Peaks Island

Chapter 3

It was going on three weeks and it was beginning to bother Alison. It bothered her a great deal. They'd been out six or seven times. Twice it was the same as the first day, a picnic and a bottle of wine. The cottage right there. Even after drinking, he wouldn't go very far and if she tried to he'd pull away. And leave soon after.

She was thinking about how frustrating it was as she walked up the rocky bluff and on to the grassy lawn to the main house. The house sat up high which made for a spectacular view. A tenant had just left and Alison was going up to clean it for the next guest who was to arrive the next morning. That was getting old too. At least, she'd learned from these experiences that for certain she didn't want to become an Inn Keeper. Or a ferry operator's wife.

It was just driving Alison crazy, that was all.

She walked up the wooden stairs to the deck that looked out over the water. Six black painted Adirondack chairs sat facing the ocean. No matter how frustrated she was she couldn't help but love being in the main house. She could have had no idea how beautiful it was until she saw it for herself. It was something out of a coastal magazine. Alison knew that her mother's aunt Meredith had hired a local architect and designer to make the place a showplace so she could rent it for $3,500 a week in the summers. Aunt Meredith retired on the reliable summer income. The designer in particular, had the perfect coastal sensibilities; it could have been in cape cod, Maine, Bahamas, the Carolinas. The walls were not simply painted white or cream but each room a subtly different shades from the next, ivory to faded lemon depending on the wall. It must have been that the designer knew how the light would effect each room, because each had so much depth yet maintained the white washed look of a beach house. All of the floors—upstairs and down—were wide planked pine. They looked refinished but with the original worn character. Every room had large windows, the trim and sills painted off white. Because the property was so set back from the others nearby and an acre between it and the water, and another two acres on each side, the light was filtered through green from the lawn, shrubs and trees. And because you had an uninterrupted view of the ocean from every window in the kitchen and sitting room, the blue water contrasted the pale walls and ivory painted sills. There were only a few decorations on the walls. Several small watercolors resembling biology drawings of fish hung over the white wooden mantle. Alison walked over and stood close. She examined the pictures. There were three centered above the fireplace. The first looked like it was outlined in pen and some of the anatomical details in pen, and the head of the fish was a deep aqua and the scales along the body were faintly painted with translucent, water-colored burgundy. The second picture, the one in the middle looked similar but its body was a little fatter, more like a sunfish. The whole fish was washed in a watery ivy color. It's single eye was yellow. The third was a darker ivy with a mustard colored tail. Alison wasn't an artist, but this kind of art gave her a flicker of inspiration. For an instant she considered trying to paint one herself. She walked over and turned off two table lamps behind the couch that the guests had left on.

She peeked in the screened porch, the most spectacular room in the house—in her opinion. She noticed several of the oversized navy and white striped towels laying on the wicker chairs. When she picked them up, they were damp and left a stain on the tan canvas pillow covers. That's what bugged Alison. She shook her head as she collected the towels in her arms. Why couldn't these people treat the house the way it deserved to be treated? It wasn't one of the junky, dank places her parents had always rented when they went on vacations. Aunt Meredith's house should have been in Coastal Living or even Architectural Digest. Maybe it even was for all Alison knew. This house was immaculate, spectacular. Alison looked across the large screened in room, she realized this house meant that Aunt Meredith was rich. She hadn't thought of herself as someone with a spectacularly rich relative. She didn't know Aunt Meredith. Alison's mother said they'd had met a couple of times at weddings and again at her grandfather's funeral. If she had her mother's aunt, Alison didn't' remember.