Chapter Eight
The first thing Liz saw when they pulled into the campground was the black SUV with the light bar on top, and she realized riding with Mitch and Paige had been a bad idea. She was essentially a hostage, with no way to escape if she felt the need.
But she hadn’t felt right about taking Drew’s Mustang on a road trip, and the thing got roughly the same gas mileage as a tank. Also, it wasn’t really designed to be packed with camping gear. Not that she had a lot, but the Mustang was safely sheltered in Mitch’s garage for the week and she was at the mercy of other drivers.
“Oh, that one’s ours,” Paige exclaimed, pointing to a very large RV with the name of a rental company emblazoned down the side.
Mitch, having substantially deeper pockets than Liz, had arranged for a rental company to deliver an RV to the campground and set it up. Liz would be setting up her clearance tent by herself.
After he parked in the shadow of the RV and killed the engine, Liz waited for Paige to climb out of the truck and open the access door. When she finally climbed out, Liz’s back and legs protested spending almost two hours in the small backseat of Mitch’s truck and she stretched, twisting her body to work the kinks out.
She got to do that for about thirty seconds before the family descended on them. It had been less than a year since she’d seen them all at Mitch and Paige’s wedding, but Aunt Mary cried a little, anyway. Uncle Leo hugged her so hard she could swear she heard cracking, and then she was passed through what amounted to a gauntlet. Her cousin Joe and his wife, Keri. Their daughter, Brianna, was almost two and played shy, turning her face away when Liz said hi to her. Her cousin Kevin’s three-year-old daughter, Lily, was more friendly, though she stuck close to Kevin’s wife, Beth. Joe’s twin sister, Terry, her husband, Evan, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Stephanie, were next. Liz wanted to kiss Paige for giving her the rundown on the drive over from Maine. She’d grown up with or near her brothers and cousins, but the kids were hard to keep track of.
Her cousin Mike and his wife, Lisa’s, kids were the hardest. Four boys—Joey, Danny, Brian and Bobby—ranging in age from sixteen to nine.
“Where’s Sean?” she asked when she didn’t see her brother in the crowd.
“They’re on their way down,” Terry said. “They got the cabin up around the corner. Between the distance and the log walls, she’s hoping Johnny won’t keep everybody awake.”
Johnny was the almost two-month-old nephew she hadn’t met yet, and she could barely stop herself from grabbing him away from Emma when she and Sean finally brought him down. She barely took her eyes off his sweet, sleeping face while she hugged her brother and then her sister-in-law.
“He’s so perfect,” she breathed, wanting to touch his cheek but not daring to in case she woke him up. She didn’t know a lot about babies, but she knew sleeping ones were a lot quieter than awake ones.
Because Mitch had just one more business call to make, they’d gotten a later start than he’d intended and they were the last to arrive, so it was quite a crowd to get through. But Bobby and Brian finally showed her where her site was. Thankfully, she noted, it was close to the bathhouse, which meant she wouldn’t have to stumble around too far in the dark to go pee in the middle of the night.
Tent first, she decided. After lugging the bag from the truck to her site, she unzipped it and pulled out her accommodations for the next week. Luckily it was designed for easy setup, with the thin, bowed poles already attached to the tent, so all she had to do was unfold it, square up the corners and pop it up. A few adjustments and ground pins later, and voilà. She had a tent.
With her hands on her hips, she tilted her head and pondered her accomplishment. It was a lot smaller than it had looked on the package. She and her one duffel bag would be very, very cozy, and anytime she was moving around in it, she’d have to be on her hands and knees.
She heard a chuckle off in the distance and looked over to see Drew, standing in front of his own tent, inflating an air mattress and watching her. His tent looked like something on the cover of a camping gear catalog. It was spacious and tall, made out of a rugged-looking canvas material. It had a fly over it, to protect from rain and sun while allowing ventilation. And it had a small screen house built out from the door.
Rolling her eyes, even though she wasn’t sure if he could see it from that distance, she turned her back and made her way back to Mitch and Paige’s site. From the humming sound, she knew they’d already fired up the air-conditioning in their RV and she mopped at her forehead before grabbing the duffel containing her clothes, toiletries and miscellaneous things from the back of his truck, along with the grocery bag that held some snacks and water to squirrel away in her tent.