Inn at 22

The Inn at 22

The Inn at 22 was solid lace in the summer, and a snow castle in the winter. In the summer, when you looked at it from the side, the inn would disappear. In the winter, every herringbone banister and ribbon-tied molding would hang with ice crystals, and after time, of course, disappear as well.
No matter what season, the inn glowed from the inside, welcoming all visitors to Cape May to step onto the porch and avoid the rain or join in tea time, even if they were not intending to stay. If the paint was chipping and the innkeeper an old witch, the Inn at 22 would fit the perfect description of a haunted house. But it didn’t. The house was freshly hand painted every year, and the reason the inn was always so welcoming was because of the innkeeper, Renee, and her little daughter Karlie. 
         Everyday Renee would check her guestbook for the next visitors, ready the rooms and send Karlie to the door with a parking pass when the guests arrived. She kept pressed-petal journals in the bedside tables of each room and invited all the guests to leave their marks, pictures, or favorite memories, and of course to read the additions of the guests who had stayed in the rooms before them. She kept the journals, records of friends and candlelight dinners and lazy beach days, in a weather-beaten bookshelf in the parlor, and the many returning guests loved to search through the dusty tomes for their old journals, to remember what they had enjoyed so much two or three years ago, and what had brought them back.
         Renee did not need reminders. She remembered the guests from last week as well as she remembered the first guests she ever had. She remembered the mother and daughter in their nylon rain jackets and single umbrella, sopping wet, who had traveled to Cape May for the day but because of the storm the ferry had been canceled and they were looking for a place to stay. She remembered Stacey, the solemn old woman who had permanently inked her named into renting the Holly Room every first weekend of May, because this had been her tradition with her late husband, since they had been married in Cape May in the inn, 38 years earlier.  She remembered Mr. Hudgens and his special friend Caroline, and the first time the laugh-lined crinkles around Mr. Hudgen’s face twitched when Renee asked how Mrs. Hudgens was, and he replied she was at home with the children.
         Renee only kept records of food allergies and birthdays. She sent Christmas cards of Karlie on the porch every year to her guests. They sent cards, too, most of the cards including the dates of when they would next be back in Cape May. “Can’t we do lunch?”
         Renee was a young mother when she first bought the Inn of 22, but as the summer weeks rolled into winter months and months rolled into years, Renee’s business and popularity grew so much she could not manage the house on her own. She enlisted the help of a kind Polish woman named Jhana to help her clean and cook for the guests, and raise Karlie. They became very close friends.
         When the beach was covered in snow and the air promised no quiet summer breeze, Renee was not like the other innkeepers who boarded up the windows and set off towards their trailer homes in Florida. She never abandoned her inn. She and Karlie lived at the Inn at 22 for the last few guests of the fall, and continued to stay in the house all by themselves for the winter, waiting until the middle of April when Jhana returned from Poland to open the house again for the spring guests. Jhana would not stay for the winter; she returned to her family in Poland. But one winter she got a call asking her to return early to Cape May not as an employee but as a friend; Renee was very ill and could not take care of Karlie and the Inn and herself. Without any family close by and spring approaching anyway in just a few weeks, would Jhana be kind enough to maintain the inn, and watch over Karlie?
         Jhana would.
         Jhana returned and went to visit Renee in the hospital. The beautiful innkeeper, who usually shone with the grace of a woman whose job was to place chocolates and fresh flowers on the bedside tables to welcome guests and cook omelettes and biscuits every morning, looked starved for beauty in the sterile hospital room. Jhana brought her flowers, irises (Renee’s favorite) and a petal-pressed journal to start the new additions for the first spring guests. Renee told Jhana they had a journal similar to this in the hospital, and she pulled out a flimsy, fluorescent-red notebook from the drugstore down the street with only 6 words written in it so far: There should be a Bible instead. 
         Jhana went to the Inn and played with Karlie. Karlie was 10 years old now, and such a perfect little reflection of her mother. Almost to a point of seriousness, Karlie would play dress up “To look clean and presentable for the guests!” or grab the Windex and cleaning supplies and say “The Dormer Room guests are arriving at 11:30…we better be ready!” She was less of a child than Renee would ever admit, but she was even less likely to admit how, selfishly, she needed her more as an adult than a child.
Karlie had found one place to still be a child: the turret. From the outside the turret was shingled and striped purple and white, the icon on the greeting card Renee sent out every year. From the inside it was the highest, smallest room in the house and perfect for Karlie to “muss up with her things”, as she said. The ladder steps were too hard to manage for most guests, but a perfect princess stairwell for a dreaming little girl.
         That’s where Karlie was when Jhana got the call from the hospital. The nurse was very sorry for their loss, and wondered if Jhana was family, or could possibly put her in contact with someone close to Renee. She had left behind a journal, the nurse continued, a very pretty parchment bound journal with pressed flowers on the front, and had written a very pretty…Karlie came bounding down the stairs. “I saw a ghost!!! Up in the turret, come look!”
         Karlie grabbed Jhana’s left hand as she held onto the nurse’s sentence for one last breath, but the little girl dragged her up to the turret. The room was blue from the fresh snow falling outside, with a thick beam cutting it in half from the street light reaching level with the balcony window. Karlie jumped over the streetlamp light and pointed straight at the black mirror. Jhana was not so limber, and crawled over the bed to avoid the beam and huffed, as she crawled: “baby girl, that’s just going to be you.”
“No, it’s Renee.”
Jhana’s eyes jumped at the sound of the familiar voice.
Karlie had disappeared.
         Jhana sold the house to a wealthy businessman set on developing Cape May into a global destination resort.  He thought the house was beautiful and stayed there twice a year, and otherwise had Jhana take Renee’s place as the innkeeper at the Inn of 22. Guests talked often about Renee and Karlie, how they missed Renee’s tea times and Karlie’s smiling face, and wished they had not moved away to the city so Karlie could go to a proper school.
Stories continued to circulate just as they always did about the hauntings of Cape May and especially Jackson Street. Jhana laughed along with the stories and smiled when guests talked of her beloved friends Renee and Karlie, and agreed that she missed them, too.
         But whenever she was really lonely, all she had to do was go up the ladder and into the turret, look into the mirror, and see them.