Camp Lost and Found, page 2
She picked up her coffee and took it back into the living room to see that the doe and her babies had moved off into the trees, taking their time and nibbling what was left on the cold November ground.
Snow would be coming soon, she thought as she reclaimed her seat in the hammock chair. On the small, round end table next to it lay a stack of books and an open notebook with a list of things she needed to do today. She picked up the notebook, along with the pen next to it, and added, Prepare room upstairs for intruder. And then she began to wonder about them. The intruder. Okay, fine, the guest. Who would be intruding on her peace and quiet. Was it a man or a woman? How long would an undisclosed amount of time actually be? Were they loud? Would they be blasting music? Constantly on their phone?
Oh God, would they want to chat with her incessantly?
Also, what kind of person booked an indefinite stay at a camp that was no longer functional? Yeah, lotta questions about them.
She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. There was nothing she could do but take care of things.
With a loud sigh, she wiggled herself out of the hammock chair, took her coffee, and headed up the wide staircase in the middle of the first floor that split the living space from the dining area. The second floor boasted four bedrooms and two full bathrooms. This was presumably where camp counselors lived during the times the camp was full. She chose the room closest to the top of the staircase because it would get the most heat from the fireplace. The furnace was dodgy, to say the very least, and Frankie had taken to leaving the thermostat set at sixty degrees and building a roaring fire, as midfall turned to late fall. If she tucked the guest into a room in a far corner, they’d likely be too cold.
In the hallway was a large closet, and Frankie knew it was filled with shelves of linens and towels and blankets because she’d washed them all when she’d arrived. She pulled a set of sheets out, along with a blanket and a comforter. She’d wash them all again today, get them smelling fresh and clean instead of musty from being in a closet for weeks. Then she’d dust and vacuum the room, make it presentable for somebody to stay in. Hopefully, the undisclosed amount of time wouldn’t be more than a few days. After all, what was there to do out here but think and be alone?
Exactly the things that drew Frankie to it in the first place.
* * *
If there was a tinier airport than Saranac Lake, Cassidy Clarke would have been surprised. It consisted of one café…and that was about it. She’d come from Boston’s Logan International on a disturbingly small plane, and it took everything she had not to drop to her knees and kiss the tarmac when she’d deplaned.
But tiny didn’t mean incompetent, something Cassidy had learned in life and also in Saranac Lake, as the SUV she’d rented was ready and waiting for her. She stopped at the restroom first to get herself together after many, many hours of travel, with a couple more still to go. She traveled a lot in her line of work, so she knew the things to keep handy. Fresh makeup and brushing her teeth always made her feel like a new woman, so she took care of those things. Then she stopped at the smallest café known to man and got herself a large coffee and a homemade chocolate chip cookie that looked too good to pass up from the smiling woman behind the counter, who looked like every mom in every Hallmark Christmas movie ever made. Bags tossed into the back of the SUV, she hopped in and began the two-plus-hour trek to the even tinier town of Shelton.
Blasting her music was the only way to combat her swirling thoughts. At least while she’d been on planes, she’d been able to do work, communicate with her staff, give orders, sign documents, return emails—all the day-to-day things a CEO of a successful company did—and that had kept her mind off the actual reason she was flying across the damn country in the first place.
Mason was dead.
She still had trouble wrapping her brain around that. She’d basically sleepwalked through his funeral, didn’t want to think about the things his ex had said to her. Tears pooled in her eyes as she drove, and she clenched her jaw to will them away.
She hadn’t spoken to him in many, many months. Too many months. She’d been too submerged in her work, in her life, in herself to make the effort to reach out. And now she knew that he’d probably needed her. And it was too late.
She cleared her throat and turned the volume up, let Halsey take up all the space in her brain with her music. At least for now.
