Page 71 of The Haunted Hotel
Following his gaze, Morgan crosses the space in three strides and yanks the drawer open, allowing letters to spill out and tumble to the floor.
“Jesus Christ.” He grabs handfuls of them and, realising just how many there are, straightens up and holds some out to his grandfather. “How long have you been hiding this from them?”
“None of your business,” Cedric snaps.
“The hell it isn’t,” Morgan shouts back, shaking one handful at his grandad. “You’re about to be homeless! When you didn’t show up at court, they decided to send out an auditor to value the house, grounds, and contents for auction. You’re going to lose your home.” He points the other handful of letters in the direction of me and Rosie. “They’re going to losetheirhome. Don’t you care?”
“That’s rich coming from you!” Cedric’s voice breaks on the last word. “You weren’t here, so don’t think you can come in here and start throwing your weight around and judging me. I didn’t need you before and I don’t need you now, so why don’t you fuck off back to America, to your fancy hotels and la-di-da lifestyle.”
“I can’t!” Morgan shouts. “Because like it or not, I’m your family and that makes you my responsibility.” He throws his hands up, letters still in a death grip. “Otherwise, you’ll end up homeless and living out in the orchard until you freeze to death like that dumb-ass ancestor of ours.”
“That’s really very rude,” Edwina’s posh and slightly affronted tone murmurs behind me, but I don’t pay her any attention. The ghosts are the least of my problems right now.
“I don’t need you! And they can fuck off if they think they’re setting one foot inside my house! I’m not going anywhere! They’ll have to burn the place down around me because the only way I’m leaving is in a coffin!”
He whirls around, well as much as he can with his bad arthritis, and hobbles back to his train room, slamming the door. Morgan moves to follow him, but I grab his arm to stop him.
“Morgan, don’t,” I say softly. “That’s not how to handle him. He’s an old man, and this house is all he’s ever known. He’s scared, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he’s trying to push it all away and ignore it.”
Morgan growls in frustration. “That’s not going to solve the problem. That’s how he got into this mess in the first place.”
“I know.” I pet his arm and continue to talk softly to try and calm him down. “But this is partly on Rosie and me.”
“How do you figure that? Did you ignore a drawer full of legal correspondence and court summons?”
“No,” Rosie interjects with a troubled frown. “But we gave him the letters. Anything official-looking we’ve always passed to him so he could preserve some of his privacy. In reality, we should have opened all of them. If we had, we might’ve known, and we might’ve been able to do something in time.” Her voice catches and she shakes her head.
Morgan takes a deep breath, hands me the stacks of letters, and goes back to the drawer to get the rest. “Show me the books. All of them.”
I hesitate. Yes, I probably should do as he asks, but Cedric hasn’t given me express permission to allow his grandson access to the financials, and I don’t want to upset him further. It’s not good for his blood pressure.
“I’ll do it,” Rosie says firmly. “I’ll show all of it.”
Carrying all the correspondence we could find, the three of us trudge down to the office. Morgan pushes up the sleeves of his sweater and plants himself at Rosie’s desk, and we ply him with a never-ending stream of coffee and hand over reports and letters from the bank and creditors when he requests them.
The next couple of hours are excruciating. It’s clear the others know something’s going on. John the Maid has cleaned the reception desk on the other side of the open office door so many times that I wouldn’t be surprised if I could see my reflection in the work surface by now. Aggie brings in bacon sandwiches around mid-morning, her expression worried, but she leaves us to it without a word. Every now and then, I even see the ghosts stick their heads around the door, but I don’t engage with them either.
All my focus is on Morgan, who mutters to himself as he sits and taps away at a calculator. The sexy, laid-back man from earlier is gone, once again replaced with tight shoulders and a scowl etched between his brows. Which, honestly, is still really hot.
Finally, he slumps back in the chair and rubs his eyes. “I’m missing payroll.”
“There isn’t a payroll,” Rosie says.
Morgan’s frown deepens. “What? Why wouldn’t you keep a record of payroll? From what I can see here, you’ve been meticulous about documenting everything. It’s incredibly professional.”
“It’s not that we didn’t keep a record of the payroll,” Rosie explains. “There isn’t any payroll.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” He shakes his head in confusion. “The only reason you wouldn’t have a payroll is if you haven’t been pay?—”
He breaks off and stares at the two of us as his brain connects the dots. Sucking in a sharp breath, he pinches the bridge of his nose. Either he has a nasty headache brewing or he’s searching for his patience, possibly both. Probably both.
“How long?” he grits out, looking up at the pair of us. “How long haven’t you been paid for?”
Rosie and I look at each other. “A year,” I finally answer.
“A year!” he exclaims, caught somewhere between horror and disbelief. “You haven’t been paid for over a year?”
“Slightly longer if we’re going to be totally honest here,” Rosie adds.