Chapter Twelve
Sean
Sean happened to be sitting in a rocker on the front porch of the lodge late Friday afternoon, talking to Andy about old tractors, when a car with New Hampshire plates pulled up the driveway.
“That’ll be the kids,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. Andy stood, too, and they walked down to where the car rolled to a stop. They hadn’t even reached the edge of the drive when a car with Massachusetts plates pulled up behind it.
Nick, Lauren’s son and Sean’s step-nephew—not that they added that step as a rule—got out of the second car. “Hey, how’s that for timing?”
Sean laughed. “There’s no way you left from Mass and these guys from New Hampshire and got here at the same time.”
“I was at my dad’s and they sent me a text when they were almost to town. That would have been cool, though. We could have used the GPS apps to try to time it exactly.”
“Maybe next time.” Sean leaned down to look in the passenger window of the first car. Stephanie, Terry and Evan’s daughter, was riding shotgun. Joey, Mike and Lisa’s oldest was driving and his brother, Danny, was in the backseat. “How was the trip?”
“Good,” Stephanie said. “We solved a bunch of Danny’s plot problems for him.”
Danny was working on his novel while attending college, since he was destined to be a writer like his uncle Joe. Sean peered into the backseat. “Maybe you should go on road trips more often.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Aliens kidnapping my protagonist and giving him an anal probe didn’t really solve any of my plot problems.”
“Oh, you write science fiction?”
“No.”
Joey and Stephanie were laughing, so Sean just chuckled and slapped the side of the car door. “You can drive out back to unload your stuff, but not very far. And don’t run over any of the kids. Then you’ll have to bring your cars back out here and park them on the lawn somewhere.”
They waved to Andy and then Joey put the car in gear and drove toward the camping area. Nick got back in his car and followed. His dad, stepmother and younger siblings lived in Whitford, though he’d moved to Brookline with his mom and Ryan. He spent a lot of time driving back and forth between the states, plus he made a few trips to New Hampshire each summer to visit that half of the family since he’d developed friendships with those kids. And he’d chosen to camp out at the lodge instead of making the short drive back to his dad’s each night.
“I’ll go let Rosie know they’re here,” Andy said. “She was rocking Jackson last I knew, trying to get him to nap for a little while. Last time she did that, she fell asleep and Jackson sat quietly on her lap and unraveled the entire scarf she’d been knitting. I swear, that woman has the patience of a saint. She just wound it all back into a ball and started over.”
“She had a lot of practice being patient with brats,” Sean said, chuckling. “I’m going to go out back and watch them try to put up their tents. Should be funny.”
By the time he reached the camping area, the kids were done running the gauntlet of hello hugs and kisses and were emptying the contents of their trunks onto the area of grass Rosie had saved for the tents.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the tents up first and then unload from the cars into the tents?” Sean asked. “That way you’re only moving the stuff once?”
“We put the tents in first, so they’re on the bottom,” Joey said, and judging by the look he gave his brother, Danny had been the one who packed the trunk.
“Steph!”
Sean turned to see his son running as fast as he could toward his cousin. Johnny loved Stephanie and the feeling was mutual. Even when Sean and Emma weren’t paying her to babysit, she’d drive out to their place just to hang out with him. Her visits were a little more scarce now that she was working and going to college, which just made the times Johnny did get to spend with her all the more special.
Steph caught him when he launched himself at her, and then grimaced. He was getting heavy. “Hey, squirt. Did you save me any s’mores?”
“Nope.” He held out his hands. “We ate them all!”
Sean laughed at Steph’s expression. “We did save you some marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers, kid.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” Nick said, looking at the three tent packages on the ground. They still had the tags on them.
“Do any of you even know how to set up a tent?”
“I watched some YouTube videos,” Steph said. “The ones they had didn’t look exactly like these, but it’s just poles and...whatever tents are made of.”
“I hope the directions explain why we have two roofs,” Danny said, scowling at the picture on the packaging of one of them.
Sean didn’t bother to tell him what the fly was for. He’d figure it out. The two brothers had a bigger, slightly fancier tent, while Nick and Stephanie had each opted for the basic pop-up dome tent. The rest of their supplies seemed to consist mainly of blankets, pillows and extension cords.
