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Eva didn’t talk much as they walked out to the car, grabbed two large, heavy suitcases, and rolled them up the walk.
“Are you staying here for the summer?” Eva asked as they lifted the suitcases up the front steps, one step at a time.
“At least. I was thinking about staying here forever. But I’ll have to find a place to stay, since I can’t keep taking advantage of Lana’s generosity.”
“Whatever room you’re staying in, you’ll be taking money out of her pocket since she can’t rent it out.”
“Does she normally rent out the mother-in-law suite?”
Eva’s lips flattened, like Jubilee had one-upped her or something. She had meant it as a curiosity question, but maybe she was pointing out that Eva was taking money out of Lana’s pocket as well.
“She just finished it last year. I don’t think she had it rented out solid. I’m not even sure she had it rented more than a few weeks.”
“I see.”
Jubilee didn’t want to fight with her and wasn’t trying to ruin anything for her, either. It had started out as a true question that she was just curious about.
By the time she had made two trips down to the basement to help Eva with her things and finished cleaning up the kitchen, the zucchini bread was out on the counter and cooling. With Eva down in the basement unpacking, the tension in the kitchen magically disappeared.
“Are you sure you don’t mind delivering the zucchini bread?” Lana said as they wrapped the chocolate zucchini bread in order for Jubilee to transport it. Her girls were upstairs changing into their swimming things. It was going to take Jubilee a little bit of time to get used to the idea that there was a lake within walking distance and they could take a break anytime during the day to run down to take a swim. It was such a fun idea, and she loved that her kids would grow up having such a fun thing all summer long.
“I don’t mind at all. In fact, I really appreciate you letting me. I want to get to know the neighbors. You know how small towns are. Everyone knows everyone else, and the sooner I start figuring out who people are and where they live, the better.”
Her girls came down, and Lana helped them grab some towels from the laundry room, which she provided as a courtesy to her guests, and then she walked out on the front porch with them and told them how to find Kim and Davis and their home. It wasn’t hard. They walked to the end of the road, turned left, and walked a little more.
For some reason as Lana was standing there and Jubilee was listening to her instructions, she thought about asking where Matt lived.
She wasn’t quite sure why that question came into her head, but she tried to push it aside. Matt shouldn’t mean anything to her. All he’d done was help her when she needed it, brought her to his mom, where he knew she would have a soft landing.
She wanted to read more into that than what she knew was actually there.
Not to mention, she had the memories of him during that summer that she spent in Strawberry Sands. He wasn’t the only thing she had admired that summer, but he did figure prominently in her memories.
Funny, because he didn’t even know it.
She and her girls started down the street, one of them carrying a small container of drinks and snacks that Lana had packed and insisted on sending with them, and the other one carrying the beach bag full of towels and some sand toys that Lana had dug up that other guests had used.
Jubilee carried two loaves of chocolate zucchini bread.
It smelled delicious, and Lana had promised them that they would have a snack of chocolate zucchini bread when they got back from swimming.
“Mom?” Scarlett asked as they walked down the street in front of several buildings that were shuttered up, along with the diner, where a man with tattoos and two earrings in one ear was standing behind the counter chatting with a customer sitting on a stool, and another shop that looked like it might have been a surf shop at one time but was boarded up now.
“Yeah?” she said, looking down at Scarlett whose eyes were bright and eager.
“Can we live here forever?”
They hadn’t even made it to the beach yet, and her daughter was in love with the quaint little town.
“What makes you ask that?” she said, instead of answering. She’d love to say yes, of course they could live there forever. But they’d hit town at the right time, June, as people were gearing up for the short tourist season. They might not have a job come winter.
“Lana is like a grandmother. I mean, like the grandmother I wish I had.” Scarlett’s voice kind of trailed off, like she thought maybe she shouldn’t have said what she did.
“I’ll ask her to be ours. I bet she’ll say yes. She likes us,” Penelope piped up from the other side of Jubilee.
How different this was from Cody’s mom, Shirley. Shirley always had sharp words for the girls and acted like they were in the way. Pretty much two seconds after they set foot in her house, she had the TV on and acted like she didn’t want them to move from in front of it.
She protected her furniture, her house, and anything that the girls might break or get dirty, like it was museum quality.
