The Guest Cottage Read Online Free PDF Page A

green, breaking through to a slight rise in the land. There was the house, massive, shabby, and enchanting, its windows sparkling in the sunlight.
    “Wow,” Lacey exclaimed. “That’s enormous.”
    Sophie stopped her car in front of the house and took a deep breath. It was the last day of June, hot but not too hot, breezy but not windy.
Here we go,
she thought.
Stick with me, Aunt Fancy.
    In the few moments Sophie paused, her kids unsnapped their seat belts and exploded from the car.
    “Hurry up, Mom,” called Lacey. “I want to see the inside!”
    Sophie walked to the front door beneath the clusters of thick violet wisteria, inserted the key, and unlocked it.
    The kids burst into the house, racing through the rooms, screaming and shouting. When Jonah was around other people, he treated his ten-year-old sister like an indulged pet. But when they were alone, Jonah became a kid again. Sophie paused, standing in the doorway with her eyes closed, reveling in the sound of her children together and happy. So maybe it would be okay.
    She entered the house. It was hot and stuffy from being closed up all winter. A center hall led straight through to the back, dividing the house. She walked to the right, the room Susie had called the library, and began opening the large windows. Whoever had been here last had left a paperback of
Great Expectations
open on the sofa. She smiled.
    Footsteps thundered as the children raced up the stairs to the second floor. More shouts filled the air—happy shouts.
    “Aunt Fancy, you clever old dear.” Sophie squeezed herself as her heart began to fill just the tiniest bit, perhaps one-eighth in a large cup, with hope.
    She crossed the hall into the large living room and opened the door to the addition extending between the main house and the apartment. Susie had said the connecting room was built especially for her aunt, a rather eccentric relative who was obsessed with the piano (
thank heavens for eccentric aunts,
Sophie thought). Because of her, this music room existed, an elegant chamber that seemed to have been lifted from a Viennese music hall.
Zack,
Sophie thought,
would have called it old-fashioned.
Thick Turkish rugs gleamed like satin against the dark wooden floors, a sparkling crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and gilt-framed paintings of concerts and pianists covered the walls. A long, deep-cushioned sofa, covered in pink roses strewn over an icy white background, sat against one wall.
    In the middle of the room was a Steinway baby grand.
    That the piano was here astonished Sophie—and cracked open the firmly shut door on her memories and on an enormous and profound part of her most essential self. She hadn’t played piano for sixteen years, but how could she not play again here?

R iver Ford—yes, his parents had named him that—was Trevor’s second-in-command and only full-time employee. Trevor paid River well, but River was what he called
relaxed
about the way he spent money and seldom had a stable place to live. When Trevor suggested that River live in Trevor’s apartment for the months of July and August, rent free, with only a few small domestic duties, River had jumped at the chance.
    The day had come for Trevor and Leo to make the trip to Nantucket. Trevor was slightly nervous about leaving his stuff in the care of his brilliant but absentminded friend. Before he left, Trevor sat River down and made him look at the list that would be attached to the refrigerator door, and to the bathroom wall next to the mirror, and to the desk next to the motherboard.
    “Read it aloud,” Trevor ordered.
    “Oh, man, come on!” River had a high-pitched voice and a tendency to giggle.
    Trevor glared at him.
    River sighed. “ ‘One. No smoking weed in the house. Two. Phone me every morning at ten a.m. Three. Clean aquarium once a week. I mean it, River.’ ”
    Trevor’s red-haired employee made a face at him. “Dude. And you think your
son
is anal?”
    Trevor folded his