“I have a couple in town. They’re a hundred dollars a week, but they’re all a minimum six-month lease.”
“Anything a little shorter?”
He leaned back, rubbing his clean-shaven chin, and after a moment said, “I have one at Serenity Lake. No lock-in time frame. The house is small but clean, fully furnished, and it’s only eighty dollars per week. It’s a bit of a ways out of town, though, and there aren’t many neighbors. Would it be of interest to you?”
I smiled, the first real smile since I’d left home. “It sure would.”
“Well, Amy.” He cleared his throat and studied the planner on his desk, which was almost empty. “Let me just check myschedule . . . I think we can fit you in.” He looked up with a smile. “I can take you there now if you’d like to have a look?”
After I agreed, he collected his keys.
“Hold my calls, Mabel,” John boomed as we walked out.
“Will do.” She smiled wryly, picking up her book as the door snapped closed.
We headed around the back of the building, the gravel crunching under our feet. John walked bowlegged, like he’d spent years in the saddle. I half expected to find a couple of horses tethered to a post behind the building. When we rounded the corner, it wasn’t a horse that awaited us, but the form of transport was almost as primitive. It was a large, old gray sedan. John used his key to open the passenger-side door.
Despite its age, the car sprung to life, the engine purredlike new, and we pulled out of the drive, heading right through town.
As we drove, I took the opportunity to have a look around. There was a supermarket, bookstore, chemist, police station, hospital, and a funeral home. Everything you would ever need. The town’s buildings dropped away, replaced by a stretch of old timber houses that were about fifty years past being cared for. They preceded a stretch of straw-colored meadows, ruffled by a gentle breeze.
“It’s dry this year. Normally the grass is green, but we haven’t had much rain this summer. No doubt that’ll change soon enough. Fall is usually wet, and winters are darn cold.” Every time we hit a small bump in the road—of which there were a few—his double chin was sent into a vibration of miniature wobbles.
I turned to look back out the window, my eyes falling on a rickety house with an old man smoking on a couch on the front porch. He stared at me like a snake watches its prey.
“Is this the kind of place everyone knows everyone?” I asked, which I figured was better than asking if everyone was related to each other.
“Are you a writer?” he asked, and there was a stiffness in his voice which made me swing back to look at him. He sat rigid in his seat, staring at the road ahead, and a prominent cleft split his brow.
“No,” I answered, mildly perplexed by his abrupt change in demeanor. “Why do you ask?”
He relaxed his posture and twisted his head to look at me briefly, seemingly pleased by my answer.
“Well, I figure there are three types of people who come to the ass-butt of nowhere. The first are those with family here. The second are those who come for their career, and the third are usually those who want to hide. Usually from the boys in blue. And you don’t have family, or you wouldn’t need somewhere to stay. You don’t strike me as someone in hiding. So, I took a wild stab.”
“How long have you lived in the ass-butt of nowhere?”
He chuckled. “All my life, love. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
“You must like butts.”
He laughed in loud, slow bursts. “I sure do!” His smile dropped away as the inference dawned on him. “I’m married,” he said quickly, holding up his ring finger. “To a woman.”
I chuckled. “No judgment here, John. Live and let live.”
The fields were lost to a tunnel of towering pines. Finally, we pulled off the main road and onto a gravel one. Serenity lake was sprawling and sat to the left of the road. Smatterings of sand-colored rocks and green beach grass crowded the shoreline. The clear waters reflected the sky above and the surrounding trees like a mirror. It was visually stunning.
“That’s the Toronto’s place.” John pointed out a wood-clad house with a large timber porch nestled on the edge of the forest. Two small push bikes leaned up against the porch, a pink one with little streamers and a basket on the front, and a blue one without any additions. “They’re a nice couple, Cindy and Luke.They have two little ones, a boy and a girl. They come for a few months every summer. And that’s the Miller’s house.” He indicated to another timber place, about two hundred feet past the Toronto’s. “They’re an older couple who keep to themselves, but they’re good, salt-of-the-earth kind of people. And this,” he said, pulling in front of a little cabin another couple hundred feet on, “is yours.”
It was smaller than the other two and was located closer to the lake’s edge, but it had the same exterior finish. Five wooden steps led up to a narrow, covered porch. I was out of the car by the time John managed to heave himself out, and I already knew this was where I wanted to be.
“This is perfect, John.”
John chuckled. “Hold your horses, love. Let’s have a peek inside first, shall we?”
At this point I wouldn’t have cared what the inside was like, but to my delight, it didn’t disappoint. The inside matched the outside. The door opened straight into the living room, which, despite outside appearances, was bigger than expected. In the center wall was a huge stone fireplace. Two old but comfortable-looking brown leather couches faced each other in front of it. The kitchen was visible beyond, with timber cabinets and gray benchtops that complemented the natural surroundings.
“The bedroom’s through here,” John said, pointing to a room off the lounge and to the right. A large window looked out onto the lake. A queen-size ensemble with white covers sat in the middle of the room, bracketed by two bedside tables. There was a wooden double-size wardrobe in the corner, and a full-length mirror beside it. A door led to a bathroom with a walk-in shower, gray tiles covering the walls and floor.
