3: 3

The next morning, Rick Hansen's son was back.

He strolled around the courtyard with his hands behind his back, like a man taking a turn through his own garden.

He pushed open the door of a guest room and poked his head inside, then reached over and gave a tug at the red lantern hanging in the pomegranate tree.

When he'd had his fill of looking around, he walked up to the front desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and spread it across the counter.

"Vacate the premises within three days."

"None of the interior work, fixtures, or furniture may be removed. Everything stays as is."

"Any damage will be charged at full value."

"You see all that?"

Rick tapped the paper.

"Every brick and every tile in here belongs to my property."

"However you put it up, that's how you leave it for me."

"One brick short, and I'll sue you for damaging private property."

I almost laughed out loud. This was squeezing me dry, right down to the marrow.

"The gray brick in this courtyard, I stripped it myself off an old house down south and hauled it all the way back."

"Your original brick crumbled to dust ages ago."

"Doesn't matter."

He said it without a shred of doubt.

"You put it on my house, so it's mine."

"You went to school, didn't you? How do you not even know a simple rule like that?"

"And another thing. The power."

Rick folded up the paper, found himself a chair, and sat down.

"The power company says the wiring in an old place like this is worn out, unsafe, has to be rerun."

"When it gets finished is up to me."

"You want to wait it out, you go ahead and wait."

He said it with a smug look, that greedy face of his not even trying to hide it.

"My son's coming back from the city next month, perfect timing for him to take over."

"You hold up my son's plans, and you and I aren't done."

I couldn't help asking, "Does your son know how to run a bed-and-breakfast?"

"Run it?"

Rick let out a snort.

"It's just putting it online, answering the phone, and taking the money, isn't it?"

"You can do it, but my son can't?"

He stood up, walked to the door, and glanced back at me.

"Owen, the land is East Village land, and the house is Hansen land."

"You should've understood that a long time ago."

He patted the doorframe, the way you'd pat your own kid.

"Sooner you clear out, the better. Figure it out for yourself."

I picked up the notice and shoved it into a drawer.

The contract was still in that drawer. When we signed it, I told Rick, two copies, one for you and one for me.

He said no need, you just hang on to it, aren't we practically family here?

At the time I even thought the old man was easy to deal with.

Now that I think about it, after all that fuss, he never meant to honor the contract in the first place.

My phone lit up with a message from the local group chat.

Ethel had quietly slipped my second account back in.

Miles had just posted a voice message.

"Rick says the kid's out within three days, all the renovations stay, and we open right up."

"Then we all raise our prices together!"

"City folks have money anyway. Might as well fleece them while we can."

A few thumbs-up followed, and a big cash gift.

The gift note read: Stick with Rick and there's meat on the table.

The one who sent it was Arthur, who ran the bike-rental stand. That rental point was my idea in the first place.

Last year he said he was short on capital, so I fronted him three thousand from the inn's account.

Rick posted a new message.

"Don't worry, everyone. I asked around."

"An out-of-towner doing business in our village, no roots, no backing, can't make any waves."

"From now on, East Village business, we do it ourselves."

Below it, the same line kept scrolling: Rick's a big man.

The pomegranate tree in the courtyard rustled in the wind.

I'd raised that tree for three years. It didn't flower the first year, so I got Arthur from the ag-extension office to come look. He said the tree was holding something back, that its roots needed work.

I crouched under it a whole afternoon, cut away all the rotten roots, and sure enough, the next year it broke out in a tree full of red blossoms.

Online, that tree was the inn's trademark.

I got up, walked out into the courtyard, and gave the trunk a pat.

Then I called a box truck.

After I hung up, I opened the drawer and turned to the last page of the contract.

There was a supplemental clause on it, written in my own hand the day we signed, with Rick's fingerprint pressed over it.

"If the lessor's unilateral breach makes it impossible to continue performing this contract, the lessor shall return double the rent already prepaid by the lessee and compensate for all renovation costs."

Renovation costs. Six hundred and twenty thousand, every last one of them backed by a receipt.

