THE JOB THAT MADE ETHAN COLE PART OF GREYHAVEN
Chapter 6
Claire rarely stayed after midnight.
One Tuesday, Ethan was finishing the kitchen when he noticed the office light was still on.
He knocked.
“Come in.”
Claire sat behind the desk.
Papers were spread everywhere.
She looked exhausted.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Ethan leaned against the door.
“You look tired.”
“I don’t appreciate that.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said it about me.”
She looked at him.
“You remember everything?”
“Usually.”
She smiled faintly.
“Sit.”
He did.
For a while, neither spoke.
Outside, rain tapped against the windows.
Claire finally said:
“My father owned this hotel.”
Ethan looked around.
“I didn’t know.”
“He died eight years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
“He left it to me.”
“That’s why you run it.”
“That’s why I can’t sell it.”
Ethan looked at the paperwork.
“You want to?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why don’t you?”
Claire looked toward the window.
“Because he spent forty years building it.”
She folded one piece of paper.
“And because I promised him I wouldn’t let it disappear.”
Ethan understood.
Promises had a way of becoming heavier after people died.
Claire looked at him.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Who did you promise?”
Ethan didn’t answer.
She waited.
He looked at his hands.
“My father.”
“What did you promise?”
“That I wouldn’t become like him.”
Claire studied his face.
“Did you?”
Ethan smiled without humor.
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t ask anything else.
That was why Ethan liked talking to her.
She knew when silence was an answer.
