Driving through the sad remains of downtown Cambden, I realized it was no longer the place I remembered. The town had been erected around the single lane highway more than a hundred years ago. While never busy, it at least had a slight bustle to it. I imagined it all ended when the highway was rerouted a few years ago.
Like many a small town, once the traffic moved away, so did most of the businesses, following the dollars that transient travelers brought. It meant the shuttering of local shops, lots of vacant buildings, and a diminishing population. Another town about to ghost the world.
As I drove down Main Street, I noted the many boarded-over windows and faded signs. Lots of for-sale properties, too, yet oddly enough almost all stated they were sold, the stickers slapped across faded signs bright and obviously recent. It made me wonder who was investing in a town that the world had seemingly forgotten. It reminded me of that damned letter I’d burned.
The fire marshal had deemed the fire an accident. It apparently started in the basement by the water heater, which happened to sit below the garburator and kitchen sink. Coincidence? Better faulty wiring than the alternative.
A good thing I’d not accepted the offer to buy the cottage. If I had, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. It made me wonder if the same person who’d offered to buy my grandma’s place was the same one snatching up properties in town. And why.
Then again, if I had the money, I’d want to own it, too. To breathe life into an old-fashioned place where neighbors looked after one another. Or so I liked to believe. I’d never know. While I was moving in, the rest of the town had moved out. It made me wonder if Tricia still remained in the area. It also brought a twinge of guilt.
How long since I’d called the best friend of my youth? Back in the day, we’d been inseparable. Hanging out together as toddlers and going to kindergarten together.
Even though I’d moved, my dad had brought me back for visits and I’d gotten to see her. When I came to live with my grandma, we had sleepovers every weekend, usually at my place on account her family situation wasn’t the greatest.
We shared everything until I went to college. We’d started out writing each other letters. It seemed so archaic now. Long distance phone calls were too expensive back then. I’d just about flipped when I got my first phone bill at my dorm. The phone company charged by the minute, and I’d spent an hour telling Tricia about Martin. Back when he wasn’t such a jerk.
Tricia had seen his potential for being a prick, though. She tried to warn me, but I was so desperate to have someone to love. Needed it so badly I ignored the signs.
And then, when I began to realize just how bad it was and how right she’d been, I’d stubbornly gone into denial. I’m sure a therapist would say I did it out of shame. Partially. I also did it out of contemptuous malice. Although I never understood why I’d want to spite Tricia. Was it because she’d seen what I wouldn’t recognize? Because, whenever we spoke, I felt guilty that I’d abandoned her and my grandmother?
Needless to say, we grew apart after that. I didn’t even have her number anymore and could only wonder if she still lived in her mom’s old place.
Taking the road that rounded the lake, I moderated my speed, mostly to watch for wildlife. I remembered that there were deer and bear that lived in the area. Yet it wasn’t the furry four-legged critters I ended up screeching to a stop for but a turtle moving laboriously across the road. Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I glanced between the trees and eyed the water. The beautiful deep blue. The freshness of the air coming through the rolled-down window.
It was quiet out here. No traffic noise, no people. Just me and my cat.
Why had it taken me so long to come back? I’d always loved this place as a young girl. Been devastated when my grandmother died just before I graduated college. I’d only returned once afterwards. I wanted to blame Martin for it, but the truth was I couldn’t handle being inside that cottage without grandma there.
I’d not wanted to deal with the grief, so my children had missed out on the adventures I’d had growing up. Frog hunting and fishing. Learning how to make jam from the wild raspberries we picked. S’mores by the fire. The twinkle of fireflies as they danced in the forest. Although my grandmother used to claim those were fairies.
“Daddy says fairies aren’t real.”
“Not real?” she’d exclaimed. “Why the very idea! Your mother used to like catching them with me. Hold on a second and I’ll show you.”
She’d gone into the house and returned with a mason jar, the lid in one hand, the jar in the other. Off she marched to the forest, her worn jeans tucked into hiking boots. Her long gray hair dangled in a fat braid down her back.
She returned with a tiny golden speck floating in the jar. Too bright for me to stare at for long, and even when I did peek, the wings fluttered too quickly for me to truly see anything.
Grandma said, “I told you it was a fairy.”
Young me believed her. Why wouldn’t I when she claimed to show me proof?
Fairies weren’t the only thing she tried to convince me to believe in. She had the best stories, like the one about the lake monster, Maddie. Depending on who you asked, she was a three- or five-eyed, horse-headed monster with a green, weedy mane that flowed down a serpentine body. A reporter doing a study of lake monsters in Canada claimed she was a mix of the legendary Mussie in Muskrat Lake and the famous Ogopogo. Although a different professor of folklore history claimed it was more likely a relative of Caddy, another monster out in British Columbia.
Whatever the case, Grandma claimed Maddie woke only every hundred years to feed, and we weren’t due for another forty years yet. But she did also warn to beware of those that disturbed Maddie’s rest.
I’d never seen the monster, given it was supposedly asleep. As an adult, I didn’t believe in fairy tales anymore. I’d also given up on miracles until I pulled into the gravel driveway to my grandma’s place and saw the cottage.
It looked just as I remembered, which should have been impossible. I’d not been by in over two decades. It should have had peeling paint and a sagging roof. At the very least been overgrown by the shrubbery.
Yet the pale cream siding appeared almost freshly painted. The porch and its railings remained a matte black. The hunter green metal roof was unbowed. A gray stone chimney jutted from the peak.
It took me a moment to move as relief shook me. I’d been so convinced I’d find a ruin. It seemed impossible that it looked untouched. I pinched myself and blinked in case it was a mirage. Yet the cute cottage remained.
Given the state of it, I wondered if someone lived here. Pretty brazen, given I owned the place. Then again, if they’d been maintaining it, could I really complain?
Exiting the car, I leaned on the door for a second and just looked around. Nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks, crushing me in memories.
The tree with the rope and the tire swing. How many times had I gone too far, felt the rope do that slack thing then drop, jolting me each time so my stomach sat in my throat? The tree was taller now, but the swing remained. As did the wrought iron bench in the garden. The birdhouses I’d painted in my youth and given Grandma as gifts had been replaced with simple feeders. I guess it was too much to hope cheap plywood and glue had lasted that long.