Page 13 of Holding On

“Catch,” is her reply and a TracFone comes hurling down the staircase. I catch it with one hand. “Nice. I’ll be here tonight in case there’s an emergency you want me out on with you. Just pound on my door.”

I lean into the stairwell and look up at her. “You don’t have to stay here when Finn’s over there.” I jut my jaw in the direction of The Inn.

“Oh, this is a courtesy for your first time on call. I’m not giving up that man for you after tonight,” she says and laughs. “Next time, you’re on your own.” With that, she disappears around the corner.

It takes about forty-five minutes to close the office and wrap up two short after-hour phone calls.

By the time I’m done, I have no interest in dinner, having snacked most of the afternoon on peanut butter and apples. My mom loved peanut butter, and though we all inherited her peanut butter penchant, I’m the only one who eats it on pineapple like she did. She even made me peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches for school.

Claire is the one who looks most like Mom—blonde and fair, like she’s wandered, rosy-cheeked, from the Yorkshire Dales of England. Everyone else is dark—Italian dark—with black-brown hair like Dad.

And there’s me and Geo. Everyone outside of town in Maine immediately thinks he’s my father, even though we look nothing alike. This mistake never happens in Boston. I’ve grown used to the assumptions and the looks, which are never malicious, just ignorant and a little self-righteous. They think they have me and my family all figured out.

Like we need figuring out.

Claire’s doing books at the table. Sighing, she announces to no one in particular, “I need an office manager.”

I’m running water in the sink and washing her dinner dishes.

“There’s a salad in the fridge, sweet potato fries you can heat up, and some leftover stuffed haddock,” she says, staring at some numbers.

I’ve noticed how generous Chloe is with leftovers from The Inn. “Best-fed practice?” I offer.

“Absolutely,” Claire answers, but she doesn’t lift her eyes from the receipts in front of her.

I wipe my hands on a towel. “Can’t you just automate all this? There’s got to be a better way.”

Claire straightens in her chair. “You are so smart,” she says with mock astonishment. “I never would have thought of that! Thank God you’re here.”

I nod my head. “You don’t have a clue how to begin.”

She sweeps a hand across the pile of papers on the table. “Thus, my need.”

“I can do it.”

“You can’t.”

“I can,” I correct her.

Now she glances up at me. “Really?”

“I took a business course.”

“And they teach you this stuff?”

Frowning a little, I nod. “Yeah. Billing, tracking, appointments, budgeting, setting up a business, liability, insurance—the whole thing. And we tested different software platforms.”

“Man, I wish they had that when I was in school.”

I shrug and hang up the tea towel.

She shakes her head. “No, though your offer is tempting. I’ll just have to hire someone—maybe part-time. I don’t want this stuff getting in the way of your practicum.”

I balk. “Practicum? Are you turning British on me?”

She smiles. “Whatever. A clinical. Is that what you young people are calling it now?”

She’s not even thirty. I’m certain they didn’t call it a practicum when she was in school either, that’s just Claire.