Six Rooms at the Lake, But None for My Parents novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ten Is the Limit

Nate says the owner caps the house at ten and the booking is Jenna's alone, so eight of Colin's relatives have to leave by seven; Jenna keeps Brooke's family because of the girls, and in the east bedroom her mother finds Gail's May itinerary sending Jenna's parents to a motel.

"Who's on the booking?" Nate asked.

"I am," I said. "Only me."

He nodded and took a folded sheet out of his back pocket.

"Then you're the renter, and this is your stay. The owner caps the house at ten guests, and your reservation was for six."

He looked around the yard and counted with his chin.

"That's eight over. By seven tonight, eight of these people are off the property, or I cancel the whole stay and all eighteen leave. That includes your parents."

Nobody on the patio said a word.

"Colin told us the owner was fine with it," Gail said.

"He wasn't," said Nate. "Someone also used your door code at eleven this morning, before check-in. I let it go because the code came from the booking."

Gail turned to her son.

"Colin?"

"Jenna, tell him it's fine," Colin said, and his voice went soft and reasonable. "It's the holiday. Nobody's hurting anything."

"Three kids are hurting the hydrangeas," I said.

Brooke stepped forward with her phone still raised.

"You'd put children out on the Fourth of July? My girls are six and nine."

I looked at the two girls on the lawn. They were holding fistfuls of petals and watching the adults with wide eyes.

They hadn't made this plan, and neither had the quiet man at the grill who had been filming.

"Brooke's family stays," I said. "That makes ten. Everybody else has until seven."

Brooke lowered her phone a little and almost smiled.

Colin's brother's wife stood up from the patio so fast her chair scraped.

"Colin said you invited us," she said. "He told us you wanted a big family weekend and you were too shy to ask."

"I said she'd be happy to see everyone," Colin said.

"You said she begged," said his brother.

Colin's hand went toward his face and he put it in his pocket instead.

The younger aunt's husband started folding his chair.

"I took Friday off for this," he said.

"Well, this is how you treat family," said the younger aunt, and she snapped her tea glass down on the table.

I did not answer her.

Nate set his sheet on the grill lid and went to the hydrangea bed.

He knelt in the dirt and pressed the torn stems back into the soil, one at a time, while the yard packed itself up around him.

It took until a quarter to seven.

I stood on the patio and watched coolers go back into trunks and kids go back into car seats.

My husband carried bags for his relatives and said, over and over, that it was a misunderstanding.

The older aunt, the one who had taken my hand, came up to my mother at the foot of the steps.

"I am so sorry, dear," she said. "If I had known nobody ever asked you, I would never have come."

My mother pressed her arm and said it was all right.

The aunt looked at me and opened her mouth to say something more, and then her husband called her to the car.

The last car pulled out of the gravel drive at ten to seven.

The yard was a mess of paper plates and flattened grass, and the grill had gone cold.

Nate stood up from the flower bed and brushed his knees.

"I'll stay until the lot's empty," he said to me. "In case anybody changes their mind."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me yet. Your husband still has the code."

He said it without a smile, and I found I didn't mind.

Then I went inside, where my father was carrying the rest of their bags into the east bedroom.

My mother stood at the open closet, holding a small stack of children's jackets.

"Where do these go, honey?" she asked. "I don't want to leave a mess for those girls' mother."

"Leave them on the bench by the door," I said. "Brooke can find them herself."

She laid the jackets down and hung her blue dress on the closet rail by itself.

She smoothed the skirt twice.

Then she reached up to the closet shelf, where Brooke's family had pushed a tote bag out of the way, and a folded piece of paper slid off and landed at her feet.

My mother bent to pick it up and read it, and she did not hand it to me right away.

When she did, I recognized Gail's handwriting, big and loopy, with a date in the corner.

May 9.

It was a schedule for this weekend.

July 2 to 6, lake house, Colin treating.

Underneath, in the same blue ink, was a line I read twice:

J's parents: motel in town. Colin to book.

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