I put the contract in a document envelope, sealed it, and dropped it into my backpack.

Then, on the booking platform, I canceled the next three months of reservations, one by one.

These were guests I'd won over one video at a time, one late night of chatting at a stretch.

One young woman said she wanted to bring her mother to see the pomegranate blossoms. One guy said he'd come eat pomegranates on his wedding anniversary, for luck and a house full of children.

In the customer group chat, I sent out a message to everyone.

"Friends, the pomegranate tree has moved!"

"When the time comes, please come to our new location in Willow Hollow. Thirty percent off, bookings welcome."

4: 4

At nine at night, the streetlights at the edge of the village went dark.

To save on the electric bill, East Village had them shut off automatically after nine.

The thirty-two-foot box truck rolled up to the bend in the village road with its lights off. Ethel jumped down from the passenger seat and jogged over to me.

"Owen, everyone's here."

All five of the longtime staff, not one missing, stood at the back door of the old house.

Ethel ran down the list for them.

"Twelve guest rooms, forty-six pieces of furniture total."

"Six old elm-wood platform beds. All of them come apart."

"Eight tea tables, twenty floor lamps, thirty-two gray-brick collage pieces, and the pomegranate tree in the courtyard..."

"Light fixtures, curtains, rugs, all of it packed up."

"Kitchen equipment's already counted. The big items go before dawn. Strip the soft furnishings as far as we can. Done by daybreak."

That old elm platform bed, I'd bought it out in the country. Three thousand for the bed, five thousand to ship it.

When I bought it, Rick had laughed at me, said what was so special about scrap wood, that his family had brand-new planks on their sleeping bench.

Now he wanted it.

I clamped the flashlight between my teeth and bent down to pry the gray-brick collage off the courtyard wall.

That piece was a mosaic. More than three hundred broken bricks. I'd lain flat on the ground fitting them together for two full days.

Every brick in that wall, I'd handled with my own hands.

The basin in the corner, I'd dug it myself.

The stone path across the courtyard, I'd hauled it back one slab at a time from the riverbank.

"Owen, the guest rooms are clear."

Ethel leaned out from the corridor.

"On to the main hall next?"

"Do it."

I stood, set the brick in my hand into a foam crate, closed the lid, and sealed it with tape.

At two in the morning, the lights were still on at Miles's country diner.

One of our staff was over there helping out and filmed a video, sent it to me.

In the shot, Rick sat in the seat of honor, his face as red as the braised pork on the table.

He had a cup in his hand, grinning ear to ear.

Miles was pouring drinks beside him, Arthur was passing out cigarettes, the table a wreck of cups and plates.

Miles had the loudest voice of them all.

"Rick, nobody's got the touch like you!"

"That Yates guy didn't even dare squeak. Just handed the place right over!"

Rick said, "Good riddance. You think we'd let some out-of-town nobody skim the money out of our village?"

At four-ten in the morning, the last floor lamp went into the truck bed.

All that was left on the walls were the nail holes where the pictures had hung.

The whole house looked like it had been skinned, back to the way it was three years ago.

"Owen, it's all clear. We didn't leave so much as a loose thread."

Ethel put a check on the last page of the ledger.

"Let's go."

The truck started up and rolled slowly out along the village road.

East Village was still asleep. The farmhouse courtyards along both sides were shut tight, the letters on their signs catching the headlights.

The words on Miles's diner sign read AUTHENTIC FARM CHICKEN, one corner of it hanging crooked.

I opened my phone. On the platform, the inn's status had already been changed to closed.

Just past the edge of the village, the truck pulled onto the highway, and a thin white line showed at the edge of the sky.

Rick called. He must have gone out to inspect his prize, pleased with himself, and then he saw it: the inn stripped back to what it used to be.

Ethel sent me a voice message.

"Rick saw the inn had nothing left and dropped straight down onto the doorstep."

"Now he's calling you like a madman."

I dragged Rick's number into the block list.

I wanted to see, honestly, what kind of inn he could run out of it.