Page 20 of A Winter Thaw

“Girl, please chill,” Michelle said, setting her down in the middle of her fenced-in area. “You love it in here, remember? All your toys are in here, and your bed—and you even have fresh newspaper in case of emergency. I need to get to work here.”

Puddle looked up at her with tragically large eyes.

“Someday you’ll be fully trained and then we won’t have to worry about it, okay? But for right now, I need you to stay here. Just for a little bit. Please?”

Puddle whined again.

Michelle bit her lip and took a step back toward Puddle, not wanting the dog to be upset. Then she shook herself.

I really do have to get work done, she told herself. She’ll learn that I still love her even if I walk away for a moment. If I always gave her what she wanted, I would never be able to do anything besides pet her and hang out with her.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said to Puddle, making pointed eye contact as if the puppy could understand her.

Puddle’s whines persisted for seven seconds while Michelle went down the hallway, and then Michelle heard the sound of Puddle starting to gnaw on one of her plastic bones. It was a chew toy, and it let off a high-pitched squeal a moment later. Chuckling, Michelle grabbed her snack and coffee and sat down behind the front desk of The Birchwood House.

She opened the laptop and gasped in alarm. She had seventeen unread emails. Two of them looked as though they were simply advertisements from other businesses, but the majority of them were from past or future guests. She saw the subject lines, “Looking to Extend Stay” and “Payment Issues—Please Respond ASAP” and gulped.

She was just about to start opening the first email when she noticed a red flashing light to her left. The Birchwood House’s voicemail was blinking, and when Michelle checked the screen she saw that they had eight new voicemails.

Today of all days, she thought with a groan. This feels like a sitcom. Where’s the laugh track? The second I’m here by myself, everyone decides that today’s the day the hotel needs to be unusually busy?

She clicked on the first voicemail, getting a notebook and pencil ready so that she could jot down the information she was about to hear.

She didn’t get a chance to, however, because at that moment, the front door opened, and a family of five tumbled into the front hallway.

“Good morning! Merry Christmas!” bellowed the father, who had a big red beard and looked exactly like a lumberjack who’d ditched his red flannel and bundled himself up in a peacoat instead. “Where are our rooms?”

Michelle froze and her mind started to race. Check-in didn’t start for another few hours, but usually when people arrived early, they tried to accommodate them. She could show them to their rooms—but what were their rooms? The violet room and the mint room—but had those guests left already? She would need to clean their rooms if they had, and that would take her at least a half hour per room, if she cut corners and just cleaned everything that was visibly dirty.

She was just starting to panic when she remembered that the tiger lily room and the rose room had been vacated the night before and she’d had the foresight to clean those rooms early in an effort to get ahead. It was part of why she felt so especially tired that day, but in that moment, she felt incredibly grateful toward her past self. Since the guests hadn’t reserved specific rooms, she could put them in different rooms than she’d originally intended to and they wouldn’t even realize there had been a switch.

“Certainly,” she said, standing up and putting on her best professional smile. “If you’ll just follow me, I can⁠—”

At that moment, the front door opened again, and in came a couple who looked as though they were freezing. They were bundled up in parkas and hats, scarves, and gloves, and the woman was shivering.

“Good morning,” said the woman. “Could we please have our room? I know we’re early, but we’re from Florida, and this cold is really brutal.”

Michelle’s mouth popped open. It was warmer that day than it had been all week, and the ocean generally kept the temperature from ever becoming too frigid. She didn’t know what to say, and her pause lasted long enough that the lumberjack man in the peacoat decided to talk for her.

“Well, you’re safe and warm now! Doesn’t matter that you’re early—we’re getting our rooms right away. What a place this is.”

Michelle wanted to let out a squeak of alarm, but she held herself together. It did matter that they were early—she had two rooms ready to go, but not three. Now instead of a blessed solution, she had an awkward dilemma on her hands.

She cleared her throat, wondering what to say. For a brief moment, she had a wild impulse to stand up and walk down the hallway, away from the embarrassing situation in front of her.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have three rooms ready at the moment,” she said. “Generally, our policy doesn’t allow guests to check in before three p.m. We’re happy to accommodate you whenever possible, but in this instance, we don’t have all three rooms ready to go. I’d need at least half an hour to get the final room ready.” She glanced down at the email inbox and wanted to groan as she wondered how much more behind on her work she was going to get before the next hour was over.

The cold couple looked at each other in dismay. It was clear they wanted to settle in and get warm, and that having to wait in the parlor of the hotel wasn’t what they’d been hoping for when they arrived early.

Mercifully, the wife of the lumberjack swooped in to the rescue. She looked at Michelle’s face, and then at the faces of the couple bundled up in parkas, and seemed to grasp the situation in an instant.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Our kids are in their messy stages. Our youngest will be staying in me and my husband’s room with us, but we’ve got a preteen and an eight-year-old who will be in the same room together. They won’t break anything, I promise, but I can guarantee you that when we leave here there’s going to be toothpaste on your counter and crumbs in the bed and at least one lost sock left behind a piece of furniture somewhere. I always feel bad leaving so much mess behind when we leave a hotel. How about you just give my husband and I one of the clean rooms, and we can give the other clean room to these folks here? Then I can just change the sheets myself for the kids’ room if you give me a clean set, and I won’t feel so bad about you having to clean up after my kids when we leave.”

Michelle wanted to cry. She could tell that this woman was being kind and simply trying to make it seem as though Michelle would be doing her a favor. She felt incredibly lucky that someone so kind and gracious had come along and been a part of the mishap.

“That sounds wonderful.” Michelle stood up. “But I can change the sheets⁠—”

“We can do them together.” The woman smiled.