In The Guesthouse at Autumn Lake, Penny Anderson is determined to enjoy what she believes is to be her last summer spent in the quaint small town of Autumn Lake. But when she walks into her favorite guesthouse in search of her hostess, she instead comes face to face with someone else who is counting down the days until he can get out of town.
Here’s a peek at Chapter One...
📖 Chapter One
“There’s something rather… euphoric about pulling into a place that feels like home after having been away for ten long months.” Even as she said the words aloud, Penny knew they made little sense, even to her. Not only was this place not her home, but these next two months were, in fact, her time away from home, not the other way around. Eventually, she’d have to return to her own life and pick up the pieces of everything she’d left behind.
But until then, until July wound down and August reared its responsibility-laden head, she wouldn’t think about that.
In the air-conditioned comfort of her car, while her road trip playlist piped out another Ranae song, Penny gave herself a stern look in the rearview mirror. Then, she placed a hand over her heart and declared, “I, Penelope Eva Anderson, do solemnly swear that I will leave my worries at home where they belong, and that I will wake up each morning in this beautiful place with a spirit of gratitude and hope and anticipation for whatever the day will bring.”
The vow was one she made to herself every summer before she set foot out of her car in the lovely little town of Autumn Lake.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing her shoulders to relax and the spinning plates she always seemed to be balancing in her mind to drop.
Outside the car windows, the late-morning sun shone warmly down on the lush front lawn of the bed-and-breakfast Penny would call her home away from home for the next two months. Flowerbeds awash in early summer color pooled whimsically around the base of the wraparound porch, a telltale sign of the green thumb who resided at the property. Behind the house, sprawling out from the back door like rainbow rays, was the rest of the garden Hazel Poleman tended so meticulously. Penny could hardly wait to make her way back there so she could revel in the ordered chaos of flowers and vegetables cohabiting the space so beautifully. There was also a small orchard of stone fruit trees, their branches aggressively pruned to hang low for easy picking, and several apple and pear trees espaliered against a south-facing brick wall to make the most of the space. She itched to get her hands dirty, to bury her fingers in the rich, dark soil that was the foundation of Hazel’s gardens.
Just as she reached down to turn off the ignition, Taylor Swift’s “Shake it off” riffed out through the speakers. Penny laughed gleefully and turned up the volume. She popped the trunk latch from her key fob and scrambled out of her seat, leaving the car running so the song could play loud and proud. It would be her summer anthem, she decided, and she let herself shimmy-shimmy-shake-shake to the catchy rhythm of the song.
Eyeing the basket of groceries—nonperishables she’d keep stashed in her room for late-night reading binges—and the bag of her shoes in her back seat, she realized she’d have to make at least two trips. She left the driver’s side door wide open so she could hear the music and bopped her way around to the back of the car. Singing along with the words she knew far too well for someone her age, she shook her backside as she unloaded her small suitcase of clothes and personal items, followed by her much larger duffel bag loaded with the books she’d brought with her. Most of them she’d already read over the last school year; she’d donate those to the Autumn Lake Library when she paid the place a visit in the next few days. But there were several she hadn’t been able to get to, and she was determined to do so before she made her way to The Cracked Spine in town to restock her to-be-read pile. She had a whole new list of books to pick up from Claire Maitland, the owner of the bookstore on Dahlia Drive, so the pressure was on, as the proprietress would say, to get to cracking spines. Book spines, of course.
It had always struck Penny as a bit of a morbid name for a bookstore. Claire acknowledged that it did sound more like a chiropractor’s office than a bookstore, but she didn’t care. “It’s my life’s work to get people reading, and that means cracking some spines. I want them to love books so much they all but fall right into them.” With her waist-length blonde hair, her porcelain features, and her willowy figure, Claire looked like she’d stepped right out of a fairy tale herself.
Penny hoisted the heavy bag of books onto her shoulder, then closed the trunk lid, still singing along with Ms. Swift. It was a little harder to shimmy and shake all loaded up the way she was, especially since her old suitcase had a broken wheel that kept getting stuck sideways. But she still managed a little jiggle-jiggle as she dragged her suitcase toward the front steps of the old waterfront guesthouse where she would be staying for the next two months. The wraparound porch beckoned her already, and she couldn’t wait to fill a Mason jar with Hazel’s homemade lemonade and settle into one of the comfortable old patio chairs with a brand-new romance novel.
She managed to lug her things up the wide steps to the front porch, and although the privacy screen door prevented her from seeing inside, she already knew that the heavy front door stood wide open to allow the cooling breeze from off the water to circulate through the house.
She rapped gently on the screen door, then pulled it open, not waiting to be invited in. There were no formalities at The Garden Gate Guesthouse.
The front parlor sat empty, but that wasn’t unusual, especially this early in the season. Come July, though, when the summer temperatures hit their peak, especially in the middle of the day, guests were much more likely to head inside and make good use of the comfortable furnishings just to stay out of the worst of the midday heat.
“Hazel?” Penny called out, smiling as she heard banging coming from down the hall.
Hazel, the delightfully eccentric proprietress of the bed-and-breakfast, had a bit of a reputation for being a wannabe Rosie the Riveter. She’d fearlessly tackle repairs around the place, only to have to give in and ask for help, often after she’d exacerbated the original problem. The septuagenarian claimed to love being self-sufficient, but sometimes, especially in the last couple of years, Penny got the feeling that Hazel wouldn’t mind having someone around to help her with keeping up with the house and property. The woman had mentioned as much on more than one occasion to Penny.
“For whatever reason, the good Lord didn’t see fit to surround me with a husband and children of my own. Instead, He gave me this house and told me to open up its doors. Sometimes, I admit, it seems more than I can handle on my own, but then, without fail, He sends just the right help my way, and I somehow manage.”
Penny would love nothing more than to be ‘just the right help’ for Hazel, but she knew that was an impossible dream. Her help was desperately needed elsewhere.
Back at home.
But she wasn’t going to think about that.
She left her suitcase and bag of books in the parlor and headed toward the sounds coming from the direction of the stairwell that sat just around the bend at the other end of the hall. She let her fingertips drift over the pattern of the vintage wallpaper, relishing in the familiarity of the kitschy décor. Her footsteps were muffled on the thick wool carpet runner under her feet. Nothing had changed about the place in so long, and as far as she was concerned, that was what made it feel so much like home to her.
Then she heard the buzzing shriek of a saw blade. “Oh, Hazel,” Penny murmured in trepidation. “What on earth?” In a surge of panic, she quickened her pace and rounded the corner, only to stop in surprise at the sight that greeted her.