Driving through the Adirondacks was gorgeous, even now, in November, when most of the Northeast was brown or on its way to brown. She’d missed the colors of fall, knew from experience, from growing up in this part of New York, how gorgeous it could be in October. But once the oranges and yellows and reds of autumn faded and fell off the trees, it was brown and gray until the snow came and gave everything a fresh, clean start.
Mason loved the snow.
Cassidy did not. No, that wasn’t true. She thought the snow was pretty, but she hated the cold. It was a big part of why she’d moved to San Diego in the first place. Sunny and seventy-two almost year-round was exactly perfect as far as she was concerned. The first few years there, she’d missed the change of seasons, but after a while, that didn’t really compare to being pleasantly comfortable one hundred percent of the time. Southern California was perfect for that.
The road was winding, and the SUV was top-of-the-line, so Cassidy made herself focus on the drive, enjoying the twists and turns, yawning several times to clear her ears as the altitude increased by small increments. It was early afternoon in mid-November, too late for leaf-peeping and a little early for ski season, though many slopes had man-made snow and were likely already spraying it all over the hillsides. Skiers didn’t like to wait for Mother Nature.
Two hours and sixteen minutes after leaving the airport parking lot, Cassidy cruised into the tiny hamlet of Shelton, New York, population thirteen hundred and twelve. Or so the very old sign said. She absently wondered if it had been updated since she’d been here as a teen.
The town had been updated, at least a little. She noticed that immediately as she decreased her speed to thirty and rolled down the main street that ran through the center. A couple of things were the same. The diner. The library. The town hall. The post office. The general store had changed hands and was now called Dobbs’s. It was bigger than she remembered and looked to be part grocery, part bakery, part liquor store? Was that right? She squinted at it, then slowed and turned into the diagonal parking on the street. She was going to need food. And wine. Lots and lots of wine.
A cute, old-fashioned bell hung over the door and tinkled sweetly as she opened it and headed inside, and holy cow, the sign was exactly right. The left half of the store held shelves of food. Canned goods. Boxed items like pasta and cereal. A cooler against the wall with milk, eggs, yogurt. A freezer toward the back. And a deli counter along the back wall. On her right was a glass display case filled with baked goods that had Cassidy’s mouth watering at the sight. Cookies and Danishes and pies, oh my. At the end of that case, several shelves of wine and liquor finished off the stock, complete with their own cash register because, if she remembered correctly, you couldn’t buy alcohol other than beer or cider in a grocery store in New York. Why, she had no idea. Laws were weird sometimes.
“Afternoon,” said the woman behind the bakery counter. She was pretty—early forties maybe? Her light brown skin was creamy smooth, her head topped with a mass of ringlet curls that Cassidy instantly envied. When she smiled, deep dimples were on full display. “What can I help you with?”
Cassidy stood still for a moment as she looked around. “This place is quite the mix.”
The woman gave a gentle laugh. “I think my parents were aiming for a one-stop shop and ended up with an amalgamation of necessities.” She shrugged. “It works, though.”
“It really does.” Cassidy liked this woman—whose name tag said she was Eden—immediately.
“You visiting or passing through?”
“I’m visiting for a bit,” Cassidy said as she stepped closer to the bakery case. “I need to grab some basics.” Her eyes fell on the triple-berry pie on the top shelf of the display, and she tapped her finger on the glass in front of it. “And some not so basics.”
“Grocery essentials are all behind you,” Eden said as she slid the pie off the shelf. “Pies are made by Baked Expectations down the street, homemade every day.” She gestured toward the wine with her chin. “Any wine or liquor?”
“I said basics, didn’t I?” Cassidy winked.
Eden laughed again, a sweet, musical sound, and pointed to the corner near the door where carts were. “Help yourself. We’ll ring the alcohol up separately over there. If you need anything you don’t see, I’ve got a delivery coming tomorrow. Just leave me the address where you’re staying, and I’ll have it brought to you.” She lifted the pie in both hands. “I’ll box this up for you.”
