The Summer Share

One

Hannah

"Good morning, travelers," I said to the camera on my phone, which was perched in its holder on the dashboard of my vintage Volkswagen van.

Bang! The right-front tire lurched into a pothole on the sorely neglected road.

"Ah!" I took my foot off the gas and swerved out of the danger zone. The van didn't shimmy or pull so we hadn't popped a tire. Hallelujah. I'd had enough flats in my career as an online camper van enthusiast to know when Buttercup-yes, my baby had a name-was in trouble.

Dude, my Great Dane rescue, lurched to his feet and shoved his big blocky head in between the front seats-to offer assistance, no doubt, as he was always helpful like that. I reached up and rubbed his soft, floppy ears.

"It's okay, buddy. We're almost there." I tapped the camera off on my phone. Given the poor condition of the road, I figured it was better to record my content for next week after we arrived.

I turned my attention back to the narrow lane. There was enough room for only one car so I really hoped no one approached me from the opposite direction. Because with vibrantly green grassy marshland squeezing the road on both sides like a too-tight corset, there was no place for me to go except into the brackish muddy water.

I scanned the area, looking for the cottage where my Pops had spent every summer for as long as I could remember. The Outer Banks had been his special place in his later years. No one in the family had ever been invited into his fishing sanctuary. It was just him and his solitary weeks spent on the water. I think we accepted the banishment only because he kept us supplied with enough grouper, red drum, and little tunny for the entire winter.

Now that I was here, my chest felt tight with a fresh wave of loss for the man who had been my number one fan, my champion, and my best friend. Inhaling through my nose, I slowly exhaled out my mouth, trying to control the grief that had been ever present since the moment Pops had passed four weeks ago.

The van lurched into another pothole. "Damn it."

When I was a kid, Pops and Nana brought me to the Carolina shore for weeklong summer vacations. My memories were full of sand between my toes and ice cream cones, marathon Monopoly games when it rained, and generally just basking in the adoration of two of my favorite people.

When they divorced, in a split my dad called the most amicable parting of ways in the history of marriage, the vacations stopped. Nana started dating while Pops continued his trips to the Carolina shore but he went by himself, making this place his own.

Another large divot appeared and I refocused on the road, weaving around the treacherous-looking pit. The marshland fell away as Buttercup rumbled onto firmer ground and the road widened just enough for two vehicles to fit with a fine hair between them.

Dude and I followed the curved lane, passing by several houses tucked back amid a copse of enormous live oaks. The way the modest cottages were nestled under the massive trees with their thick trunks, wide canopies, and arching limbs, it felt as if I'd stumbled into a sort of magical forest. I glanced at the numbers on the homes and knew I was getting closer.

Excitement zipped through me. I was overcome with curiosity to see the place where Pops had spent so much of his life by himself. Separated from the other residences by a stand of smaller sand oaks was a lone white clapboard house with dark green trim and matching shutters, all of which were closed over the windows. I felt my lips curve up. This was exactly the sort of place where I could picture Pops spending his days, fishing and boating, enjoying the quiet after so many years as the local news anchor in Providence, Rhode Island.

The van chugged to a stop and I turned the key in the ignition off. I double-checked the metal numbers tacked onto the side of the house. Eighty-one. This was it. Dude let out a small whimper and wiggled as if he, too, knew that we'd finally arrived. I turned and patted his shoulder. "Let's check it out."

I opened my door and Dude clambered over the seat-all 150 pounds of him-almost knocking me down in his haste to follow me as if afraid I might leave him behind. He trotted forward two steps and immediately lifted his leg on the trunk of a crape myrtle, identifiable by its peeling brown bark and thick clusters of bright pink flowers. I couldn't blame him; a dog has his priorities, after all.

I took a beat to take in the house in front of me. A sense of déjà vu hit me right in the chest. I had been here before. I was certain of it. I remembered thinking in my little-kid brain that this house was a sentient being, that the dormer windows on the second floor were eyes, the front door a nose, and the porch a wide smile. I supposed it might just resemble the house I'd stayed in with Pops and Nana, but I felt certain it was the actual house.

I remembered Pops had let me ride my bike on the wraparound porch and we pretended I was a race car driver doing laps until Nana declared I was making her dizzy. When had Pops bought the house that we'd rented for our vacations, and why hadn't he ever told me?

I marveled at the place that held a decade of summer memories. When Nana returned from her vacation, I'd call her and ask if she knew this was our old rental. I put my hand on the stair railing and studied the place. Upon closer inspection, the house was less charming and more woebegone in appearance. The roof had missing shingles, the gutters were stuffed with leaves, and several of the shutters were missing slats and in a few cases hanging drunkenly from their hinges.

The paint was peeling and green moss was growing thick in the shadows and crevices. Knee-high weeds filled the front yard, covering the crawl space below and curving up onto the porch railing as if intent upon swallowing the house whole. Several tree limbs had fallen in the yard, probably from recent storms.

Given the state of the outside, I hated to imagine what the inside looked like. A month had gone by since Pops had passed and his estate settled. I knew it had been several months since he'd come down here to fish. I had no idea if he had anyone checking on the house or not. I was assuming not. During those months of vacancy, I feared a wild critter or two might have taken up residence and would now claim squatter's rights.

"Do not bite anything in the house, especially if it moves," I said to Dude. He tipped his head to the side as if he found this order confounding. "I'm serious. You don't know their medical history, if they have fleas, ticks, or rabies. No biting." He opened his massive muzzle and yawned. "Oh, I'm sorry. Am I boring you?"

