There was an old woman sitting on that porch in an oversized wicker chair. Annie was guessing she was maybe in her eighties, thin, with silver hair pulled back tightly. She peered in Annie’s direction through thick-framed round glasses. On a small table next to her sat a cup of coffee or tea or, who knew, maybe something a little stronger.

Annie figured it was never too soon to introduce herself. This wasn’t New York, after all, where you could live next door to someone for years and never know their name. Time to make more of an effort.

But when she raised her hand in a friendly wave, the woman did not respond. Annie surmised those glasses she was wearing weren’t for distance, so she strolled down to the foot of the driveway and called out, “Hello! My name’s Annie and my son and I are taking the house for the summer and I just wanted to say—”

But the woman was putting her hands on the arms of the chair, slowly pushing herself up, and turning her back to Annie. She went inside and closed the door with enough force that Annie could hear it from across the road.

She stood there a moment, slightly dumbstruck, then shrugged and turned around to start unpacking, thinking maybe it would be easier to get used to her new surroundings than she might have first thought.

“Just like New York,” she said under her breath.

Five

There was some settling in to do.

Despite being told that the kitchen was well stocked, Annie had brought a few things, including Charlie’s favorite cereal, the chocolate chip cookies he liked, a dozen authentic New York bagels that she put into the freezer to get them through the first week until she found something nearby that might fill the void. She got her clothes and Charlie’s unpacked and put away in their respective bedrooms and set up their toiletry items. There was a bathroom attached to the larger bedroom, which Annie took, and a smaller one in the hall that would be for Charlie.

It was late afternoon by the time she had all that done. She was going to propose heading into nearby Fenelon, the closest town, to see what it had to offer, but an exploratory trip like that could go on indefinitely and turn into a dinner out, and they’d already had a fast-food feast at lunch, so Annie decided that could wait a day. Whoever’d stocked the place to Finnegan’s specifications had loaded the freezer with several prepared entrées. Annie found a meat lasagna in there, and a bag of salad in the fridge that would serve nicely for a first meal in their new digs.