Page 10 of The Grump Who Stole Christmas
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s is when the inn made almost fifty percent of the profits for the year, but only if all the rooms and cabins were booked.
“Did something change with the Jamboree?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then this doesn’t make sense unless…”
Unless the regulars who booked every year had a bad experience at the inn?
Not possible.
It was the freaking Kringle Inn for Pete’s sake. There were decorations, there were treats. There was the smell of Christmas trees everywhere.
This place was Christmas!
Except the porch decorations seemed a little off. There were no treats to be found. Rhonda was gone and the rooms were only half filled.
“Now don’t you go making too much of things,” my dad said, even as he patted the cast on his leg. “Everything will work out in the end. You’ll see.”
My dad was an optimist who believed all things would always work out in the end, where I was much more like my mom. A devoted pragmatist. I looked at a problem and immediately wanted to solve it.
First thing I needed to do was get caught up to speed on what was happening here.
Ethan was busy with town business. Rhonda had already quit. I needed someone who was here, day-to-day, who could tell me what was really happening with the inn and my dad.
I landed on one name and winced.
It looked like Paul the tree farmer and I were going to need to have another conversation.
I really should have been nicer to him this morning.
THREE
Later that Morning
Paul
Huh. So that was the legendary Kris Kringle Jr. I met last night.
Pops had told me about the family joke. That he had wanted to pass on his family name to his first child, and when that child was a girl she’d been christened Kristen Kringle Jr.
She didn’t strike me as the type to be amused by her name, but I found it hilarious.
I hadn’t known much about Pops’ other two kids.
Ethan, the middle child, had stayed in town, and was around the place a lot. In fact, he’d sat in with his father while I was being interviewed for the job. Ethan had done his due diligence with a background check on me, so he knew where I came from. What my story was.
We shared beers at the local bar on occasion, when the Broncos were playing.
Ethan was a good guy with a lot on his plate and I had thought he could use his sibling’s help. He was one of those guys who wanted to be all things to all people and it didn’t leave much for himself.
But Kristen was supposedly a very busy executive VP for an insurance company in New York, and Matt Kringle, well, Matt was the reigning MVP of the National Hockey League. Neither job allowed for them to come home much, according to Ethan.
But their dad was still their dad, and no matter how busy or important they were, or thought they were, they needed to be here for him.
Especially now, with things the way they were.
Not that it was my business, of course. In fact, the reason I was here was to get away from other people’s problems. To not be responsible for what felt like the world anymore.
