26. Present
Chapter twenty-six
Present
“Oh,” Dottie says. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.” She walks over to the old radio and turns it off. “I’m sorry,” she continues, searching her apron for her glasses. “Can I help you?” she asks, sliding them up the bridge of her nose.
“Dottie?”
“Yes,” she nods, standing up straighter, despite a new hunch in her upper back. “That’s me. Last I checked, anyway,” she laughs. She squints. “Taylor Roberts? Is that you?”
I smile. “It’s me.”
Dottie closes her eyes, drawing up an image from her memory. “You and Lisa used to drive me crazy. I’ll never forget the time you got in that fight. What was that boy’s name?”
A laugh escapes my lips. “Matt Thompson. Dottie, this is Matt’s daughter, Brett.”
“I’m so glad to see you two finally got together.” The old woman claps her hands.
“Oh, she’s not mine. I wish she was, though.” I look at Brett and wink. “We’re just good friends.” I place my hand on Brett’s shoulder. “Honey, this is Dottie. She was the cook for all the years that your daddy and I came here. And still is, apparently,” I add, raising an eyebrow.
“Would you girls like to join me for a cup of cocoa? My cake’s almost ready.”
I exchange a glance with Brett, getting the visual cue that she’s okay with it. “That sounds great. Thank you,” I reply.
I lead Brett over to a round table with folding chairs set up for ten people. The chairs scrape across the glossy wood floor, covered in years of annual polyurethane coatings. We have a seat, and Dottie brings over two melamine mugs of hot water and two packets of Swiss Miss hot chocolate.
“Sorry, no frills here,” Dottie explains, setting the provisions down. “I do have milk, though, if you’d like some.”
“That’s okay. We’re grateful for this.” I gesture at the offering. “Thank you.”
Dottie grabs two napkins and spoons from the serving counter as I carefully tear open one of the packets and pour it into Brett’s mug. Finally, Dottie pulls out a chair and joins us at the table.
“I guess you’re wondering…” Her voice trails off.
“What you’re doing here?” I reply.
Dottie shrugs. “Yeah. But I could ask you the same thing. How did you get in? Isn’t the gate locked?”
“It is. And there’s a ‘For Sale’ sign by the road.”
“So, what did you girls do? Jump the fence?”
I laugh, imagining Brett and I abandoning the car on the side of road to jump over a chained gate into camp. “No. We came up through the beach stairs,” I say, realizing that the real story sounds just as ludicrous as Dottie’s hypothesized one.
Dottie’s brow furrows. I remain silent, waiting for her to reciprocate with her own explanation.
“I never imagined someone would come in that way,” Dottie begins. “I’m glad it was you, and not some stranger.”
A million questions swirl in my mind.
“I guess the jig is up.” Dottie chuckles. “I suppose I couldn’t keep it up forever.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Did Lisa ever tell you about her great-grandparents?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Well, a long time ago, my grandparents—my dad’s parents—settled out here and started a farm.
They owned a farm stand and lived off the land.
It was our family business for many years.
” She stirs her cocoa. “They left it to my father when they were too old to work anymore. He married my mom and they kept the great farm going.” Dottie pauses, swallowing.
“But when I was very little, they were approached by developers who wanted to buy the land. It seemed like a lucrative opportunity, so they sold about half of what they had, and that became what is now Bluff Oaks, the little community next door.”
“That’s where we parked the car,” I say. Brett takes a sip of hot chocolate.
“That’s where I live.”
“Yes. I remember that from Lisa.”
“That was part of the deal, that the developers would build a house for my family, which they did. I’ve lived there my whole life.”
I nod.
“But the other half of the land was the farm. We had a barn and animals and acres of forest and beach. It was too much, and my father felt a lot of it was going to waste, but he didn’t want to disrespect his parents by selling it all off.
My mother had the idea to build a camp on the land.
That way we could keep the farm but utilize the other space.
That was back in 1960, when I was still just a girl. ”
“Those pictures.” I point to the framed old 8x10 pictures above the fireplace on the far side of the Lodge.
“Are those of your family?” The pictures in question had been a fixture above the fireplace for as long as I could remember.
The one in the middle is of a large teepee with a group of children posed in front of it, and the other two are just of groups of people in outdated clothing.
“My mother, Dorothy, is in the one by the tee-pee. The others are pictures from that first summer. She had such grand plans,” Dottie says longingly.
“What happened?”
“She passed away suddenly over the winter of the following year. I was only eight years old. From then on, it was just me and my dad. He didn’t know the first thing about kids, and didn’t want to run the camp, but couldn’t bear to consider parting with it, since it was my mom’s dream.”
I blow on my cocoa before taking a sip.
“The one thing my dad did well was hire people. So, he found the first camp director, Kenny Porter, who stayed with us for seven years until he retired. His son, Charles, took over for the next dozen or so years, but he got injured in the great barn fire of 1979. Then he hired Pat O’Donnell. You remember him, don’t you?”
Remember him? He was like family. “Of course.”
“Pat stayed with us for 40 years, long after my dad passed away in 1998. The camp was left to me, but I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to run it.
I just liked to cook, so I stayed in the kitchen, where I was comfortable.
” She smells the air. “In fact, I think our cake is ready.” Dottie smiles, rises from the table and heads back over to the oven.
She removes the pan of simple butter cake with cinnamon sugar topping and sets it on the stovetop.
She uses the spatula to expertly maneuver it onto a plate, and she brings it, along with a small stack of dishes and forks, over to the table.
