Brass Buttons at Cinderwick

“You carry those everywhere?” Victor asks.

“I’m festival chair. Planning is my religion.”

Victor takes a flyer, then looks at me. “Monday.”

“What happens Monday?”

“I decide whether you’ve earned that kiss.”

Nolan hands me the rest of the stack. “Wonderful. Civic engagement.”

By October, Cinderwick gets brisk enough to slap sense into anybody foolish enough to work outside before coffee. Frost freckles the boardinghouse lawn before dawn. The harbor carries salt and diesel across the square, and I put a second layer under my work shirt without anybody ordering me to.

Dewey approves the renovation in pieces, which is apparently his preferred method for keeping contractors humble.

“Room Three’s window is good,” he says Tuesday, working the new sash twice. “Stair rail is solid. Smoke detectors are where they belong.”

“You do know how to compliment a person.”

“I don’t compliment people. I approve work.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It sounds accurate.”

He checks the new porch post, then writes on his clipboard. “Keep going.”

From Dewey, that’s practically a sonnet.

By the middle of the month, Victor turns my worksite into a field trip. He arrives each morning around ten with coffee for me and a different pair of café regulars behind him.

“This is Dean,” he says one day, though Dean has already watched me eat a sandwich while covered in plaster. “And this is Mr. Larkin, who takes his coffee black and complains if I use a clean mug.”

“I complain if it’s the wrong clean mug,” Larkin says.

“You see my burden.”

“Do I get a vote?” I ask as Victor ushers them into Room Two.

“No. You’re busy making this place pretty.”

“I’m making it safe.”

“Safe can be pretty, mon coeur.”

He says it without looking at me, like he hasn’t just shoved a crowbar under every rib I own.

Room Two does look good. I stripped the cracked wallpaper, repaired the plaster, painted the walls a soft blue that makes the afternoon light behave itself. The original brass bed sits under a quilt Nolan found in a cedar chest, and the window faces the harbor. Victor’s customers linger in the doorway, talking about who might stay there first.

Every time somebody admires a room, I pretend I don’t care. Every time, I care so much I could chew nails.

On Thursday, a loose floorboard in the front parlor gives under my boot. I pry it up expecting mice, mold, or a bill from 1986. Instead I find a biscuit tin wrapped in oilcloth, tucked beside an old leather ledger.

The buttons inside the tin shine dull gold: two dozen brass disks, each stamped with a little anchor. The ledger is older than the one Nolan handed me in August, its cover cracked, its pages smelling of dust and old paper. Men wrote their names in it from 1911 through 1948. Some stayed one night. Some filled half a page about chowder, fishing, or the view from Room Four.

At the bottom of the final page, someone has written: Keep the lamp lit for the next fellow.

Well. That’s annoyingly effective.

Friday evening, I set the old ledger on the front desk beside the polished tin. Nolan, Dewey, Victor, Dean, and two men from the volunteer crew crowd into the parlor after work. I pass around good beer because I understand bribery when I see it.

“Every room gets an entry,” I tell them. “Nolan said so. This one’s for everybody who helped make the place worth opening.”

Nolan presses one hand to his chest. “You listened.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

Dewey writes first. His block letters fill three neat lines: Room Three passed inspection. Nobody dies in a fire on my watch.

“Romantic,” Victor says.

“You write yours, café boy.”

Victor takes the pen, squints at the page, and writes longer than anyone else. He closes the book before I can read it.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Rude.”

“Build suspense.”

The others leave gradually, hauling empty bottles and leftover paint rags toward the door. Nolan lingers long enough to point at the tin.

“Brass buttons were from the old porter coats,” he says. “Folks used to say they meant a guest was looked after.”

“Folks say a lot around here.”

“Yes,” he says cheerfully. “You’re learning.”

When the door shuts behind him, Victor and I are alone in the front parlor, with the lamps on and the unfinished house making its usual small creaks around us.

“Can I ask something?” he says.

“Depends. Is it another tour?”

