Just when she thought her mom was zoned out, she perked up as they rolled into the quaint downtown Irish Hills, Manitou Lake Road.
There was a lovely welcome sign and a gazebo with white columns separating the main street. On one side, there was scaffolding and nothing but construction. The other side, though, was picture-perfect!
It looks plucked out of Main Street at Disney, Siena thought. But she was also kind of embarrassed to think that. She knew the reverse was true. Disney was a copy of something like this.
“Wow, this place is looking pretty cute. Those buildings were gutted in the tornado, I thought,” her mom said. She’d sat up straight in her seat and had rolled down the car window for the first time in their eight-hour trek.
“They look totally restored,” Siena said. She noted a cute restaurant on the corner and a hardware store across town. It looked like they had a grocer and a car dealership down the way, too. Libby Quinn had plucked this town from the jaws of a developer, Siena had read.
“Is it like you remember?”
“It is. I can’t believe it.”
Siena would hold off just a little longer. It was best to have Aunt Goldie in the room when she dropped the bomb. No, not dropped the bomb, started their future. It was all good. Still, Siena was nervous. She’d been at the helm of the business, and her mom had trusted her, but she’d trusted her to keep things going, not turn them in a new direction.
“Yeah, they look lovely, and look, that town square that was there when I was a kid, but not as fancy.”
Siena imagined get-togethers, craft shows, and all manner of fun stuff happening here. She was excited to be a part of it. She was excited to look forward to helping her mother do the same.
She was not excited to tell her mother any of it.
“Do you have any innate sense of the direction we’re going for this Two Lakes Grove Hotel?”
“Maybe if I was on a bike. I didn’t have a car here back in the day.”
“So, how many summers did you spend here?”
“Gosh, from 1985 to 1989. After that, the tornado made this place a less than desirable vacation spot for my parents. I was only eleven when I met the girls. A couple of them were my age, and Libby and Hope were our gang leaders. To an eleven-year-old, a thirteen-year-old is the height of worldly sophistication.”
“Of course,” Siena said. But in truth, she didn’t have a gang of girls to hang around. She had her mother and father, her Aunt Goldie, and other grownups. She’d been given access to their world, which was amazing. But now, hearing about her mom’s old friends, she felt a little sad. She didn’t have a BFF.
She did have her mom, and she was determined to bring her around. There was no reason this malaise should linger. This trip and this plan would be just the thing.
“So, the GPS says turn here down this way.”
“Seems right.”
“Wow.” Siena looked beyond the downtown buildings and toward the lake.
“Yes, wow, I sort of forgot how pretty Lake Manitou could be.”
Siena drove slowly and continued to glance between cottages at the water beyond.
They traveled down a main road and to one paved with gravel. But it all skirted the lakes. They were never more than a house or two’s width away from a glimpse of the water.
Finally, they drove up to the Two Lakes Grove Hotel. It was easily the biggest structure they’d encountered since leaving the main drag.
The historic building was stunning.
“This building is Aunt Goldie, no question.”
“She does like glamour.”
And that was right; there was a glamour to this hotel. It looked like a little cousin to the famed Grand Hotel on Mackinaw or something you’d find on the beach in Coronado, California. It gleamed.
Aunt Goldie could afford the best, and it looked like she’d restored the place to her movie-star standards.
“Yeah, Aunt Goldie looks like she’s doing just fine as a part-time superstar,” Viv said. Siena knew her aunt had scaled back her shooting schedule, but this place revealed that she hadn’t scaled back her life, not one bit.
