They all stared at each other.
“Okay, this is easy, right?” Noelle asked, breathing in and out slowly, trying to stay calm. “Miriam can sell us her portion, and we’ll go on with our lives. Levi doesn’t care what we do.”
Hannah made a little sound in her throat, and Noelle winced. She never knew when the sound of Levi’s name was going to gut Hannah.
“Miriam, you don’t want to be part of running Carrigan’s, right?” Noelle asked before getting up to pace.
She could fix this. She and Hannah wanted to spend their lives running this place. They’d planned it, talked about it, dreamt of it. They were good at it. Great, in fact. They could just go on running it, even if Cass had had some last-minute terrible idea.
“What on Earth was she thinking?” Noelle asked the room.
“I know what she was thinking, as I was present when she amended the will,” Elijah answered, though the question had been rhetorical.
“Although Cass was a decent, if idiosyncratic, businesswoman, traffic had dropped off sharply in the past few years,” Elijah explained. “More people are buying artificial trees, fewer are heading out into the country to have a Christmas experience. The recession happened and Cass dragged her feet on creating an internet presence for the farm. Carrigan’s used to subsist on Christmas tree income and returning annual holiday guests, but that’s not viable anymore. She was forced to take out a second mortgage, and she’d fallen quite far behind. The members of the bank board knew Cass for decades, but with her gone, they’re no longer able to honor the, uh, somewhat unorthodox verbal repayment agreement she had with them. Because Carrigan’s is an important local institution, they’re willing to work with you on repaymentifyou can present them with a viable plan, but there’s no way around it: the farm is in real financial trouble. Cass believed the four of you, as a team, could right the ship.”
In her shock, Noelle dropped onto the couch with a thump, startling Kringle.Cass believed what?
“She loved the ship metaphor,” Elijah continued. “She said she had a dream that Carrigan’s was a ship. Miriam was the sails, the creative wind. Noelle was the anchor that kept everyone from blowing off in wild directions. Hannah was the captain, Levi was the map to unknown lands, and she, Cass, was your North Star.”
Everyone was quiet a moment.
“She changed our entire lives based on a dream about a ship?” Hannah asked, sounding stunned.
“This is Cass we’re talking about,” Noelle murmured, and Hannah nodded slightly. It was a very Cass move.
“How am I supposed to help make any of that a reality?” Miriam asked, incredulously. “I don’t have any real money anymore, not the kind you’re talking about. I spent any savings I had renovating my store, and that’s sunk cost even if I wanted to get it back. But I don’t. I’m about to open my dream shop, I have a fiancée and alifein Charleston. Besides, I don’t know shit about trees. Or hotels.”
Noelle’s brain stuck on the word fiancée. It was bad enough that she’d flirted with Miriam Blum, but an engaged Miriam Blum? This week kept getting, impossibly, worse.
“She didn’t want your money, Miriam.” Elijah pushed up his sleeves, smiling. “She wanted your brilliance.”
“What could I possibly contribute to Carrigan’s?” Miriam snorted. “Ruined antiques?”
“I’m trying to think like Cass,” Hannah said slowly. “What would Miriam bring to Carrigan’s, if this were her home base? There’s room for a studio and a shop in the carriage house, maybe. She could bring traffic in during the summer months…” She trailed off at Noelle’s glare and shrugged. “If this is what Cass wanted, shouldn’t we at least have a conversation about it?”
Noelle didn’t want to have a conversation about it. Miriam had been handed this magical place on a platter, and she’d thrown it away. She’d left Cass for ten years and never came back, even when Cass was dying. She had no place in Carrigan’s present or future.
“Elijah,” Noelle asked, “leaving the rather serious question of Levi aside for a moment, walk me through what it would look like if we bought out Miriam.” She tapped her short, buffed fingernails against the wooden back of the couch, the sensation helping her think.
“Well, the first question is, do you have the money to do that?” he answered.
Hannah shook her head. “I certainly don’t. My parents had Rosenstein money, but making documentaries is expensive. And I’ve been here since college, getting paid, well, the family rate.”
She pulled her cardigan closer around her, and Noelle shook off her own panic enough to realize that her best friend was terrified, with much more right to be. To Noelle, Levi was an annoyance, and Miriam a problem to solve. To Hannah, they were the other two legs of her stool, and they’d left her here alone to wobble desperately before she’d miraculously found her own balance. Now, she had to rely on the same people who’d proven themselves unreliable to do right by the only home she’d ever had.
“Wait,” Miriam interrupted. “I should sell it to you both. And I probably will, cheap, so it’s not a hardship on you and I can go back to my life. But Cass must have left it to me for a reason. I’d like to think about that before I make any final decisions.”
She looked around but Noelle refused to meet her eye. “I just found out this was happening, and I can’t even process it. I need some time, Noelle. Hannah. I’m sorry. Can you give me a little while?”
“How much time?” Noelle growled. Some better angel deep in her consciousness told her she was being unreasonable and unfair to Miriam, who had been taken by surprise as much as anyone. She told her better angel to shut it.
Hannah reached across their chairs and squeezed Miriam’s hand. “You don’t have to know right now, babe,” she sniffled.
Noelle lost the battle with her temper and slammed out the door.
She loved Cass, but how could she do this to them? How could she have hidden that the business was on the brink of bankruptcy? Noelle knew traffic had slowed down, but why hadn’t Cass trusted them with the full picture?
Noelle didn’t care if she inherited a half or quarter share, but she did care that her home now belonged in part to Miriam the Absent and that little fuckhead Levi. All that had been getting Noelle through losing Cass was the belief that she and Hannah would be carrying on Cass’s work into a new generation, and now that was gone. The woman she’d thought had loved and trusted her had pulled the rug out from under her.