Page 68 of The Accidental Innkeeper

I turned toward the back door instead. Get the job done. That was the plan.

Still, as I stepped outside and grabbed the ladder from my Ford F-150 navy blue truck, the vehicle I used when I was working construction, I caught myself glancing back through the window.

New York was behind the desk, answering questions, the pen flying and her shoulders squared. She was professional, focused, and way more distracting than she had any right to be.

Damnit.

I tightened my grip on the ladder and headed for the side of the building, my eyes on the work. That’s where they needed to stay.

I hauled the ladder around the side of the building and set it in the grass where the ground felt solid. The Hartwell Inn sat high on its little cliff like it had something to prove. Pink paint or not, the place had presence with wide porches, strong lines, and wood that had been cut and fitted during a time when men took pride in work because pride kept you fed.

I leaned the ladder into place and gave it a shake. The rungs held. The rails didn’t flex. Good.

My tool belt felt familiar around my waist—weight, order, a place for everything. I didn’t need to think about where the drill was or where the tape measure lived. My hands already knew. That was why I liked work like this. It made sense. Cause and effect. Fix the thing, and it stays fixed.

I climbed the ladder, my boots ringing against the metal. With each rung, the air shifted, cooler and cleaner. By the top, the wind had me, salt heavy off the bay, the kind that carried through your clothes and reminded you that you were alive. The roofline came into view, and I stepped up onto the shingles with controlled weight.

I looked around. The roof wasn’t new, but it wasn’t desperate either.

Age showed in the granules and the fading, in the way some shingles curled slightly at the edges near the eaves where sun and weather got the most time to do damage. But the lines were mostly straight. The valleys weren’t sagging. No obvious soft spots underfoot.

It told me this place had been maintained. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not recently. But it hadn’t been ignored either.

I walked toward the chimney first. Flashing was where a lot of problems hid. Water found its way into the smallest weakness and turned it into rot and mold and money.

I crouched at the base of the chimney and ran my fingers along the metal. I could see that the flashing had been replaced once, maybe twice. One section was newer than the rest. Clean cut. Tight seal. Whoever had done it knew their job.

Another section had been patched with a line of sealant that had hardened into a rough ridge—not pretty but effective.

Edna would’ve approved of “effective.” She’d never cared how something looked, only that it worked and stayed working.

I took my phone out, snapped a few pictures. Close-ups. Angles. Seal lines. A fix list started forming in my head without asking permission.

Next, I moved along the edge toward the eaves, checking shingle integrity. I lifted one corner carefully. The underlayment looked intact. Nails weren’t popping. The edge flashing held.

I followed the gutters after that, stepping lightly along the perimeter. Gutters were full of old leaves and pine needles, no surprise. A little overflow stain on the fascia told me rain had spilled over at least once. The fast fix was cleaning. The better fix was adding guards and re-checking pitch.

I snapped pictures of the low spots and made a quick note in my phone. Clean gutters. Re-pitch. Guards before festival.

Pearls & Pints had already infected my thinking. That timeline sat in the back of my mind like a ticking clock. I told myself it was because the event mattered for the town.

I told myself a lot of things.

A laugh floated up from below, bright and friendly. The sound carried through an open window on the second floor. A moment later I caught New York’s voice—warm, polite, moving fast. She was in full innkeeper mode.

“Welcome,” she said. “Yes, breakfast is included. Coffee’s hot.”

I paused with one boot braced on a ridge. New York wasn’t shrinking away. She was doing the job.

That part had surprised me. Most people talked big at the start and then stayed until the first real problem showed up. She’d stayed, opened the inn, and rolled up her sleeves instead of handing the keys to someone else.

Still, reality had a way of catching up.

Once she saw the list I was putting together, the structural fixes, the rot, the kind of repairs that came with real numbers attached, she’d do what made sense. Sell. Walk away. Let someone else deal with it.

And then she wouldn’t be my problem.

She wasn’t my problem.