It looked like a sloped two-story structure with a warm beige flag-stone porch leading up to a front-door that was painted a bright pastel yellow color.
“That’s weird,” Lennon said as she leaned on Maverick for support while the rest of us unloaded the suitcases from the car.
“What’s weird?” he asked, glancing from her to the house.
“The house looks different, newer almost. The front door also used to be blue—that’s my grandma’s favorite color.”
“Why would she change it?”
I knew the answer to that. “Because yellow’s your favorite color, isn’t it?”
Four sets of eyes turned and looked at me like I had grown a second head.
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “What? I notice things. Your tablet cover, phone cover, and most of your lounge wear that no one picks but you are yellow.”
Not wanting to be stared at anymore, I shuffled past them with a few of the suitcases and climbed up the steps. “The door code should be the same one as the one at the gate, right?”
“Dallas,” Lennon called after me but I was already putting in the code, my ears burning.
Stepping inside of the house, the first thing I smelled was fresh paint.
Then I saw the shiny hardwood floors and the brand new side table with the quirky yellow bowl that looked ready to catch keys at a moment’s notice and I realized that this was nothing like the house that Lennon had described a few minutes earlier.
The way she had been talking about it in the car, I had half-expected one of those grandma-esque beach houses you see in magazines full of wicker furniture and blue gingham print pillows with far too many ruffles.
But all of this lookednew.
And Lennon’s gasp from behind me only cemented that fact.
“Oh mygod,” she said as Maverick helped her inside behind me, her eyes wide with wonder as she took in the front entry way. “What did theydo?”
“Is this not how it used to be?” Zeke asked as he filed in behind them, Brooks bringing up the rear.
Lennon shook her head. “No, not at all.”
She stepped away from Maverick, who looked reluctant to let her go, and hurried forward and immediately through an archway that led into what looked like the living room and gasped again.
“What?” I asked, thinking something was wrong as I followed her into the living room.
The lights were turned on in here as well, and even though it was nearly pitch black outside now, I could tell the large floor-to-ceiling windows opened out into what was probably a million dollar view of the ocean.
Directly in front of the windows was a sunken sitting area with fluffy yellow couches and a superfluous amount of fluffy pillows tossed all over.
“It’s…” Lennon trailed off as she stared at it before skirting around the sitting area and gripping the latch of the large windows and lifting it. The entire wall slid open and the cool ocean air from outside filled the living room.
Lennon hugged herself tightly and glanced back at us, her flushed face looking more vulnerable than I think I’d ever seen it before. “I think this is my board.”
“Your board?” Brooks asked as he snagged a nearby blanket out of the sunken conversation pit and hurried to wrap it around her shoulders.
She nodded, swallowing hard. “We’ve never really lived in our own house. We’ve owned one, sure, but for as long as I can remember we’ve lived in governor’s mansions or the White House and you can’t really do whatever you want in places likethat. So I got mad when I was sixteen and made a board out of all of the things I’d want to do in my own home when I was a grown up and could do whatever I wanted… and I think my grandparents did it here.”
Lennon turned away from the open windows and hurried into the kitchen, staring at the robin’s egg blue countertops and open glass cabinets for only a moment before she was gone again, opening every door she found and peeking inside.
We followed quietly behind like ducklings trailing their mother.
The bathrooms were bedecked and brightly colored with deep tubs built into the walls. The linen closets filled similarly with blue and yellow linens that seemed to scream Lennon’s preference.
Two of the bedrooms had comfortable, neutral furnishings. Probably guest bedrooms.
