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“Really?Sixty?
“Sixty-one, to be specific.”
“Wow.”Maureen sat up in her seat.“That must be a record.You’ve been a guest here for sixty-one years?”
Elise laughed.“Well, not quite a guest.At least not always.When I was a girl, much younger than I am now, I took a job here a few years out of high school.I started out cleaning rooms.”She chuckled.“It was not a glamorous job by any stretch of the imagination, but for me, it was the greatest opportunity I could have been offered.”
Fascinated, Maureen settled back in her chair, the mug warming her hands as she listened.
“You see,” Elise continued, “that was back in the days when there weren’t very many choices for unmarried girls.Or married ones, for that matter,” she added as an afterthought.“Not unless your family had a lot of money.And mine did not.It would have been different for you.I must have at least forty years on you.”
“I’ll be fifty-six next year.”
“Ah, I just celebrated eighty-eight.Those years make quite a difference.”
Maureen couldn’t argue with that.She’d often thought of her own mother, for whom going to college had never even been an option.She was also very much aware that she’d been born to a father who was a physician and, as such, had enjoyed a certain level of privilege.
“I’d grown up poor in a little town north of here with fewer opportunities than there were people.So when I heard that Merry Falls Inn was hiring, it felt very exotic, like an adventure.And I was more than ready for a little adventure.”
Maureen couldn’t miss the sparkle in the woman’s eye as she spoke about the past.
“That must have been so exciting, Elise.What an adventure, indeed.This place must have made quite an impact on you if you kept coming back for all these years.”
Elise took her time looking around the lobby, a warm smile on her face as she took it all in.“I sure didn’t know all those years ago how much of a mark on my life it would leave.That’s for sure.”She was quiet for a moment and then, as if she realized Maureen was still there, she shook her head clear.“I fell in love.”
Maureen waited a beat.“With Merry Falls Inn?Or with someone else?”
The smile on Elise’s face told her the answer, even before she spoke.“Both.”
She knew that feeling well.Maureen smiled to herself a little, gave herself a moment to pull up the memory and started to share her story.
Thirty-Seven Years Ago…
Maureen was in love.Totally and completely in love.There was no other word for the way she felt.She could feel it in her bones and every breath that she took when she looked out, off the deck at the lake below.Maureen was totally in love with Cedar Springs and the mountain lake.
Her father bought the cabin when she was a child and had started taking Maureen and her older sister to the lake for the summers, almost as long as she could remember.But what Maureen couldn’t remember was ever feeling the way she felt at that exact moment.She attributed it to the fact that she was no longer a child.
Freshly graduated from high school, and at the very mature age of eighteen, Maureen was a woman.She looked at things differently now.With an eye of maturity.Which was why when she looked out off the deck that towered over the blue, mountain lake where she’d spent her childhood summers swimming and splashing, she saw that same view now with love in her eyes.
The footsteps on the deck boards behind her interrupted her quiet moment of reflection.A second later, her best friend Sue Ann appeared next to her.Sue Ann draped herself over the railing, her arms full of bangles, clacking against the wood.
“Isn’t it amazing?”Maureen continued to gaze out at the view.
“What?”
She turned to stare at her friend.“The view.The lake.This place.It’s magical, don’t you think?”With both hands on the rails, she tipped her head back and inhaled deeply.
“I think you’ve lost your mind.”Sue Ann laughed.“It’s the lake.The same lake it’s been every summer since we were kids.”
“Sue Ann!”Maureen didn’t bother hiding her exasperation.“We’re not kids anymore.”
“And?”
Maureen sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes.“I’ve decided that it’s time to grow up.”
“Wearegrowing up.”
She spun to face her friend.“No.I mean likereallygrow up.It’s time to get serious.No more little girl games.We need to start paying attention to the things that really matter in life.”
