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We’d taken care of everyone’s check-in items and had ordered food when Blake had turned to me and asked if I could share some more personal history about my mom.

“My mother?” I’d asked, surprised. This was outside Blake’s and my tacit understanding of safe topics.

But we weren’t alone. And it was related to the business—Mom was stitched into every part of this resort. Since we’d started the review, I’d been thinking about her a lot—probably because her name was all over the old documents; in the annual review photos; on every piece of correspondence.

“Yeah. What was she like?” Blake asked, stuffing a forkful of salad into his mouth. “I feel like I know who she was, but I don’t know what she was like, if you know what I mean.”

Something went warm inside my chest. It was like he knew how I’d been feeling. I was touched. But Blake was sitting next to me, and I was also suddenly keenly aware of his leg under the table, only inches from mine.

“She built this place up from nothing, right?” he asked.

“Yes. But she didn’t intend to buy it,” I said, tearing my eyes from his. Everyone’s eyes were on me. At first I was worried they somehow knew about the warmth tingling through me. But when I realized they were waiting for me to continue talking, I relaxed, settling back in my chair. The noise of the busy cafe fell into the background as I thought back to the story Dad had told us so many times.

“When Mom’s parents passed, she got a small inheritance. They sat on it for a while, but Dad was really hating his job. He was doing some kind of insurance work in Cincinnati—it’s where his job had taken them.”

Even though they’d also heard it a hundred times, even Jude and Eli had their ears perked as they ate.

“She always had a dream of running a hotel, and when Dad said he’d rather stay at home and look after kids than do the grind every day, they’d started looking for a place.”

“Did they always know they wanted to settle in Vermont?” Lila asked.

I shook my head. “No. They looked all over the Midwest, mostly at small hotels in smaller towns—Mom always figured she’d run a smaller one for a while, grow her chops and investment, then move onto something bigger. But it didn’t occur to her to look back in their hometown until Dad casually mentioned it.”

“Wait, so both your parents were from here too?” Blake asked. I guessed their research hadn’t gone that far back.

“Born and raised.”

“Why didn’t she look at the resort first?” he asked. “It had been shut down for years, right?”

“Yes.” I took a sip of my water, hiding my smile at the rapt attention around the table. I loved how invested everyone was. I loved that it felt like us coming back to run this place—and getting the Harringtons to help us fix it—still felt like exactly the right thing. Even if there was that distraction of Blake.

“The Rolling Hills resort used to be called the Vista Grand,” I continued, “and it had been hugely popular in the 1920s and 30s. But during the war, visits plummeted.”

“Dad thought the owners’ sons had been killed in action, didn’t he?” Jude asked.

Jude was especially into the history of this place. He really ought to work with Dad on doing some kind of actual research project—if Dad ever came back.

And if they didn’t get distracted by silly ghost stories.

But I nodded. “It was our dad who’d been into the lore of the place,” I explained to Blake and Lila. “He figured the previous owners had been so heartbroken they didn’t have the drive to renew the place once the war was over. In any case, they ended up leaving it to a cousin, who kept the building chugging along for another decade or so but didn’t really do any major upkeep. He started shutting down rooms when they needed work, and according to the records, they finally sold it to a developer in the 60s with only about 50 operational rooms.”

“How sad,” Lila said.

It was sad. I hated thinking about these bereaved parents, too devastated to greet the visitors they’d once loved. Watching their baby fall into ruin.

“But the developer didn’t do anything with it?” Blake said.

“That’s right. That’s when it went fallow. Dad said he remembered the building kind of looming over the town for years. The local kids all said it was haunted.”

“Dad still says that,” Eli said.

I rolled my eyes, but Blake’s eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah, the ghost in room—”

“114,” Jude supplied.

I threw Jude a look. “In any case, Mom and Dad didn’t think to look at the place as a potential for purchase, even though Mom said years later it was the Vista Grand that got her inspired to run a hotel in the first place.”

“They thought it was too big,” Eli said.