It took Cassidy about an hour, but she loaded everything she needed into the back of the SUV. There were a few things she wanted that Eden didn’t have in stock but was promised would be delivered to her by tomorrow afternoon. Eden seemed slightly surprised when Cassidy gave her the address, but she assured Cassidy that Frankie would take care of everything, no worries. Back in the car, she pulled up her GPS again and pointed herself in the right direction. She hadn’t been there in—she squinted as she did the math in her head—twenty-two years. Would it look the same? Would there be a deluge of memories that washed over her like a tidal wave?
She snorted at that. “Of course there will,” she said aloud to nobody. “How could there not be?”
And then, there it was. The sign that indicated her turn. It was old and faded and rotting in places, but it was still legible. Camp Lustenfeld.
With a deep breath, she hit her turn signal and indicated the left-hand turn, onto the cracked and uneven pavement that morphed into just gravel and pointed up, up, up. A beat passed. Another. She stared, knowing she needed to brace herself for what was coming, for everything that lay ahead. Laying a hand on the large duffel in the passenger seat, she cleared her throat and asked quietly, “Ready for this, Mason? It’s too late to turn back now.”
This was it. After twenty-two years, the time had finally come, and somehow, she’d always known it would. She made the turn and headed up the long, narrow, two-mile driveway.
She was going back.
Back to Camp Lost and Found.
Chapter Two
Wow. It was a damn good thing Cassidy had rented an SUV because a regular, sits-closer-to-the-ground car would never have made it up the camp driveway without completely bottoming out.
“This must be what popcorn feels like,” she muttered as she bounced along, woods on either side of the rattling SUV. Adele stopped singing abruptly when her phone cut in, and it took her several tries to hit the correct button on the touch screen because of the shimmying and shaking.
“You there yet?” Jenna’s voice was a welcome distraction.
“Heading up the driveway now,” Cassidy told her. “Though two and a half miles is gonna take a really long time at seven miles an hour.” A breathy oof was released from her lips when she hit a particularly deep pothole.
“Well, drive faster. Duh.”
“Not if I want to keep all four of my tires. This driveway is a wreck.” She steered around another deep hole. “Things okay?”
“Absolutely. I wasn’t calling about work.” Jenna’s voice softened. “I just wanted to check on you. You left before I had a chance to really see how you were. So…how are you?”
She had kind of fled. She’d gotten the news about Mason, called Jenna to see if she could handle things at work for a while, then flew across the country without so much as a see you later. Which wasn’t really fair, but Jenna was made of steel and barbed wire. She’d handle things without issue. Cassidy knew that. It was the only reason she’d been able to drop everything and go.
“I’m okay.”
“Well, thank you for that very detailed answer.”
Cassidy grimaced, tipped her head from side to side. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve gotten my food and my wine, and I’m exhausted and starving, and I’m just trying to focus on this road.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll talk about your state of mind later.” There was a pause, and then she added, “I wonder what the state of the camp is like if the driveway is that bad.”
“I guess we’ll find out. From what I could ascertain from my call, there’s some guy on the property named Frank that’s supposed to get me settled.”
“Are there other people staying there? Or just you and…Frank?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t ask.”
“Yeah.” Jenna let go of a small snort. “That’s part of what’s got me worried. The not asking. You just went.” It was clear how she felt about that, and Cassidy couldn’t really blame her. But she was too tired to try to explain it all now.
“I know.” She sighed quietly. “I’m sorry. Listen, let me get myself all situated, and I’ll check in with you later. Okay? I’m basically wiped.”
“Yeah, okay, go ahead to the camp in the middle of East Jesus where there’s a dude named Frank, who could be a serial killer, and nobody else. No worries.” Jenna’s tone made it clear that she was most certainly not okay with this direction but would take it anyway because she was Jenna, and that’s what she did when it came to Cassidy. “But if I don’t hear from you, you will be hearing from me. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cassidy said with a soft laugh. They said their good-byes, and she hung up and tried not to wonder if her internal organs would be completely rearranged after this ride.
