He really is a sweetheart, she reflected fondly.Most men wouldn’t want a chatterbox like Melanie tagging along on their dates and monopolizing the conversation or interrogating him about his life, but he’s been so kind and patient. I should givehim a call and let him know I came back early. Maybe I’ll invite him out for dinner tomorrow night, just the two of us…
Melanie bustled into the room again, handed Caitlin a glass of water, and plonked herself down on the sofa. “I’m dying to know what you found out at the meeting with the estate attorney.” She bluntly asked, “Did you and your aunt’s nephews inherit a fortune?”
Taken aback, Caitlin replied, “I-I don’t feel comfortable disclosing the specifics of her Trust. But yes, her nephews received a nice sum of money.” The two young men on Lydia’s side of the family had been designated as the beneficiaries of her retirement accounts, and they’d also been awarded what was left of the proceeds from the sale of the home she’d owned before moving into an assisted living facility.
Melanie furrowed her brows. “What about you? Didn’t she leave you any money?”
“Not exactly… but she did bequeath me her summer place in Hope Haven.”
“TheHope Haven? On Dune Island, in Massachusetts? The place where presidents go on vacation?” Melanie slapped her thighs. “Who-hoo, lucky you!”
“Lucky” wasn’t the word Caitlin would’ve used to describe how she felt when she’d learned she’d inherited Lydia’s summer cottage. How she felt was utterly overwhelmed. Burdened. Maybe even a little resentful—which in turn, made her feel very ungrateful. But instead of confiding these emotions to Melanie, she agreed, “Yes, it’s a very generous gift.”
“It’shuge. You never told me she had a summer place in Hope Haven,” Melanie chided, as if Caitlin had neglected an obligation to disclose this information sooner. “I thought your aunt and uncle were schoolteachers. How did they ever afford to buy a vacation home on Dune Island?”
Refraining from rolling her eyes at Melanie’s personal question about Lydia’s finances, Caitlin figured it wouldn’t hurt to share more about her aunt’s home.
“The property was an investment, and they didn’t exactly vacation there—they worked. Their place was the main house in a little colony of six cottages, which they also owned. They lived in New Hampshire, but they spent summers on the island, leasing out the cottages to guests. They planned to move there year-round after they retired. But then…” Caitlin paused as memories of one of the most difficult periods in her family’s life came rolling back.
“But then…what?” questioned Melanie.
“My uncle got cancer and my aunt had to take an extended leave from work to care for him. They couldn’t keep up with the mortgage on the summer property, so they sold off the surrounding cottages and they just kept the main one. They still planned to settle there, but ten years ago my uncle died and then my aunt started showing signs of dementia. So she had to move into an assisted living facility near her home in New Hampshire.”
Even though she knew her aunt had received excellent care during the final decade of her life, it made Caitlin sad to visit Lydia during her rare trips back to New England—and those visits became even more heart-rending as her aunt’s dementia progressed.
I kind of feel like I lost Aunt Lydia twice. The first time was when it became clear she no longer recognized me at all, and the second time was when she died…Caitlin reflected pensively, but Melanie was impatient to hear more details about her inheritance.
“Has the cottage sat unused the whole time your aunt was in an assisted living facility?”
“No. Her nephews had it renovated and then they hired a property management company to rent it out during the summertime.”
The income generated by the rental had been used to cover the costs of Lydia’s care. Apparently, Lydia’s nephews had assumed that once she passed on, they’d inherit her summer property, and they’d been looking forward to collecting the rental income for themselves. So, as Caitlin discovered during the group meeting with the estate attorney after the funeral, they were more than a little disgruntled that Lydia had bequeathed the cottage to her, instead.
Considering the stipulation she put on my inheritance, I almost wish Aunt Lydiahadleft it to them, Caitlin brooded. She’d barely had time to think about what her aunt had asked her to do.
Melanie’s question pulled her from her worrisome thoughts. “Did you ever get to go there on vacation?”
“Yes. When I was in high school, I spent a few summers helping my aunt clean the cottages in between guests and stuff. But then my family moved to the Southwest, so it wasn’t convenient for me to go to the island anymore,” claimed Caitlin. It was a flimsy excuse, but she couldn’t admit the real reason why she’d never returned to Dune Island.
It was too dark. Too painful.
“What’s the cottage like? Does it have an ocean view?”
“No. It’s within walking distance of the bay, but it’s only one story tall, so you can’t see over the trees and shrubbery to the water.” Describing it, Caitlin felt a swell of nostalgia for the cottage she used to love so much—before everything changed. “There’s a windmill on the property, though, and?—”
“A windmill?” interrupted Melanie. “For electricity?”
“Not a wind turbine. A windmill, you know, like the kind you’d see in the Netherlands,” explained Caitlin. “The originallandowner was a Dutch miller, but over the years, the property switched hands several times. In the sixties, the owners who built the guest cottages removed almost all its functioning parts and installed electricity so they could use the first story as their rental office.”
“That sounds cool! Do you have photos?”
Caitlin lifted her phone from where she’d set it on the coffee table and pulled up a photo from the internet. Angling it toward Melanie, she pointed to the weathered, silver-gray shingled house with an octagonal, conical-topped windmill right beside it, taller than the house but complementing it. Both the windmill and the house had cornflower-blue doors and trim.
“That’s my aunt’s house, and that’s the windmill, obviously. And there are the cottages, which, as you can see, are just a little smaller than hers.”
“Aww, how sweet,” cooed Melanie. “All the cottages are identical.”
“Yeah, except for the doors and trim. The colors were different so the guests could identify them. There’s the yellow cottage, the turquoise cottage, the lavender cottage, and so on. The new owners had to agree not to change them or to alter their exteriors in any substantial way.”
