“We couldn’t do much with the kitchen,” Hannah said. “Our options were doing some of the kitchenorsome of the bathroomorreally making a difference in the living room and bedrooms. You know how it is.”
Kitchens and bathrooms absolutely devour a renovation budget, and he knew his brothers would feel the same about it as he did—all that really mattered was that things functioned. Looking good was secondary.
“We stole the primary bedroom,” Rob said, which wasn’t a surprise because there had been a day’s worth of text messages about it in the family group chat.
Last season, Brian had taken the bigger of the two bedrooms—literally the only thing that made it the primary, since the entire house shared one bathroom—because it had a queen bed. Stella, his yellow Lab, actually claimed the bed, and since Brian was her human, he got the big bedroom.
But now Brian was spending more time at home, with his new wife and the son he hadn’t known about until last summer. And Stella, of course. Rob and Hannah were making the campground their full-time home, so they’d all agreed it made sense.
“We did what we could with the second bedroom,” Rob said, standing back so Danny could go in.
In a small house with small rooms, the phrasesmaller bedroomreally meant something. But he was still impressed with how they’d maximized the space. The window had been replaced, the walls were a light cream, and the floors gleamed. On one wall was a bunk bed that had a double mattress on the bottom and a twin on top. In the corner was an armchair with a side table that had a drawer and two shelves under it. Next to that was a portable crib, folded up in its case.
“Since most anybody using this room will be here for a weekend, or a week or two at most, we skipped a dresser and just put a low shelving unit in the closet,” Hannah said from the hall. “Most of you just bring a duffel bag, so we chose the space over a full bureau.”
“We didn’t consider a desk setup, though,” Rob said. “There’s a space issue, of course. And also, a desk and a chair for somebody who spends most of their time sitting feels a little personal. We could maybe set something up in the store, but we’ll be deep cleaning and doing inventory in there pretty soon.”
“I’ll probably work at the kitchen table if I won’t be in the way.” He’d already considered the working situation, and, while it wouldn’t be great on an ergonomic level, he needed to be pushed out of his comfort zone because that clearly wasn’t getting his book written.
“Whatever works for you,” Rob said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll let you get settled, and give a shout if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
What he needed right now was to email the manuscript to Kenzie before he lost his nerve. It was one thing to knock around plot points and character choices with her. Letting her read the unfinished manuscript was a huge step for him. It wasn’t really an exaggeration to say he’d be more comfortable letting a stranger drive his truck or stay in his house than he was letting somebody read unfinished work.
But it was Kenzie. He’d already shared more of his process with her last summer than he ever had with anybody else. And he needed help.
Before he even unpacked his clothes and put them on the shelves in the closet, he opened his laptop and waited while it connected to the not-so-high-speed internet that fed the store and house. After he typed in her email address, he took a deep breath and attached the manuscript file.
Then he spent ten minutes writing a cover note for it. There was typing. Thinking. Deleting. More thinking. If only his brain could work as hard on his book as it did on an email to Kenzie Pelletier.
I’ve attached the first two-thirds of the book in both Word and in a PDF, so you can read it however works for you. I don’t usually let anybody read it before it’s done, so please don’t share it or talk about it with anybody else. I’m a little superstitious, I guess. I want to ramble on about why I think I might be stuck, but then I decided it might be best if you cold read it and maybe you can see problems I don’t. I know you’re busy, and I appreciate this so much.
It was only a few minutes later that he got a text message from her, and he wondered if she’d been watching for the email from him, since she was still at work.
It’s our little secret. I’ll start reading it tonight.
He sent back a happy face emoji because he wasn’t sure what else he could say, and now that he’d hit Send, it was even more difficult to stop himself from telling her to never mind—that she absolutely couldn’t read it because it wasn’t done.
Our little secret.
He did like the sound of that, though. Maybe it wasn’t scandalous, as secrets went, but Danny liked having something only he and Kenzie shared.
Chapter Three
On Monday afternoon, the first of the three days Corinne’s Kitchen was only open for breakfast and lunch, Kenzie flew through her closing duties and practically ran out the door. Frank and Nathan—who helped in the kitchen along with bussing tables and washing dishes—would stay later, doing a deeper weekly cleaning.
Kenzie always left as soon as possible on Monday afternoons because it was the day she and Rhylee went shopping. Her cousin was the middle of three kids—sandwiched between two brothers—and, being the same age, she and Kenzie had always been more like sisters. And maybe making the drive to a big chain store to stock up on staples that cost a lot more in the local markets wasn’t exactly glamorous, but they tried to have fun with it.
Today, she was hoping to sneak in a little more reading before her cousin picked her up. She was almost done with the pages and she had so many thoughts to share with Danny. For one, she could almost pinpoint the page where the magic went out of the story. It went flat, like a stale soda, and she had some ideas on why that had happened.
It was a ten-minute drive to the house she’d grown up in, and had moved back into after her mother died. At twenty-four, Kenzie had been living and working in the southern part of the state with her boyfriend, Hunter. He’d recently been offered a job in Boston, so they were preparing to move to the city and excited to begin a new chapter in their lives. They would work hard for a while, travel when they could and then start a family.
Most of what she owned was packed into moving boxes when she got a phone call that brought everything crashing down around her. Corinne Pelletier had taken a familiar corner too fast and hit a moose. Kenzie’s dreams—and her relationship—had died along with her mother because she couldn’t leave her grieving father with nothing but an empty home and a family restaurant he couldn’t run alone. And Hunter didn’t want to wait.
Ten years later, Kenzie had no regrets. She had a good life, shared with family and friends, and she actually loved her childhood home.
Some paint wouldn’t hurt, though, she thought as she pulled off the dirt road onto her gravel drive. The cape-style home was well over a hundred years old, and it always needed something. The next big project would be repainting the clapboards the pale sunshine yellow her mother had chosen years ago—thinking it would be cheery and bright with white trim and shutters. Itwascheery, even during this drab season, and Kenzie smiled just thinking about how pretty it would be when everything turned green and the plants started budding.