I pulled the key to the cottage out of the side pocket of my beige cargo shorts. The house was much smaller than I remembered, but given that I'd been living in my van for the past five years, it felt like a castle to me. Not for the first time I wondered why-out of all the members in my family-Pops had left his summer place to me. Was it because I presently lived in a van? Unlike the rest of my family, my grandfather had never tried to dissuade me from my current life choices.

Pops had followed me on the socials and actively engaged in my posts. I'd always thought he was proud of me for going my own way when.my career in journalism came to an unexpected and tragic end at the same time that my husband announced he no longer loved me and ended our marriage. But maybe Pops had given me the house so I had a safe place to land when I was tired of my nomadic lifestyle. If so, he'd been right. After several years of nonstop traveling-some might say running away-lately I'd been getting the urge to plant myself somewhere and put down some roots, or at the very least take a sabbatical from the daily quest for content.

I climbed up the steps, fully prepared for the boards beneath my feet to give way. They did not. They even supported Dude. The front porch was empty except for two large white flowerpots on each side of the front door that contained the dried husks of what had once been some sort of large plants. Geraniums? Roses? I couldn't tell.

It seemed an unexpectedly cheerful aesthetic for a man's fishing retreat. I tried to remember if Pops had been a plant guy. He'd never remarried after his divorce from Nana, and I couldn't remember any plants in the bachelor residence Pops had maintained down the street from my parents' house in Little Compton, Rhode Island. He and Nana both lived in that neighborhood. When Nana married George, my bonus grandpa, Pops had been the one to give her away.

Another wave of grief hit me. How could a man who had loved his family and friends as fiercely as Pops had be gone? There'd been no warning. No time to say good-bye. The lump in my throat was hard and I tried to swallow it down. Pops hadn't seemed himself the last three months of his life. His contagious laugh, a deep throaty chuckle, was seldom heard and the sparkle in his eyes was dim. Whenever I asked him what was wrong, he pushed away my concerns, blaming it on aging, but it never sat right with me. I should have persisted. Now I would never know what had been on his mind during those last few months.

Guilt and regret honed my grief to a sharp edge. I glanced at the door in front of me. Ever since my dad had handed me the key to the house, I'd pinned a lot of hope on finding solace in this place that Pops had loved so well.

I slid the key into the dead bolt and twisted it until it clicked. I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Well, I tried to push it open. The humidity had swollen the door shut and I had to put my shoulder into it. Dude watched me encouragingly as I used the force of my entire body to ram the door. When it gave way with a groan of protest, I stumbled inside.

With the exterior shutters closed over the windows, the light was weak. I reached for the switch by the door and flipped it on. Nothing happened. No electricity. Great.

I squinted into the gloom and as my eyes adjusted I noticed dust sheets covered the furniture, and the place smelled musty. It hit me then that the last time Pops had been here, he must have closed it up knowing he wasn't coming back. Otherwise, why would he have used dust sheets when he'd popped down here once a month and every summer?

I crossed the front room to the closest window, turned the latch to free the interior sash, and pushed it open and then the screen as well. The clasp to the shutters was on the inside, so I quickly popped it and pushed the shutters wide. I swear I felt the house sigh in relief as I lowered the screen. I did the same with three more windows until there was enough light to see and air moving through the house to push out the musty scent of neglect.

Dude prowled through the living room, the dining area, and the kitchen-his favorite room, of course. His nose was pressed to the ground and he snuffled his way through, looking for any snacks that might have been left behind.

I followed him, taking in the vintage cooking space. White appliances and rounded oak cupboards. Hello, 1994. I recognized the same interior aesthetic from my baby pictures in my parents' old photo albums.

I opened the large window over the sink and unlatched the shutters, pushing them wide. The view from the back of the house boasted a monstrous live oak to one side, a sloping woefully overgrown lawn, and a narrow dock that ran fifty yards through the tall grass to the wide waterway that ran through the center of the marsh. Wooden stairs led up to a small shack on a large platform raised on stilts. That had to be where Pops cleaned his fish and stored his boat during inclement weather.

Below the shack was a lower platform that sat on the edge of the wide channel. I noticed a boat was tied up to it. It was not Pops's boat, as his was moored at the marina in Little Compton. He might have left the house to me but the boat was his pride and joy and had been bequeathed to my dad, his only child. And yet there beneath Pops's fishing shack was a boat . . . and a fisherman.

I'd been worried about critters squatting at the house. It hadn't occurred to me that a person might have done so. Fantastic. The lawyer for Pops's estate was due here at any minute. This was so not what I needed right now.

From this distance it was hard to get a sense of the man. The sun glinted off his thick, wavy, dark brown curls, his broad shoulders were snug beneath his T-shirt, and as he cast his line, his muscled calves flexed beneath his knee-length shorts as he strode along the rocking planks with purpose. He was pale as if he didn't get enough time outside and yet he looked entirely too comfortable on Pops's . . . er . . . my dock. I decided I was going to have to go say something. I patted my pocket for my phone, realizing then that I'd left it in the van.

"Come on, Dude. I don't want to confront anyone without the ability to call for backup if things get weird or nasty."

Being a woman, traveling on my own, I had become very savvy about always having my phone fully charged and on hand. If I got a weird vibe, I called someone and started talking about where I was and what I was doing immediately.

I turned, expecting my ginormous shadow to follow. He did not. Instead, Dude nudged open the back door with his nose. Not hard, since it had apparently been left OPEN! Clearly, the trespasser on the dock with the boat had been in Pops's house. The audacity!