“Care for some?” she asks Brett, who nods happily.
Dottie serves up a square of steaming cake to Brett and another to me, warning us to give it some breathing time to cool down before indulging. She dishes out a third piece for herself and settles back into her chair. “Where was I?” she wonders aloud.
“You were saying that you didn’t know how to run the camp.”
Dottie snorts. “That’s for sure. I hadn’t the faintest clue. But I was lucky, because Pat was so good, and he stayed with us right up until the cancer got him that last year.”
“Pat had cancer?”
“Skin cancer. He didn’t want to stop working, but Callie begged him. She just wanted him to slow down. And I’m sure she was right. Him finally retiring gave him a chance to be with his grandbabies and rest a bit.”
“Hmm,” I grunt. “I had no idea.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, of course. Pat was always quite stoic that way.
Private about private things. He saved all his energy to be a leader here.
” She takes a careful bite of cake, closing her eyes to savor the perfect balance of butter, vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon.
“When he left, this place unraveled. There was too much to be done, too much to be fixed, and I didn’t have the skill of being able to hire the right people like my dad did.
I did my best, though, for six years. But this year, I decided it was time.
It’s just too much for me. So, I put the camp on the market. ”
“What about Lisa? Didn’t she have an opinion?”
Dottie shrugs. “She moved down south. Her husband’s got family down in Florida, and they’re all very close. And he’s in hedge funds,” she adds. “That’s a far cry from managing a summer camp.”
I nod sadly. “I can’t believe this whole entire time I didn’t know you were the owner here.”
“Oh, dear, I never wanted anyone to know. I certainly didn’t feel as though I was doing the job. Not like my father did, certainly. I just knew how to keep people fed. Were you happy with the food?”
I take a forkful of the perfect cake in my mouth. Chewing, I say, “Always.”
She smiles, satisfied with my answer. “So then, now that the cat’s out of the bag, tell me. What brings you out here?”
“Actually,” I swallow, “I called the realtor about a week and a half ago.”
“Wait. That was you? I remember he gave me a message about a young family who grew up out here. The father was ill?”
I blush. “It wasn’t entirely true. I’m sorry, Dottie.”
“Oh. So, he’s not sick? Well, thank God for that.”
“Unfortunately, Matt has seen better days.” I put my arm around Brett. “But the part that wasn’t quite true was that we’re a family. I mean,” I quickly go on, “I love them like family. But Matt’s in a relationship. Brett’s mommy is a famous actress, isn’t that right?”
Brett shrugs. “She’s in California,” her little voice mumbles.
“She’s working on a Netflix series,” I continue. “And I’ve been helping out around the house while she’s away.”
“Do you work for them?” Dottie’s face contorts, confused.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. We’re just great friends, like always.”
“Well.” Dottie leans forward. “I’m sorry for saying so, but I think everyone here expected the two of you to end up together. You were both so in love.”
Brett looks at me, eyebrows raised, a tiny smirk on her face.
“And, I’m very sorry to hear that he’s not well,” Dottie tells Brett. “Your daddy was quite the charmer in his day. When he was still a boy, he had Taylor and my daughter both so smitten with him that they had a fist fight! Can you imagine, two young girls fighting over a boy like that?”
Brett laughs. “Really?” she asks.
“It’s true,” I concur. “That’s a story for another time, though.
Speaking of which,” I pause, lifting my backpack up off the floor and digging through the small pocket to find my phone, “I wonder what time it is.” I swipe and hit the screen with my thumb.
It reads 2:46 p.m. Just beneath the time is an alert. Three missed calls. Matt. Matt. Matt.
“I’m sorry, Dottie, but it looks like Matt called to check in while we were chatting. I’m just going to give him a quick call back.”
“Of course,” she replies, standing and collecting the empty dishes before retreating to the kitchen.
I dial him back, curious at the fact that he didn’t leave a voicemail.
One ring. Two.
Three.
Four.
A recording. “Hey, it’s Matt. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message at the beep.”
“Matt, hi, it’s me,” I say. “I just saw that I missed a bunch of calls from you. I brought Brett out to camp for our hooky day. Hope everything’s okay. I guess give me a call when you get this.”
“Everything all right?” Dottie asks.
“He didn’t answer,” I say, “but I’m sure it’s fine.” I try to sound convincing, but as I sit there listening to Dottie tell more stories about the rich history of camp, I become increasingly distracted.
It’s not like Matt to not leave a message.
My pulse pounds in my ears, and I note the squeak of the dusty old ceiling fan and the ambient buzz of the fluorescent light fixture. They grow in volume, drowning out Dottie’s words and Brett’s gentle laughter.
I text Matt. Hey, you good? I hit send.
Three dots appear, along with a read receipt below the text. I exhale a sigh of relief. Then, the dots disappear.
I wait.
No message comes.
I type a single question mark and hit send.
He reads it.
No response.
Something’s not right. A knot forms in the pit of my stomach.
My head begins to spin.
I tap my foot nervously as Dottie finishes telling Brett a story about a piglet from the farm who thought that a goat was its mother.
I check my phone one more time. Nothing.
I stretch my arms up over my head and force myself to laugh at the ending of the story. “This has been so lovely,” I say to Dottie. “But we should probably get a move on now. We’ve got a long walk back to the car, and then a long drive back home.”
“Of course, dear,” Dottie replies.
“Aw,” Brett whines. “I don’t want to go. I really like it here.”
Dottie smiles. “Of course you do, sweetheart. We all do.” She pats Brett on the shoulder and whispers, “This place is magic.”