“No. Though your trim work in Room Five has a corner I intend to critique later.” He looks at me. “Why did you leave back then?”

There it is. No paint, no plumbing, no clipboard to hide behind.

“I got scared,” I say.

“Of dating me?”

“Of trying and messing it up. Of letting somebody see enough of me to decide I wasn’t worth the trouble.” A brass button rests in my palm. “I made leaving sound practical because I thought that made it less cowardly.”

Victor looks down at the ledger. “It hurt because you didn’t try, Hollis. We weren’t married after four dates. I knew that. But I liked you. I gave you chances to say you were afraid, and you gave me jokes and a disappearing act.”

Every defense I ever built deserves a wrecking bar.

“You’re right,” I say. “And I’m sorry isn’t a fix.”

“No.”

“I won’t use work as a place to hide anymore. I can’t promise I won’t be scared. I can promise I won’t make you guess what I’m doing when I am.”

He steps closer. “That’s a better answer.”

“Good. I was worried you wanted a worse one.”

“Idiot.”

“Frequently.”

His hand settles at my jaw. He leans in, slow enough that I can choose it too.

“I want this,” I tell him.

“Me too, chéri.”

I start toward him.

The front door bangs open so hard the ledger jumps.

“Hollis!” Nolan calls. “Don’t move those pumpkins until I tell you where they go!”

A volunteer crew pours into the hall carrying paint cans, bundles of cornstalks, and enough pumpkins to start a minor orange rebellion. Victor steps back, laughing into his hand.

Nolan spots us. “Excellent. You two can help arrange the foyer.”

“Of course we can,” Victor says, eyes still on mine.

I pick up a pumpkin and glare at it.

This town has impeccable timing and no mercy at all.

It proves its point the following Saturday, when the harvest festival turns the square into a loud argument about cider, pie crust, and whether Nolan has used enough pumpkins.

He has not. There are pumpkins on every porch step, pumpkins around the café tables, and one very judgmental-looking pumpkin beside the boardinghouse sign.

Cinderwick Boardinghouse stands behind them all, freshly painted and proudly upright. Its porch rails are straight. Every window shines. Brass buttons from the old porter coats sit in a glass bowl at the front desk, polished until their little anchors show clear.

Nolan shoves a microphone at me.

“Say something inspiring,” he orders.

“I’m a contractor.”

“Then inspire them structurally.”

Victor stands beside the café’s cider table in a green sweater that makes me want to start a fight with autumn for giving him an excuse to wear it. He sees me looking and lifts one eyebrow.

Brat.

I open the guest ledger at the front desk. The crowd quiets enough for me to hear the harbor beyond the square.

“This place had good bones,” I say. “It also had rot, leaks, bad wiring, and a porch post that was one hard sneeze from surrendering.”

Dewey folds his arms. “Accurate.”

“Plenty of people helped bring it back. Nolan kept me supplied with impossible deadlines. Dewey kept me from burning it down. Victor fed me when I forgot that lunch exists.”

Victor’s mouth goes crooked, but he doesn’t interrupt.

I turn to the page he wrote in October. “Victor’s entry says, ‘A home is not a building unless someone chooses to stay.’”

Nobody makes a joke. That’s how I know the sentence lands.

I look at Victor. “I’m trying to learn that.”

He leaves the cider table and comes up the porch steps. His cheeks have gone pink from the cold or the attention. Maybe both.

“You’re trying?” he asks.

“I’m not great at speeches.”

“No, chéri. You’re great at speeches. You just hide the useful parts under insults.”

A laugh rolls through the crowd. Victor takes the microphone from my hand.

“Hollis Boudreaux,” he says, looking straight at me, “has become my favorite kind of trouble. The kind that fixes what’s broken, brings extra lumber, and stays for coffee after the work is done.”

Dean claps first. Then everybody else joins him, loud enough to make the pumpkin beside the sign wobble.

My face feels hot. “That’s a terrible thing to say to a man in public.”

“You love it.”

“I do.”

Victor’s grin comes quick and bright. “Good.”