And then her brain let the memories begin to sift in as the cabins came into view on either side of the car.
Camp Lost and Found—as the foster kids had dubbed it—was made up of several buildings. There were six small cabins, three on each side of the property, fanned off from the main building. Girls on one side, boys on the other. The main building housed the kitchen, common area, dining hall, and counselors’ quarters. There was a large building behind that where the toilets and showers were, and then several other small buildings for indoor activities when the weather was bad. Art, reading, movies. But the camp was mostly about the outdoors. The pond was large enough for canoeing, swimming, fishing—they’d actually called it a lake back then because they were young and from the city, and most of them had never seen a body of water larger than a swimming pool. There was hiking and volleyball and soccer. While it was true that many—okay, most—of the kids that attended Camp Lost and Found’s foster weeks came from less-than-ideal backgrounds, the three weeks each summer they spent there were some of their happiest. At least for Cassidy. And for Mason.
The cabins on either side looked much more run-down than she’d expected, but she decided to reserve judgment. The guy she’d spoken to on the phone, Ethan Lustenfeld, had told her it wasn’t really up to snuff as far as housing guests. She assured him she didn’t require much, and then she proceeded to tell him what the place had meant to her as a kid. He had sighed and been hesitant, but the money she offered, plus the sizable donation to his family’s foundation for foster kids, convinced him. But she’d have to stay in the main house, he’d told her.
Fine. Whatever. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t there for a vacation.
The woods finally emptied her into the open in front of the main house.
Holy shit.
She barely recognized it.
The white paint was faded and cracking, dirty in some places, split in others. The wraparound porch railing was missing spindles here and there. It didn’t look damaged so much as simply old. Run-down. Not at all the way she remembered it.
“I mean, it has been a couple of decades,” she said quietly as she sat in the idling car and looked out the windshield. “But wow.”
Sudden rapping on her window scared the living hell out of her, and she was pretty sure she hit her head on the sunroof, she jumped so high. She caught her breath and pressed a hand to her chest, calming her heart rate enough to finally notice a woman standing next to her car. A steadying deep breath, and she powered down the window.
“You scared the crap out of me,” she said, a bit snippier than she’d intended, but Jesus Christmas in St. Louis, she was pretty sure she’d had a mild heart attack.
“Sorry,” the woman said, her dark eyes flicking away and then back.
“I’m Cassidy Clarke. I’ll be staying here for a while. I’m looking for Frank?” She realized too late that she’d said it as a question instead of a statement, and she hated to sound uncertain in general, but she didn’t know anything more about this Frank than his name. Which was on her for not asking for more detail. God, she wasn’t herself lately.
“Frankie.”
She blinked at the woman. “Okay. Frankie, then. Is he here?”
“Yes. I’m her.”
Squint. “You’re her. Oh, you’re Frank? Er, Frankie?”
“I am. Yeah. Mr. Lustenfeld said you’d be here for a while, and I should get you settled.” She stepped back to allow Cassidy to open the car door.
“Oh. Well, okay then.” Cassidy got out, grateful to stretch her legs after spending so many hours in a sitting position, on planes and then in a car. She held out her hand. “Cassidy Clarke.”
The woman looked at her hand for a beat before taking it. “Frankie Sisto.” Her grip was firm, but she didn’t hold on one second longer than necessary, and again, her gaze darted away. She was pretty—Cassidy would have to be oblivious not to see that—but almost seemed to be hiding it. She had dark curls that were pulled back in a ponytail, and thick, dark brows that were perfectly arched. No makeup. She was tall and solid and dressed in jeans, a red hoodie, and a black puffy vest. Worn Timberland work boots were on her feet. Her face was dead serious, and she looked like somebody who didn’t smile often. At all. “Follow me,” she said, then turned and headed toward the house.
