Parking in the underground garage, I took the elevator up to my apartment. Not the penthouse—far too showy and a bit more than I wanted to spend—but two floors below still gave me a great view from my balcony.
Stepping outside, I carried my dinner to the café table and sat down. It was no little room, but the twinkling lights below offered a perspective I didn’t get during the day. My office was a place of healing, but it could also be overwhelming sometimes. I had so many patients to see. The time was blocked out and another doctor filling in for me. He’d be coming in from out of town, and his plans were already made.
I needed to take a few days and unwind. Probably a lot of places, but I was already hating going home alone. Where could I go just to relax? How much would I hate sitting in a hotel room somewhere by myself?
Dipping fries in ketchup, I considered my options. I could stay in town and go to the club, which would be amazing, but I just had a feeling I’d end up going in to the office every day. Thatfeeling came from having had exactly that experience the year before when I scheduled a vacation.
Finished with my food, I carried the trash inside and placed it in the bin under the sink then headed for the shower. The greasy burger already began to sit heavy in my stomach, and I crawled into bed, just another night like all the others.
As I lay there listening to my grumbling stomach, a friend texted to invite me on a fishing trip. He sent pictures of a gorgeous shimmering lake with people pulling fish as long as their forearms out of the water.
Several of us are going up there. We’ve rented a house and would love you to join. We don’t see enough of you, old friend.
When is it?
Chapter Three
Sammy
Today was the day I’d been dreading. It was one thing to fill out paperwork, get keys, and make a plan. It was another to drive the familiar path to my grandfather’s cabin for the first time since he passed and the first time since he retired down south a few years earlier. As a kid, heck, as a young adult, I would get giddier by the second as I got closer to the lake. This time, my stomach sank with each mile I passed.
Rowan offered to come. He thought I might need someone with me. As much as I appreciated the offer, he and his daddy were away with friends and I didn’t want to bug him on his weekend away. I considered asking Brock. He would understand my grandfather’s chaos, but he was up to his eyeballs in a new project at work. In theory, it could result in a promotion, and that was great, but I didn’t like seeing him work this hard.
I reached the last small town before the turnoff to the lake and stopped at the local grocery store to get a couple of random things. The total added up quickly. The prices were nearly double out here, and I got everything shelf-stable and ready to eat, so that didn’t help. I wasn’t sure if the refrigerator was plugged in or even working. Better safe than sorry. It wasn’t like I could DoorDash out there.
I finally pulled into the familiar dirt driveway and parked the car at lunchtime.
“I’m here, Grandpa.” I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself enough to go in. It took a few minutes. I walked up the porch steps, the wood looking pretty rough. I wasn’t overly handy, but I’d figure it out because, despite what my aunt, my uncle, and my cousins all wanted me to do, which was sell it, andspread the wealth, I was keeping it. They could be mad about it.
The stale air slammed into me as I opened the door, and I spent the first ten minutes focused on opening windows to air the place out. It was only then that I stopped to see what was left behind. My grandfather had planned to come back for summers when he moved down south but never did.
All the furniture was still there, and all the dishes remained in the cupboards. Some canned food that, possibly edible, was far past its date and not worth the risk, and books and books and more books. It was pretty much exactly how I remembered it. It would almost be better if it weren’t, if my jerks of relatives had emptied the place out of greed. This brought back too many memories.
The only two rooms I hadn’t looked in yet were my grandfather’s and the one I stayed in when I was here. I wasn’t ready to look at Grandpa’s room yet, to see the picture of him and my grandmother at their wedding, the quilt that she made for him, the end table he carved himself. That was going to be rough, and I knew that about myself. So, instead, I went into the room I had one time called mine, but was technically a guest room and just as stale as the rest. I opened the window and looked around.
“I’m back.” I sat and picked up the bear that lived on the bed, my cabin buddy. “Hey, you’re gonna keep me company tonight, right?”
I stripped the bed, dusted the furniture off, then went out to the car to get my bag, which included new bedding. The sky was dark already, too dark. The storm I knew was brewing felt like it was going to arrive sooner rather than later.
“I need to shut all the windows again,” I told the stuffie.
Bed made, I stopped to eat the premade sandwich and bag of chips I’d bought and drank a glass of water. Then came the heavy labor for the night. I started to make a list in my headof everything I needed to do and then shuffled it around until I decided on the order I wanted to jump into things the next day.
This place was disorganized, and I had no idea where anything was. There were things I would keep, but a lot I was going to need to get rid of. Moths had gotten into the closet, and the room I was staying in and the wool blankets stored there were holey and yuck. I suspected I was going to find a lot more surprises like that as I went along, but today was about getting adjusted. About making a plan, about being ready for the real work, the work that was going to come tomorrow.
“What do you think, CB?” CB, the nickname I gave my cabin buddy. I picked it when I was only six. I had learned about initials in school a little because Grandpa had been part of the Seabees long ago and, at the time, I thought they were spelled the same. “Should I take a walk around or call it a night?”
A crack of lightning followed by a boom of thunder answered that for me. Calling it a night, then.
I shut all the windows and stared at my grandfather’s bedroom door, wondering if it was best to just get it over with. Lightning followed by an almost immediate boom had me climbing into the bed instead. It was just as lumpy as it was back then, and just as creaky.
I took out my phone, thinking I’d watch something I saved, to be reminded that I hadn’t charged it since I woke up. No movie for me. I plugged it in, snuggled CB, and attempted to go to sleep.
There was quite a bit more lightning and thunder before the rain began. This wasn’t a little storm. It was huge. Wind whistled, rattling the windows. The rain beat on the glass, thumped on the roof, and thunder shook the walls.
“Maybe I should call Rowan after all.” CB shook his head as I twisted my wrist. “You’re right. I shouldn’t bug him. He’s got hisown daddy now, and I shouldn’t expect him to drop everything when I need one, just because I’m scared.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I started going over all the butterflies I’d seen around here, one by one. It didn’t work.
