Chapter One

Jack Rigsby turned his pick up truck off the paved state road onto a dirt fire lane that meandered for over a mile through the Maine woods to his lake house. The road was no more than a path, peppered with cavernous holes and trenches that could only be safely negotiated at idling speed. Each year he vowed to put new gravel down, but each year something would happen to distract him, so it remained a slow mile. It was his first time up since last fall when he had closed the house up for the season. The winter had been unusually cold and snowy, even for Maine, and his caretaker, a local busybody whose only qualification for the job had been possession of a working snowmobile and lots of time on his hands, had called Jack several times over the winter to inform him all about the vicissitudes of New England winters.

“Yes Bobby, I’m aware that it’s cold up there and there’s lots of snow,” Jack would answer. “That’s why I hired you. You really don’t have to call me every time there’s a storm. We’ve gone over this a hundred times.”

“This last storm brought some trees down on the path, I imagine,” continued Bobby undeterred. “Suppose I’ll go up in the morning.”

“You do that.” 

Jack had learned over the years that the only way to end any conversation with his caretaker was simply to hang up. Despite years of trying, it appeared to be impossible to hurt the man’s feelings. But now, as he made the year’s maiden drive to the lake, he found no evidence of any downed trees, no fresh piles of chopped wood, no evidence that he even had a caretaker. But each year, despite little proof that he ever actually showed up, Jack would retain Bobby Landry’s services. It was mostly out of guilt. Part of the price of owning a lake house in Maine was participation in the great caretaker scam, whereby wealthy people from away, employed the unemployable local jackleg who needed to supplement his fraudulent disability claim check from Social Security, with a reliable side hustle. Who better to hustle than some rich guy from Virginia who was only in town for a couple of months every summer? However unreliable and unskilled Bobby might have been as a caretaker, he made up for it by being in the know about every detail of every property owner on the lake. If anyone on Quantabacook had suffered a financial setback, gone through a divorce, or had a kid in rehab, Bobby could be relied upon to keep Jack fully informed. It was part of the reason that he hadn’t told Bobby of his plans to open the house up in April this year. Jack Rigsby wasn’t in the mood for salacious gossip. Not this year. He preferred to slip in  unnoticed while it was still cold and the smell of snow hung in the air.

As the truck trudged up the last hill before the long sweeping curve down to the house, Jack felt his heart beating quicker, the odd tingle of expectation rising in his chest. Every year it was the same. He turned to Evelyn and gave her a smile. “Gets us every time, Evie.”

It had been Evelyn Rigsby who had begged him to buy the place. Jack enjoyed the lake, was fond of Maine. Evelyn was enchanted. There was no place on earth where she was more beautiful, thought Jack as he watched the tears well in her eyes with a hand held to her lips as the truck came to a stop by the front gate, right along side Bobby Landry’s F-150.

“Isn’t that Bobby’s truck?” Evelyn’s question was asked with an I told you so smile. “You can’t keep a secret from that man.” Jack got out of the truck slowly, feeling the tightness in his back and the pains in both hamstrings from two days of driving. He stretched to his full six feet, feeling all of his 60 years. He noticed some lumber in the back of Bobby’s truck and then heard the sound of hammering coming from the deck side of the 70 year old A-frame cottage he had bought during a whirlwind weekend ten summers earlier. Thanks to a tip from a neighbor’s omniscient caretaker, he and Evelyn had learned that Beatrice Deveraux was grieving her husband’s death over the winter and was entertaining the idea of selling the lake house that had been in her family since it’s construction in the late 1940’s.

“My kids have all moved away and can’t afford to pay the taxes on the place,” she had explained. “And even if they could, they couldn’t be bothered to drive up all the way from Tennessee.”

Evelyn had always loved the Deveraux place because it sat so close to the water’s edge. She would kayak past it in the morning and see Mrs. Deveraux reading her newspaper under the umbrella on the deck. The only words that had ever passed between them for ten years had been Evelyn’s, “Beautiful morning, Mrs. Deveraux” and her curt reply, “maunnin.” But now, on this afternoon, seated around her kitchen table, Beatrice Deveraux was heaping full-throated scorn on her worthless children. Instead of negotiating a sales price for the cottage, she seemed much more interested in describing the depths of ingratitude into which her three adult children had descended. While she went on and on about the sinful distractions which had ensnared her children since they landed in the Volunteer State, Jack had glanced across the table and noticed the glow of delight shining from the glistening eyes of his wife, who had fallen head over heels for the place. While Jack saw nothing but week after week of work and expense, Evelyn was imagining how beautiful it would be after just a few creative graces. The large family room looked out at the lake through a wall of windows. The two upstairs bedrooms were only semi-private and oddly shaped by the steep pitch of the roof. But there was plenty of room for a bathroom to be added somehow, she was convinced of it! And the master bedroom just off the kitchen on the main level of the house was begging for a French door and a little imagination. Jack, only half listening to Mrs. Deveraux’s travails, decided at that moment that his days as a renter were over. He could never say no to her, to those glistening eyes. When Mrs. Deveraux finally threw out a number, Jack had added $10,000 to it to clinch the deal. A handshake served as the contract, and in less than a month, he had delivered the purchase price to Mrs. Deveraux, in cash, in a green leather briefcase.

