“You heard of old Millie?” Stu asks in a whisper.
Dawn pauses. The name twinges a memory, but she can’t pull up details.
Stu rubs a grease-streaked hand across his mouth and glances nervously at the hunters. “Folks up here don’t like to talk about her. They respect her privacy, you know?”
Dawn nods. “She lives backwoods?”
“She does. Over on Little Thorn Lake.”
When Dawn frowns, he says, “It’s about an hour north. Near Blind Bay.”
That gets her attention. When she’d been a kid, Blind Bay had been one of those places considered too remote for anything but the hardiest hikers. Fast forward twenty years, and it was the latest hot development spot…now that all the truly hot ones were fully developed.
“Old Millie’s lived out there since her husband died, nearly twenty years back. They never had kids.”
“How old is she?” Dawn asks, trying for idle curiosity.
He shrugs. “Gotta be close to ninety by now.”
She whistles. “Must be a tough old bird.”
“She used to be, but it’s been years since she could even row out. I take her supplies, and the last time I was up there…”
He shifts, looking uncomfortable as he lowers his voice more. “She’s not going to make it through the winter. I feel like a ghoul mentioning this, but I’d hate to see the place go to a great-nephew who hasn’t even bothered to come see her in a decade. I was thinking, maybe if I had you run some supplies over, and you could get to know her…”
“Get to know her and convince her to sell me the property now, in return for a lifelong lease and enough money to make her final days very comfortable?”
He exhales. “Exactly. I trust you to treat her right.”
“If her nephew is expecting a windfall, he should have looked after her.”
“He should have.”
“Instead, you’ve been doing it, and I’m sure he’s not going to repay you for that.”
“He won’t.”
“So let’s make sure she gets a square deal, you get properly compensated for your work and the nephew gets as little as possible.”
Stu smiles. “I like the sound of that.”
Dawnpaddles along the edge of “Old Millie’s” property and tries to reason with the disappointment leaching into her bones. Yes, it’s not as close to Blind Bay as she’d hoped. Yes, it’s only accessible by water—hence the canoe. Yes, it’s completely off grid, with no electricity lines for two kilometers. But if you want rustic, it’s perfect. Better than perfect, in fact. According to Stu, this isn’t just a half-acre of lakefront property. Millie owns fiftyacres, with a thousand feet along the lake. Hell, she pretty muchownsthe tiny lake with the way her property wraps around it.
There’s definitely a demand for rustic these days. Faux rustic, that is. Like the lawyers she sold to last month, who paid a quarter of a million for a property so uneven and inaccessible that they weren’t even going to be able to build on it.We’ll pitch tents, like our parents did! It’ll be perfect!Yeah, give it two years and they’ll be begging her to buy it back for a fraction of that.
The people who want off-grid and remote are the ones who don’t truly understand what that means. They still expect cell signal and running water and to be able to hire a babysitter and pop out for dinner at some adorable wharf restaurant.
Millie’s land is ten times better than what she sold the lawyers. It’s accessible through interconnecting lakes from Blind Bay. It’s flat enough to build on. Materials can be flown or boated in for a proper summer home, complete with solar array and cell phone boosters.
Millie herself has none of that. The dock is rotted and half missing. An overgrown path presumably leads to a cabin, and Dawn isn’t sure she wants to even see it.
But she does want this property, and the more she thinks about it, the more she wants it.
Dawn paddles to the decrepit dock. She’s barely reached it when a shape rears up from the undergrowth and waddles toward her through the shade.
Dawn freezes. She’s encountered a black bear or two while inspecting a property, and she recognizes that short and squat shape and that waddle. But what emerges into the sunshine isn’t a bear. It’s a woman.
As Dawn had been paddling for the dock, she’d been psyching herself up to see the cottage. To show not one hint of revulsion. Now she has to draw on all that preparation as Millie makes her way toward her.
