Resort.
That was what her dad called these sixteen acres. Sam Cavenaugh had come across this acreage almost forty years ago, back when Hayden had been nothing more than a gas station stop on the rise up Stevens Pass. He’d bought the parcel for a song and settled into the decrepit farmhouse that came with it. He’d named his place River’s Edge Resort and begun to dream of a life that didn’t include hard hats and earplugs and night shifts at the paper plant in Everett.
At first he’d worked after hours and weekends. With a chain saw, a pickup truck, and a plan drawn out on a cocktail napkin, he began. He hacked out campsites and cleaned out a hundred years’ worth of underbrush and built each knotty pine riverfront cabin by hand. Now, River’s Edge was a thriving family business. There were eight cabins in all, each with two pretty little bedrooms and a single bathroom and a deck that overlooked the river.
In the past few years, they’d added a swimming pool and a game room. Plans for a mini golf course and a Laundromat were in the works. It was the kind of place where the same families came back year after year to spend their precious vacation time.
Claire still remembered the first time she’d seen it. The towering trees and rushing silver river had seemed like paradise to a girl raised in a trailer that only stopped on the poor side of town. Her childhood memories before coming to River’s Edge were gray: ugly towns that came and went; uglier apartments in run-down buildings. And Mama. Always on the run from something or other. Mama had been married repeatedly, but Claire couldn’t remember a man ever being around for longer than a carton of milk. Meghann was the one Claire remembered. The older sister who took care of everything … and then walked away one day, leaving Claire behind.
Now, all these years later, their lives were connected by the thinnest of strands. Once every few months, she and Meg talked on the phone. On particularly bad days, they fell to talking about the weather. Then Meg would invariably “get another call” and hang up. Her sister loved to underscore how successful she was. Meghann could rattle on for ten minutes about how Claire had sold herself short. “Living on that silly little campground, cleaning up after people” was the usual wording. Every single Christmas she offered to pay for college.
As if reading Beowulf would improve Claire’s life.
For years, Claire had longed to be friends as well as sisters, but Meghann didn’t want that, and Meghann always got her way. They were what Meghann wanted them to be: polite strangers who shared a blood type and an ugly childhood.
Claire reached down for the Weed Eater. As she slogged across the spongy ground, she noticed a dozen things that needed to be done before opening day. Roses that needed to be trimmed, moss that needed to be scraped off the roofs, mildew that needed to be bleached off the porch railings. And there was the mowing. A long, wet winter had turned into a surprisingly bright spring, and the grass had grown as tall as Claire’s knees. She made a mental note to ask George, their handyman, to scrub out the canoes and kayaks this afternoon.
She tossed the Weed Eater in the back of the pickup. It hit with a clanging thunk that rattled the rusted bed.
“Hey, sweetie. You goin’ to town?”
She turned and saw her father standing on the porch of the registration building. He wore a ratty pair of overalls, stained brown down the bib from some long-forgotten oil change, and a flannel shirt.
He pulled a red bandanna out of his hip pocket and wiped his brow as he walked toward her. “I’m fixing that freezer, by the way. Don’t you go pricing new ones.”
There wasn’t an appliance made that he couldn’t repair, but Claire was going to check out prices, just the same. “You need anything from town?”
“Smitty has a part for me. Could you pick it up?”
“You bet. And have George start on the canoes when he gets here, okay?”
“I’ll put it on the list.”
“And have Rita bleach the bathroom ceiling in cabin six. It got mildewy this winter.” She closed the pickup’s bed.
“You here for dinner?”
“Not tonight. Ali has a Tee Ball game at Riverfront Park, remember? Five o’clock.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll be there.”
Claire nodded, knowing that he would. He hadn’t missed a single event in his granddaughter’s life. “Bye, Dad.”
She wrenched the truck’s door handle and yanked hard. The door screeched open. She grabbed the black steering wheel and climbed up into the seat.
Dad thumped the truck’s door. “Drive safely. Watch the turn at milepost seven.”
She smiled. He’d been giving her that exact bit of advice for almost two decades. “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too. Now, go get my granddaughter. If you hurry, we’ll have time to watch SpongeBob SquarePants before the game.”
CHAPTER