3. Tea
Chapter 3
Tea
Everything about Cabin B was exactly as Tea left it, like the memory of this place was frozen in time, waiting for her return.
The chipped green paint on the awning covering the patio.
The carved wooden bees nailed to the pine tree by front door.
The cherry-red bird feeder dangling outside the kitchen window, giving Nan the perfect shot for eyeing hummingbirds and blue jays while she formed casseroles and baked treats.
Tea dragged her luggage up the back porch, then stood staring at the rickety screen door.
Knocking felt impossible.
Knocking meant inviting pain back into her heart.
Pain from memories of summers in a place she tried to erase from her thoughts.
Baking with Nan. Night games of Capture the Flag, followed by staying up far too late around the bonfire.
Her father wrangling her out of bed for an early morning sail.
She wondered how this place could possibly hold the same kind of magic when everything about it had irrevocably changed.
She took a deep breath, expecting the scent of dried pine on the dirt driveway behind her, but was met instead by the smell of freshly baked ginger snap cookies.
Maybe some magic still exists.
The scent of her favorite treats—ones she hadn’t devoured in almost a decade—finally propelled her to knock on the door.
“MY ANGEL! Get in here.”
Tea smiled at the sound of Nan’s voice as she stepped into the cabin, the screen door snicking shut behind her.
Before she could scan the inside of the house, she was clobbered by a hug.
“Oh, I’m so happy you are finally here,” she said.
Tea’s muscles tensed at the hug.
She hadn’t been hugged like this in months, and the contact had her hesitating.
How strange it felt to be touched.
Strange, and yet so wonderful.
She melted into the embrace, burying her nose in the crook of Nan’s neck, even though she had to crouch down to do it.
She inherited those tall Richards genes, just like Pop and Dad.
When she kept growing and growing in high school, dating proved difficult.
No one wanted to take the tall girl to prom, she learned.
So the night was spent with her girlfriends, thinking about what it would be like to be swept up and kissed by a handsome guy in a tux.
There was only one who could sweep her up like that, but she didn’t have the courage to ask him when he was nine hundred miles away…
or if his feelings were even reciprocated.
She’d learn the truth three months later.
Nan pulled back from the hug, squeezing Tea’s forearms as she craned her neck to accommodate for the six inches that separated them.
Nan still wore the same clothes as always; loose jean capris, a soft Life is Good T-shirt, her LL Bean fleece despite the warm night air.
But it was hard to ignore the subtle differences, too.
The way her face had thinned and the skin at her cheeks drooped.
The extra crinkles around her mouth and her bright blue eyes.
Her hair was completely gray instead of salt and pepper, and cropped much shorter.
But her toenails were painted that same shade of hot pink, and around her neck was the small gold heart-shaped locket her father bought for his parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary.
Tea reached out to wipe the tears from Nan’s cheeks with the pad of her thumb, and returned the sentiment with a watery smile.
“You look good my girl, so strong,” Nan said.
“I’ve missed you so.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
“I’m sorry it took me so long.”
Nan sniffled and shook her head.
“No need to apologize. I understand.”
She swallowed, not feeling convinced by her grandmother’s ability to brush off her prolonged absence.
But this wasn’t the moment to air her grievances.
This was the time for ginger snap cookies.
Tea followed Nan farther into the cabin and into her grandmother’s domain: the kitchen.
No matter what time of day it was, she always had something going on in the kitchen.
Fresh baked cookies were almost a daily specialty.
She loved hosting “cocktail hour” with whatever dip she’d made that day, like jalapeno popper or spinach artichoke or fresh salsa—always served with margaritas or white wine.
And of course supper, which was an overdone affair, despite the fact that Tea and her dad would insist that burgers on the grill were more than enough.
Nan never accepted that kind of lazy cooking; casseroles in nine-by-thirteens were more her style.
Tea eyed the cookies on the counter, already cooling on a metal rack.
She slid right back into her old bar stool at the counter like she never left.
Hers was at the center, where she could prop her feet up on the stool on her right and face the lake.
Like everything else at Wild Pines—the trees that stretched taller the more she drove north, the cabin, the ginger snaps—the lake was also as she remembered.
She gazed out the bay window, amazed at how so much of her life could change in eight years, yet somehow ten minutes at Silver Falls was enough to ground her.
It was equal parts nostalgic…
and unnerving.
Nan opened the fridge.
“Did you eat?”
“I stopped by the drive-thru at Dairy Queen and grabbed some fries.”
Nan turned and frowned, her hand still on the door.
“That’s all you ate?”
She shrugged.
“Haven’t been very hungry.”
Nan shook her head and reached into the fridge.
“Well, gal dang, that won’t do,” she grumbled.
Tea watched as she pulled out four different Cool Whip containers, and then a large red Tupperware.
She shook her head, amused by Nan’s continued insistence on keeping those flimsy containers because they were “good quality” and it was “wasteful to throw them out.”
“Seriously, Nan—”
“Hush,” she snipped.
“Go to the back fridge and grab a bottle of that Sauvignon Blanc your mother insisted I buy you and pour yourself a glass.” She flipped the lid off the red Tupperware and began forking slices of ham onto a plate.
“Actually, pour two glasses.”
Tea slid off the stool.
“Mom made you grab my favorite wine?”
“There are six bottles back there.”
Tea coughed a laugh, imagining what Nan looked like carting six bottles out of Sip maybe in passing if he visited his parents.
But she had no idea that she would be dealing with him all summer.
She wondered if it was possible to go an entire three months avoiding Archer completely.