I hop out of the trailer, close the door behind me, and then cut through the narrow path that connects our properties. It’s filled in over the years from disuse, trees bowing toward each other and small shrubs growing heartily under their protective canopy.

I get hit in the face with a few branches and sputter when I walk through a cobweb and nearly eat the freaking spider. I stumble over a root as I wipe my hand over my face and nearly face-plant into the dirt.

When I open my eyes, I’m face to face with Bee’s cottage. I take a moment to breathe through the sudden tightness in my chest. I’m not a sentimental person. Not really. I don’t get attached to places or things. I try not to fall in love with buildings or spaces, because life is fluid and you can’t have roots and wings at the same time.

But as I stare at the old, beautiful, run-down cottage, a million wonderful memories come flooding back. When I moved away for college, Bee made me handwrite letters to her. Once I tried to send a typed one, and she mailed it back. When she passed, she took a piece of my heart with her, and I’m feeling that hole now more than ever. Other than once a year for the holidays, I didn’t see her much after I moved away for college, and I realize now how selfish that was. I didn’t want to feel tied to this place, so I avoided it and everyone in it. I created distance when what I should have been doing was spending as much time as I could with her.

The front porch is in quite a state of disrepair, and once again I’m reminded that my heels are ridiculously impractical around here. I’ll be trading them for flip-flops, flats, and running shoes.

The age of the cottage is starting to show. The exterior is in need of fresh stain; some of the boards on the front porch are soft and beginning to rot through. If I had to guess, I’d say there are probably a few chipmunks living under there. A pair of rocking chairs sit in the corner, a table between them, the layer of dust and dirt making it clear they’ve gone unused since Bee passed. We used to sit out here and play cribbage in the evenings, drinking unsweetened iced tea in the summer or hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream in the fall.

I knock on the front door and wait for someone to answer. After a good thirty seconds I knock again, then move to the window and peer through a gap in the curtains. Everything looks the same inside—a mass of organized clutter.

Maybe it’s not her grandson like I thought. Or maybe he sent a developer to look at the property. I figure it’s probably a good idea to let myself in and check things out, knowing that Bee wouldn’t want a stranger rummaging around her place. I slide the key into the lock. It’s always been a tricky door, so I lift, jiggle, and twist to the right until I hear the faint sound of the lock clicking. The door creaks on its hinges as I push it open and step inside the dimly lit space.

Twenty-year-old wallpaper covers the majority of the open space, and it always takes me a moment to gather my bearings, since it’s a heavy visual assault, at first anyway. The colors are muted with age and sun. Blue teapots are now nearly gray and pink peonies the palest of peach. The living room is a mishmash of eclectic furniture, purchased from the town flea market; nothing matches, not even the chairs around the dining room table. A layer of dust covers nearly every surface, making it an untouched shrine to Bee.

The wall to the right is covered with old framed photos, some black and white, some color. There’s a distinct line through the center of half of them, where the sunlight from the window cuts across it at midday, bleaching the pictures on the top half of the wall.

I move across the room to stand in front of the framed photo collage until I’m casting a shadow over the pictures. Mostly they’re of Bee’s family. My gaze catches on a picture of Bee with Donovan. He was always wearing a ball cap, half his face hidden in shadow, making it impossible to get a clear picture.

I took it on the sly with the camera on my phone while I was working in the food truck, the summer before I left for college. They were picking up deck boards at the hardware store. Bee was trying to climb into the bed of the truck while wearing a dress, and Donovan was trying to stop her. It encapsulated everything about her as a person and the love between them.

Despite being close to Bee, I always kept my distance when her favorite grandson was with her for the summers. I had Bee ten months out of the year, and I knew how much she looked forward to seeing him, so I gave them privacy. So, other than seeing brief glimpses here and there, we never crossed paths.

I touch the corner of the frame to straighten it. Then I step back to make sure the rest of the pictures line up properly as well. Which is when the sound of water running registers. I glance toward the kitchen, but the sound isn’t coming from the sink, which means there’s either a leak somewhere, or someone is in the bathroom.

I take a cautious step toward the center of the living room, and the floor creaks under my foot. The sound is ridiculously loud in the quiet space, and a shiver runs down my spine.

“Hello?” I call out. “Is anybody here?”

CHAPTER 4

NOT QUITE WHAT I EXPECTED

Van

Everything about Pearl Lake is steeped in nostalgia—full of some of the best summer memories. I spent my youth here, staying at my grandmother’s cottage on what she cheekily referred to as the right wrong side of the lake.

On my way through downtown, I smile as I pass the specialty candy shop with treats from England, homemade ice cream, and deluxe chocolates. In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve only been inside once. I was eight at the time and had never so much as cleaned my own room, let alone anything else. Grammy Bee had offered to pay me twenty dollars for helping her wash all the windows on the cottage. I’d been bored, and I couldn’t say no to her, so I’d picked myself up off the front porch swing and got to work.

It had taken me almost the entire day. Plus, I was only eight, so reaching the top of the windows meant climbing up and down a ladder for hours. Regardless, as soon as she handed over the money, I jumped on my bike and pedaled to town—without a helmet, despite her constantly telling me how important it was that I protect my brain, since it couldn’t be upgraded or replaced—and the first stop I made was that fancy candy store Grammy Bee refused to let me go in whenever we went to town.

I’d been so excited. I left my bike outside and rushed in, and I ended up spending almost everything I’d earned. I gorged on ice cream, chocolate, and soda. When I left the candy shop, I crossed the street, my paper bag of treats in hand, and stopped in the convenience store to pick up a copy of the city newspaper that Grammy Bee liked to read on the weekends.

I rushed down the aisle and came to an abrupt stop when I noticed the same glass bottles of soda and the same fancy candies, except instead of being in large glass jars with ornate tongs to handle them, they were stacked in plastic Tupperware, and salad tongs sat on top of each bin. Everything cost half as much.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: just because something looks prettier doesn’t mean it’s better.

When I left the convenience store, I crossed back over to the candy store without a paper because I was fifteen cents short. And I realized my bike was gone because I’d forgotten to lock it up. The hour-long walk home was another lesson. By the time I got back to Grammy Bee’s, I was fuming, frustrated that the candy store jacked up their prices like that and that someone had stolen my bike.