As expected, Mason frowned. “But, Mom—”
His sister’s eyebrows inched up, and she blinked a few times. Aaron remembered their mom doing the same thing when she was about to deliver a statement they weren’t going to like. “If you’d rather stay home today and work on your room, that’s fine with me.”
Mason gulped down the rest of his milk and pushed back his chair. “I’ll go work on it now.”
Aaron suppressed a grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m done, buddy.” Picking up his empty coffee cup, he stood. “You should get the kid a bulldozer to clean his room. Does it even have a floor?” He hadn’t known where to step when he went in the other day. Clothes, books, and various pieces of sports equipment covered whatever parts of the floor that weren’t occupied by furniture. “Do you want more coffee?”
With a nod, Elise handed him her cup. “Believe it or not, I helped him clean it a few weekends ago.”
If Elise said she’d helped Mason, he’d take her word for it, because it looked like the room hadn’t been touched in years.
“What do you two plan to do while we’re gone?”
“A round of golf and then we have dinner reservations.” Nick put another stack of pancakes on the table and took the seat across from his wife. “We haven’t golfed together since the fall.”
The cell phone next to his sister’s plate chimed. As a certified midwife, the woman was never far from her phone.
Accepting her coffee, she picked up the device and glanced at the text message. “Mom said someone called yesterday and rented all five cottages for the next three months.”
Although his mom closed up the majority of the cottages around the lake after the second weekend in October and didn’t open them again until the first weekend in May, she always kept five open. Some years people rented them out every weekend during ski season, and other years the cottages remained empty for weeks on end. During the summer, it wasn’t unusual for a group of relatives to rent out cottages so they could vacation together, but never this time of year. And as far as he could remember, no one had ever rented out a cottage for such a long period of time. But he knew his mom wouldn’t complain, because the agreement would guarantee extra revenue.
“Mom must be happy. Did she say how many people she is expecting?”
Two of the larger cottages still open each accommodated up to six people, assuming two people slept in each bedroom and two people slept on the pull-out sofa. The other three cottages available in the winter each had one bedroom and a sleeper sofa.
“One,” Elise answered.
“One person needs five houses? Who’s staying there, the Queen of England?” Nick asked.
His brother-in-law made an excellent point. If an individual had rented out all the available cottages, they either didn’t want any neighbors or they considered themselves superior to the rest of society.
“What do you think I’m asking her now?” Elise didn’t look up as she typed out a new message. When she finished, she set the device down and reached for her fork. “But whoever it is, Mom expects them tomorrow.”
Although she’d grown up in New England and still spent a fair amount of time there, Juliette could probably count on two hands the number of times she’d visited New Hampshire. And many of those times involved visits to see her cousin who’d moved to the state the previous year. During those visits to Pelham, she’d thought the town was rural. The more she drove through Avon, the more she realized how wrong she’d been about where her cousin lived. While Pelham had some small farms and a charming town green, it also had one fast-food restaurant, a chain coffee shop, and two traffic lights. So far, she’d seen no sign of any of those things here.
“You want to take the next left,” Holly instructed her.
Since Holly hadn’t seen her family in months, she’d offered to make the drive with her. She planned to stay with her parents for a little while and then catch a flight back to New York.
Juliette turned onto a road that actually had a sidewalk and a street sign. They’d crossed into town about ten minutes ago, and many of the streets she’d traveled so far were unmarked. Evidently, the town didn’t want to make it easy for outsiders to find their way around.
Judging by the buildings lining both sides of the road, Main Street was the heart of Avon. On the right-hand side, a large municipal complex stood. The sign out front stated it housed the town hall, the police station, and the fire station. A store called Gorham’s Shop and Save was across the street from the complex. It shared its parking lot with a small movie theater and a liquor store. Considering the old-school marquee listing the four movies currently being shown mounted over the entrance, she didn’t expect to find any luxury loungers or IMAX screens inside. A mom-and-pop-style diner and coffee shop completed the businesses on the left side of the road. Not long after passing the municipal complex, she spotted a series of school buildings and the town’s public library.
“Let me guess, this is considered downtown,” she said as they passed the post office and a hair salon.
“There are a few other businesses scattered around town, but yeah, I guess you’d consider this the downtown area. It makes 5th Avenue look dull, doesn’t it?” Holly asked, laughing. “It’s not as bad as you think. We don’t have many retail businesses here, but North Conway is only about forty minutes away. You can find just about anything you need there. And since it tends to be a popular tourist destination, they also have some nice little artist studios and boutiques. Ashford, the next town over, has some restaurants and shopping as well.”
She’d have to keep a visit there in mind for another day because once she got out of the car today, she had no intention of getting back inside it.
“Unless you want to do a little exploring, you’ll want to take a right at the stop sign.”
She wouldn’t mind getting a better look at the town she planned to call home for the next few months. However, they’d spent roughly seven hours in the car today, and she needed another bathroom break. “Maybe I’ll do some tomorrow.”
A few miles and a handful of turns later, she got her first glimpse of Avon Lake. “I expected the lake to be much smaller.” Why, she didn’t know, but she’d expected it to be about the same size as the one not far from her cousin’s house. The body of water on her left was at least fifty times larger, if not more.
Holly reached for her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and typed a message. “This is the third-largest lake in the state. If you ask my brother, he can probably tell you exactly how many acres it covers and how deep it is. All I know is it is huge. Right now, we’re on the southernmost portion of it,” Holly explained as they drove.
Homes of various sizes and ages dotted the shore. Several had docks leading into the water, and when the temperatures warmed up, Juliette assumed boats would be parked alongside many of them. The houses continued for several miles before they stopped and were replaced with trees for a short time before ending at a public beach.
“The easternmost side is actually part of Ashford. There are several restaurants right on the water over there. In the summer, people will take their boats out for a few hours and then stop at one of them for lunch or dinner. And if we’d turned onto Timberlane Road instead of Harris, we eventually would have reached the kids’ summer camp along the western section of the lake. I used to love going there.”