Page 37 of Happy Harbor
“Yep,” she said, turning toward the restaurant.
“Well, good luck!” he called as she continued walking. As she opened the door, she was surprised to see her mother already there, setting each table with a paper place mat and silverware wrapped in a white napkin.
“How’d you get here before me?”
Diane smiled. “Josie, I live upstairs.”
“Wait, what? Here? In the restaurant?”
“Momma finished an apartment up there years ago.”
“I had no idea. I thought that was for storage.”
“It used to be, but now we have a storage room behind the kitchen.”
“Oh. Do you pay rent?”
Diane looked at her for a moment. “Well, Ihaven’t.”
“You’re going to need to start.”
“Josie...”
“Look, I own this place now, and you’re not my daughter. If Nana wanted to be nice and let you live here for free, that was on her. For me, I need four hundred dollars a month. You can start next week, since it’ll be the first.”
Diane sucked in a sharp breath. “I thought we had a clean slate, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Who said we had a clean slate? I said I’d stay six months, and that means we have to work together. It doesn’t mean I have to give you free housing. I’m sorry, but my goal is to make this place more successful so when I sell it in six months, it’ll go for top dollar. Having a squatter living upstairs isn’t beneficial to me.”
“So, you’ve already decided you’re selling this place in six months? On day one?” Diane crossed her arms.
“I’m not spending the rest of my life in Happy Harbor. I’m honoring Nana, and then I’m taking what she left me, in monetary form, and starting a better life for me and my daughter. That’s my plan, yes.”
“So we’ll all just be out of jobs?”
“That will be up to the new owners. Regardless, you need to pay rent or find a new place to live.”
Diane said nothing else as she walked toward the back. Josie knew she was trying to restrain her anger, probably to make Josie believe she’d changed. Nana hadn’t said a word about what would happen if her mother quit, so she wasn’t planning to go easy on her. She couldn’t fire her, but that didn’t mean she had to play nice while they worked together.
Besides, the restaurant desperately needed updates, and having a nonpaying tenant living upstairs wasn’t helpful. That space could be rented to a paying tenant or even used for a second dining room. Josie planned to make use of everything she’d learned while working in marketing, and one of those things was to think outside the box. Do different things. Be a risk-taker.
“Good morning, Josie,” Bear said as he walked into the restaurant.
“Good morning,” she said without looking up.
“Listen, I wanted to mention again that we lost a server recently. You might want to start interviewing for a new one.”
She finally made eye contact. “We have Diane—I mean, Dee Dee—and that Tabby girl.”
“Pardon me for saying so, but those two can’t handle this restaurant alone. You’ll probably need to help out until you can hire more people.”
She fake smiled. “Bear, I doubt this place gets busy enough to support three full-time servers.”
He chuckled. “Okay, whatever you say, ma’am.” He walked to the back without another word.
A few minutes later, a woman—more like a young girl—walked into the restaurant. She had platinum-blond hair pulled up in what Josie would refer to as a “cheerleader ponytail” and wore a black T-shirt with skintight light-blue jeans and white high-top sneakers.
“Excuse me, but we don’t open for another hour.”
