Page 88 of Once Upon a Fall

My eyes move to Rosie as she takes her first bite.

Maybe not the only thing.

“Dean, this is the best chicken I’ve ever had,” she says, her eyes closed.

“You said that last time,” I remind her. I smile this time, not bothering to fight it.

“I was wrong last time,” she says.

The next morning, I go back to my grandparents’ house.

It’s Thursday, and the rest of the rooms need to be ready by Sunday, so I hate leaving Rosie at the inn. But Dominic is there helping, and Rosie practically shoved me out the door herself.

I mentioned once yesterday, in passing, that I still needed to get some paperwork from the house, and she refused to let it go.

“Dean, don’t you need to get those insurance records?” she asked while I was laying tile in the bathtub of the Beauty and the Beast room. The tile is yellow with a single rose in the center.

Roses are apparently very important to this particular princess story. I asked why, and Rosie looked personally offended that I didn’t already know.

This time she didn’t make me promise to watch the movie with her that night. We both know we’re running out of time. She did, however, make me swear on everything I love that I’d watch it eventually.

When I was about three-quarters of the way done with the tile, I took a break and drove over to the farm.

Actually, took a break makes it sound voluntary. Rosie grabbed me by the arm and physically steered me toward the door.

The house smells worse than I remember as soon as I walk inside. Stale air, dust, and something distinctly animal underneath it. Next week junk haulers will be here to remove everything, which means I still need to go through the place and figure out what I want to keep.

But I won’t have time for that today.

I head straight for the back bedroom, where there’s an old file cabinet in the corner. I remember it because my grandpa once told me to stay out of it, which naturally made eleven-year-old me desperate to know what was inside.

One night, after my grandparents had gone to bed, I snuck into the room and opened it. Imagine my disappointment when all I found was paperwork.

I think I’d been hoping for buried treasure. Or, at least a map to some.

There’s a layer of dust on top of the cabinet now. I pull open the top drawer and start thumbing through my grandpa’s filing system, which is more random than a system.

I find a file folder with a tab that says “insurance” and pull it out. I look through it and I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what I need.

That went much faster than I expected it to. Good. Now I can get back to the inn.

When I go to shut the drawer, I find a folder with my name on it. I’ll have time to look at it next week when the inn is finished, but I can’t help but take a peek.

I set the insurance file on the bed beside the cabinet, sending up a small cloud of dust from the old floral comforter.

Opening the file, I find school pictures. Seven-year-old me is missing a front tooth, my unruly hair gelled so aggressively to my head it could have survived a hurricane.

There’s so much in here. Pictures from school. Report cards. Things I didn’t even know they held on to.

There are things from later, too. A printout of an article from my high school website about our baseball team making the state playoffs, my name highlighted in yellow. Another one about a game-winning double I barely remember hitting.

I stopped coming every summer, but apparently they never stopped keeping a place for me here.

I think I might have that pesky indigestion again.

Instead of putting the folder back, I take it with the insurance file, tuck both under my arm, and head back to the inn. I’ve got a quarter of a bathtub left and two days to finish it.

Rosie