“It’s only a 500, so my machine can take the weight. We’re going to put the front wheels up on my back rack and strap the shit out of it. Then, nice and slow so I’m not doing accidental wheelies, I’m going to pull it out to the road.”
Ben laughed, shaking his head. “Sean and I did that once. He made me ride all the way back on the front rack of his machine to balance the weight of mine on the back.”
“I remember when you guys pulled in the yard. Worked, didn’t it?”
Ben looked at Josh. “We were young and stupid.”
“And now we’re older and wiser, so nobody’s riding on the front rack. It is going to take all three of us to get that front end up high enough, though.”
Matt snorted. “Aren’t you glad you took this job, Ben?”
He laughed, but hewasglad he’d taken the job offer. Sure, he was sweaty and his arms were going to be sore and he could only hope there hadn’t been poison ivy or oak on that hill, but he had no regrets.
Coming back to Whitford had been the right decision and he had a feeling things were really going to start looking up.
* * *
Laney Caswell had been looking to make big changes in her life, and almost being able to touch both walls of her new home at the same time certainly qualified as a big change.
The camper was small, but it had a bed, a tiny bathroom with a tinier shower, and outlets for her coffeemaker and charging her phone. What more did a woman starting over in her midthirties need?
Today was the first full day of her new life at the Northern Star Lodge & Campground, she thought, feeling pretty damn proud of herself. The divorce had taken forever, but the papers had been signed and it wasfinallyfinal. Throw in the camper’s hot water heater being just big enough to rinse all the soap and shampoo away, and things were looking up already.
A knock on the camper door startled her, and she would have laughed out loud at herself except she knew campers weren’t exactly soundproof and she was trying to make a good impression on her new employers. After setting her coffee mug on the small square of Formica that made up her kitchen counter, she opened the door to find one of those bosses smiling up at her.
“Good morning, Laney.”
“Good morning.” Laney guessed Rose Miller—who she’d been told to call Rosie, like everybody else did—was in her very late sixties, though she wouldn’t ask, of course.
“Now that you’ve spent your first night in the camper, I thought I’d stop by and see if everything went okay, or if there were any problems.”
It was awkward standing above the woman, so Laney stepped down onto the metal step and then the ground. After separating the two door panels, she closed the screen door and then folded the exterior door all the way back. There was a small hook bolted to the side of the camper that would hold it open. The camper had been closed up for a while and every little bit of fresh air would help.
“I didn’t have any problems,” she said. “Everything seems to work fine, the bed is comfortable and my coffeemaker went off at the time I set it to. Thank you for the welcome basket, by the way. The muffins were amazing, and the banana bread was the best I’ve ever had.”
“You’re welcome.” Rosie smiled. “And you can’t ask for much more than a comfortable bed and fresh coffee in the morning. Andy’s off doing some chores and I thought maybe you’d like to take a walk with me and see a little more of the place.”
“Of course.” This was going to be her home until fall, and she was looking forward to exploring it.
“Your flamingo is adorable, by the way,” Rosie said.
Laney looked at the silly yard ornament she’d set into the ground next to her step and smiled. The wooden flamingo was bright pink and it had a funny, painted cartoon face. It also had thin plastic wings that would whirl if the winds were strong enough. It was something neither her family nor the Ballards—including her ex-husband—would have allowed on their lawns, and Laney loved it.
“Thank you. He’s definitely a cheerful guy.”
They walked around the campground area of the property. There were two cabins, and a dozen sites with sewer and electric hookups, not counting hers. Her site was closer to the line of trees between the camping area and the lodge, and had a view of the new pool.
When they walked past the field behind the campsites where the campers could park their ATV trailers, Rosie waved to her husband, who was mowing with a zero turn mower. He blew her a kiss and Laney swore she heard Rosie giggle.
During her very informal interview, which had been a conference call with Rosie and Josh Kowalski, Rosie had made a joke about being a newlywed and then explained to Laney that she and Andy had only been married for a couple of years.
Just thinking about it made Laney smile. If Rose could find true love and happiness at her age, that meant there was still plenty of time for Laney. She could take her time making her life into whatshewanted it to be and then maybe, in the distant future, she’d be lucky enough to find a man who would want to share it with her.
First she had to figure out what exactly she wanted her life to be, of course. And that’s why she was here, in the middle of nowhere Maine, with nothing but her clothes, a few prized possessions, and a tablet loaded up with movies her ex-husband hadn’t wanted to watch and books she’d never gotten around to reading. She was going to live simply, consume things she enjoyed and find her true self.
She felt as if she was starring in one of those movies, invariably based on bestselling books, in which women went on epic treks of self-discovery to distant and exotic lands, except in Laney’s case, she’d trekked to Maine to live in a box on wheels for a few months.
The Northern Star Lodge & Campground was her distant and exotic land. Or distant-ish, since she’d started her journey in Rhode Island. But the difference between the decade she’d spent being Mrs. Patrick Ballard in a big house in Warwick and now couldn’t be measured in miles.
