“I found your cabin.”
I stopped writing.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sending you a link. Open it while I’m on the phone.”
The listing photograph loaded slowly on my laptop.
Grandma’s porch.
The blue chair I had sanded and painted.
The quilt folded across the bed.
Abe’s Lakeside Hideaway.
I read the title again.
My father’s first name sat above a photograph of the house I insured, maintained, and had inherited from his mother.
The description called him a retired local who had owned the family cabin for years.
There were twenty-six reviews.
I clicked the first one.
Then another.
Guests mentioned the quiet cove, the screened porch, the friendly host.
One thanked Abe for meeting them with the key.
Another praised the drawings on the refrigerator.
I put my hand over my mouth.
“Shelby?” Cody said.
“I’m here.”
“Did you authorize any of this?”
“No.”
“Has he ever given you rental income?”
“No.”
“Okay. Don’t contact the listing yet. Save what you can see. I’m doing the same.”
“How long?”
“The oldest review I can see is from two summers ago. That doesn’t tell us every stay or every payment.”
Two summers.
I had worked weekends during both of them.
I remembered calling my father once to ask if Delaney and I could come up on a Saturday.
He had said his fishing friends were using the second bedroom. Another time, he told me the plumbing was acting up and I should wait.
I had thanked him for letting me know.
“Can you get it taken down?” I asked.
“We can report unauthorized use with proof you own the property. The platform has to review it. First, we need to make sure nobody’s currently staying there.”
“And if someone is?”
“We handle that carefully. They may have paid for a booking in good faith.”
I stared at a photograph of the kitchen.
Delaney’s pictures were visible beside the freezer handle.
A sun wearing sunglasses. A heron. Grandma standing on the dock with wings.
She had drawn them when she was five, three years after Grandma died. She knew her mostly through photographs and the stories I told.
She said the cabin needed pictures so it wouldn’t look lonely when we went home.
I enlarged the photograph until the image blurred.
My father had made those pictures part of the listing.
Cody drove to the cabin that afternoon.
He called from the driveway and walked me through what he found. No cars. No guests. Beds stripped. The house looked as though it had recently been cleaned.
There was a guest book on the side table.
He photographed the pages without removing them.
Some entries matched public reviews. Others didn’t.
“That still doesn’t prove how everybody paid,” he reminded me.
“I know.”
I was beginning to hate how often the careful answer was the one I needed.
He checked the shed and found my father’s tackle box. The hat was on its hook.
I asked him to set those things aside and leave the rest alone until we had an inventory.
That afternoon, I collected Delaney at three-ten.
She was watching the drive when I pulled in.
At home, she asked whether I had to go back to work.
“Not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow either.”
“Are you using vacation?”
“Some.”
She looked disappointed on my behalf.
“We can still do something,” she offered.
So we sat at the kitchen table and played cards while my phone kept lighting up beside the sink.
I put it on silent.
She won four games. On the fifth, I made an obvious mistake, and she narrowed her eyes.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You had a seven.”
“I missed it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I tried to look innocent.
She laughed for the first time since the pickup.
I let her tell me exactly how badly I had cheated.
Before the locks were changed, I spoke briefly with a local attorney whose name I got from the office that had handled Grandma’s estate.
I explained the permission I had given my father, the listing, and the fact that the cabin was currently empty.
She reviewed the documents I sent and helped me put the notice in writing. She also told me to keep the ownership issue separate from the accounting.
“You know he rented it,” she said. “You don’t yet know the full amount.”
I had been adding figures on the back of an envelope.
Twenty-six reviews. Two-night minimum shown on the current listing. A nightly rate of one hundred eighty-nine dollars.
She stopped me before I turned the total into a demand.
“Reviews aren’t a ledger. Rates change. Some guests stay longer. Some don’t leave a review at all. Get the records.”
I crossed out the figure.
For once, I didn’t have to know everything before taking the next step.
Cody sent the platform a report with my signed authorization and proof of ownership. I submitted my own statement.
Before that report was processed, he made an inquiry through the public listing about availability for the Fourth of July. He used his real first name and business telephone number.
My father called him back.
Cody didn’t answer. Dad left a voicemail.
He offered a lower price for cash and said there was no need to book through the platform.
Then he said something that made me listen to the message three times.
“My daughter’s name is on some paperwork, but I handle the place. She’s always working. You won’t have any trouble.”
Cody forwarded the original message to me and saved his copy.