“It’s a good one. I didn’t get a ton of details about my stay, but I got a few stories about the cat.”
“Boss Man gives her more fodder...”
“She said I’ll be feeding him.”
“The most important task of all,” Brett concurred. “And really the only one except collecting their mail. The cat spends most of his day outside so you don’t even have to bother with a litter box.”
“I’m so disappointed...”
Brett snorted. “I figured you would be.”
“So I’ll get the mail and take care of—”
“Boss Man.”
“Right. I just can’t bring myself to say his name.”
“It won’t take long. He’s firmly in charge.” Brett turned onto another country road. “Thanks again for doing this. Mom would much rather have you staying here than someone she doesn’t know.”
“I appreciate her kindness, but I suspect she knows everyone in the county.”
“Even so, you’re the one she wants in her house.”
The scenery on both sides of the road shifted from a line of houses to acres of farmland, hemmed in by hills and trees. Knowing she could borrow Gerald’s truck to navigate these roads was a relief.
There were dozens of questions she should probably ask Brett, but right now, all she wanted was to crawl into a guest bed for the night. Finish readingLavender Ridgeand then sleep.
“What should I do with the mail?” she asked.
“Package it up twice a month and send it to Florida. My parents will pay for the utilities and everything else.”
Three months,she thought in amazement. A place to live and write with no food prep or catering or entertaining Hollywood rats. Providential indeed.
Her memories flooded back as they wound through the treed hills and onto a red covered bridge, barely wide enough for Brett’s car. They must be near the Suttons’ house, because she remembered walking to this river with Brett and a few neighbor friends, all of them masquerading as the musketeers or Davy Crockett’s frontiersmen.
They would create stories together, mysteries to solve, battles to fight. And they would stand on the wooden planks of this covered bridge like it was their fortress. Depending on the day, the fishermen below trying to catch rainbow trout were either friend or foe.
“Do you remember playing here?” he asked.
She lifted an invisible sword in her hand. “All for one and one for all.”
“Ready to defend our territory at any cost,” he said as their wheels rumbled across the wooden planks.
“With cardboard swords, wrapped in foil.”
He laughed. “We were fierce, weren’t we?”
“I’m sure we terrified everyone trying to fish.”
“At least we scared all the fish away.”
Those were the best of memories. She’d loved spending time outside with her cousin and his friends, so different from her apartment at the time in Van Nuys.
On her last trip to Catawba, when she was maybe nine or ten and Brett was off being a teenager, she’d explored a little on her own. Somewhere near this bridge, she’d followed the creek upstream and found a small lake tucked into the trees. Or, at least, that’s what she remembered in that cloudy film from childhood.
She’d dreamed of that magical place over the years. The beauty and peace of it along with something more intangible. This sense that she’d had of stepping into something new.
Her aloneness that afternoon long ago created a new sense of wonder. Like the enchanted Lake of Shining Waters that Anne of Green Gables discovered near Avonlea, all shimmering and silver. A portal back into the wonderings of childhood.
