Touching Stars by Emilie Richards

the multihued roses sprinkled across the spring-green surface made her feel as if she were walking barefoot in a garden. This morning she passed over them too quickly to notice.
    In the family room, Dillon and Noah were doing excellent imitations of roadkill. She hoped they were awake enough to decipher her words.
    “I fell back asleep. Did either of you check on your dad this morning?”
    “You always get up early,” Dillon said.
    “Apparently no longer true.”
    “Jared’s making pancakes. He woke us up.” Dillon looked as if Jared hadn’t done a thorough job of it.
    “Dad’s still sleeping,” Noah said.
    Gayle slowly let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Well, good. I’ll get dressed and help Jared. Remember, he graduates tonight.”
    Dillon scratched his head with all ten fingers. “I think we should wake up Dad and make sure he eats.”
    “He needs sleep as much as food,” Gayle said.
    “And stop pointing out he’s skinny,” Noah told his brother. “Can’t you figure out he knows that better than anybody else?”
    Apparently Dillon was too sleepy to take offense.
    Gayle showered, then dressed quickly in blue jeans and a white cotton crewneck. She didn’t bother with makeup. After slipping into loafers, she left her younger sons to finish the transition to the land of the living and headed outside.
    The inn was really an assortment of buildings, and she loved them all. The bones of the house dated back to the mid-nineteenth century, but at the turn of the twentieth, the sprawling main house had sheltered the growing family of a country doctor. According to local historians, in later years the doctor and his wife had each taken in a sister, along with her husband and children, adding rooms and outbuildings to accommodate everyone.
    Unfortunately, as succeeding generations had taken over the care and the property taxes, the huge old house had slipped into disrepair. Contemporary families were smaller and less likely to want to grow old together. By the time Gayle and Eric had seen the property, the house had been well beyond a fixer-upper. Instead, the sales pitch had revolved around the potential for a new house on the same site.
    Gayle had never regretted the decision to ignore sage advice and renovate the old one.
    In addition to the house, which had been whittled down to eight functioning bedrooms, and the carriage house, which was the family living quarters, there was a bonus room over the modern garage that Jared and Leon, when he was in residence, shared, and a garden shed—soon to be the Star Garden suite—which had been converted into an efficiency apartment for the assistant innkeepers. The shed was perched, not surprisingly, at the edge of what had once been a garden large enough to feed the doctor’s family.
    Until recently the apartment had been occupied by an older couple who had helped with every phase of the inn’s upkeep and management. But two weeks ago they had retired to Florida. Gayle planned to incorporate the suite into her overall rental plan, but first it needed serious updating. She was subcontracting the work herself, which was progressing too slowly to suit her, and at the moment she didn’t see much hope that it would be rentable until fall.
    This morning, with mist rising from the river and the sky brightening, all the hard work seemed worth it. Like many owners of country inns, she knew living in a scenic area, in a house rich in history, was one of the bonuses of her profession. She was proud that she had saved the rambling old house and found a way to make it pay.
    Cutting across the patio, through a well-organized storage room and into the kitchen, she found Jared frying bacon.
    All the boys helped with the running of the inn. They routinely answered telephones, set tables and washed dishes. They did garden chores under protest, and more willingly helped with any chore that required use of the computer. Leon Jenkins, the high schooler who