “Sometimes I wonder why their mother leaving didn’t mess them up more.”

“Because of you,” Olivia reminded him quietly. It felt so obvious. But she knew Robby wasn’t the sort of guy to brag about his accomplishments.

It was one of the reasons she was in love with him.

Thinking again of what the woman had said in the bathroom, she said it again. “I love you, Robby.”

Robby’s eyes were alight. “I love you, too.”