Now, he walked down the stone side walk around the side of the house and spotted Bobby Landry actually doing some caretaker work, replacing a couple of rotting deck boards. Bobby didn’t look up from his work, but greeted him with, “Hope you packed some wharm clothes. Callin’ for snow latah…”

“What are you doing here Bobby?” Jack was genuinely curious why on this chilly day in April, he should find his caretaker caretaking, when all the evidence of the past ten years would argue against such a coincidence. “You chose this day, of all days, to replace a couple of boards on the deck…the very day that I come all the way from Virginia to open my house in April for the first time ever? I give up. How did you know I would arrive today?”

Bobby looked up from his work for the first time to inform Jack that he just happened to notice on his “regular rounds” that there were a few rotted boards that needed replacing so he figured he would swing by and get it done before the spring snow storm hit. 

Jack interrupted with, “Let me guess, you called my office to tell me about the spring snow storm, heard my away message about being away for a month, then put two and two together and decided to make sure I caught you in the act of actually doing some work…”

“ Mr. Rigsby, you’re about the smahhtest home owner on this entire lake. That’s what I tell everyone who asks me who my smahhtest home owner is…Jack Rigsby, hands down!”

“If I’m so smart, how come I have you as my caretaker?”

“And funny too…I tell them that you’re the funniest too!”

Bobby soon lost interest in deck repairs and launched in to his annual fishing expedition, asking a series of probing questions about what kind of year the Rigsby’s had enjoyed, all the better to keep his other lake clients abreast of news from Virginia. Jack always played along, viewing it as part of Bobby’s odd charm, but this year he had a feeling that his patience would be tested.

“So, why exactly did you decide to open up Loon Magic in April?”

Evelyn’s first order of business after the briefcase of cash had been delivered had been to pick a name for her new summer home. Jack had zero input into the decision, reasoning that the person in charge of naming the place should be whichever of them had been moved to tears at the closing. Even though it had taken her over a month to decide on Loon Magic, Jack always had known that Loon would have wound up as part of the winning name, for it was that majestic bird with the mournful call which had always filled Evelyn’s heart to overflowing. Every summer she would take her kayak out first thing when the morning fog was just beginning to lift off the water, until a Loon would elegantly break through the water twenty feet from her. There they would both sit, staring at each other, not a single ripple stirring the glassy void between them. Evelyn would speak softly, Good morning, friend. The bird would throw its head back and let out a plaintive song. After a few minutes of this back and forth, the Loon would slip back under the water in that silky way they have and be gone. It was, in fact, magical. The name was perfect.

Jack was already irritated. “I suppose I needed to get away a little earlier this year than usual. Should I have asked your permission first?” 

“Are you kidding? Bobby laughed, “I’m as happy as can be to see you Mr. Rigsby. It’s just that you usually wait until June, after Ms. Evelyn is done with school.”

“Yes. Well, my wife is not teaching school any longer. Thirty years was enough. I hope that her decision to retire meets with your approval, Bobby. Now, if you don’t mind, we have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“But I only have a few more things here and I’ll be out of your way.”

“No, Bobby. Leave that as it is. There’s just a couple of boards left and I am perfectly capable of doing that myself. Now, thanks for everything, but we will check in with you later.”

“Sure Mr. Rigsby. You tell Ms. Evelyn that I said hello, ok? And, we will have our ‘state of the cottage’ meeting later then?”

“I certainly will, Bobby…and yes, I wouldn’t miss a ‘state of the cottage’ meeting if my very life depended on it. I’ll call you…”

As soon as the sound of Bobby’s truck disappeared into the thickness of the woods, Jack opened the French doors from the deck and walked through the bedroom, into the kitchen where he found Evelyn in the living room, removing a dusty sheet from his favorite recliner.

“You better try it out…make sure Bobby hasn’t been sitting in it all winter watching football…” Evelyn smiled.

It was the same question she asked every year, an old, well worn joke between the two of them which never failed to make him smile. Jack stood in the kitchen and watched her glide gracefully through the room among the sheets and whirling dust. This was why he would open Loon Magic in April, to be alone with her, free from distraction and the increasing judgement of his two adult children, who could never in a million years begin to understand what carrying around such a crushing weight felt like. He would always love them, but he needed some separation. They would just have to get used to it, this new normal. It was a diminished life…but it was the only life he had left.