Page 1 of The Magic We Made

Frankie

I’m ripping weeds from between the bricks of my front walkway when a Summer Person wanders over from the rental next door.

“Why, hello, there!” she cries as she picks her way across what had once been my home’s beautifully manicured front lawn.

But now the lush green grass has turned to bare patches of dry dirt, the flowers have all died, and there’s a stray cat living under the steps to my front porch.

“Are you Dr. Francesca Giovanni?” the Summer Person asks in a too-cheerful tone.

“Frankie.” Dealing with Summer People is the price you have to pay for living in paradise, Dad always said. “You can call me Frankie. How can I help you?”

NotHow are you doing.NotGood to meet you.Because it’s clear how the woman is doing: not great, if the way she’s hugging her thick, knee-length cardigan around herself on such a warm September day is any indication.

And I’m not sure whether it’s good to meet her. She looks like she may have a problem that’s even worse than a stray cat under her porch—a problem she’s about to unload on me.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” she says, still with obviously false cheer. “I’m Ruth Baumgarten, your new neighbor. My husband and I recently moved in next door.”

I don’t bother pointing out the many factual errors in this statement. Mrs. Baumgarten is not my new neighbor. She is merely renting my neighbor Ash Merit’s house so that she can escape her own life for the next thirty days. After that she and her husband will leave, and then Ash—or rather, the management company he’s hired—will find new renters. Ash himself has never spent more than a night or two in the house. He bought it last year as a vacation rental property.

And Mrs. Baumgarten doesnotjust want to introduce herself. She wants something from me. Summer People always want something. Never mind that Labor Day is long past so technically, summer is over. A Summer Person is always a Summer Person, no matter what day it is.

“I’m so sorry to bother you while you’re, um, gardening.” The well-toned, middle-aged white woman glances uncertainly at the weeds I’ve flung around.

“Yeah, I’m not too sure gardening is the word for it, either.” I steal a look at the front porch. No movement, despite the mound of tuna I’ve left on a paper plate in the dirt beside the steps. What is wrong with this cat? “Is there something I can help you with?”

I ask this not because I’m such a kind person, but because the sooner Mrs. Baumgarten leaves, the sooner I can go back to pretending I’m weeding, and not trying to lure a stray cat into my house like a crazy person.

“Oh, yes.” Her gaze flickers briefly back toward Ash’s house. “This is going to sound odd, but I... well, I heard that you’re good with... unusual phenomena.”

“Really?” This is a new one. Most Summer People only ever want to know the town’s recycling schedule or where they can find the freshest produce, even though I happen to know all of this information is listed in a binder sitting in Ash’s house. I know this because I’m the one who made the binder, then demanded that my friend Rochelle, who works at the rental company, put it there so Ash’s renters would stop coming over to ask me these things. “Who told you that?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Baumgarten says. “The man who lives with you.”

I don’t live with a man. At least, not anymore.

Buy your own home,Dad said.It’ll be a good investment,Dad said.

What Dad failed to mention is that when you buy your own home, you have to do everything, like weeding and catching stray cats, yourself... especially when the person you bought it with decides to dump you and take off in a catamaran to sail around the world with his yoga instructor.

Then I realize Mrs. Baumgarten isn’t talking about my ex, Richard, but my younger brother. “Oh, you must meanMark.”

“Yes,Mark.” Mrs. Baumgarten smiles—though not with her eyes, I notice. They remain anxious. “That’s what he said his name was. I ran into him yesterday as he was leaving your place, and I just happened to mention my concern. He said I ought to speak to you about it.”

“Concern?” I purposefully bought a house on the edge of a naturepreserve so I could have a minimum of nosy neighbors telling me their concerns.

Just my luck to get someone renting next door who wants to do exactly that.

“Yes, it’s very concerning. I’m sure your young man must have thought I was insane.” Mrs. Baumgarten is laughing at herself, but the laughter has an edge to it. “But he was kind enough to listen, and I truly was at the end of my rope. Normally, I don’t believe in this kind of thing, but there’s just no other explanation for what happened.”

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she called Mark my “young man” when she goes on, “I read that West Harbor has very little crime—that people around here don’t even bother to lock their doors. I mean, justlookat this place.”

She gestures back toward Ash’s house, a gorgeous multi-deck three-bedroom with views that, like mine, look out over Walker Lake, the twenty-nine-acre wooded island in the center of it (imaginatively named “Center Island” by Colonial settlers), and the thick woods of the nature preserve across the water.

Unlike mine, however, Ash’s house also features a three-car garage, wine cellar, sauna, private dock complete with four personal watercraft, kayaks, vintage wooden speedboat, and a massive stereo system with outdoor speakers all around his deck. Twice this past summer I’ve had to sneak over to that deck in the middle of the night and snip the cables to those speakers because Ash tends to rent to people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to blast Jimmy Buffett outdoors at top volume all day and night, including when they’re out on the lake in the boat and too far away even to hear it.

I have nothing against music—even Jimmy Buffett—except when it’s disturbing the pastoral tranquility of the lake.

Fortunately Ruth Baumgarten doesn’t look like much of a fan of yacht rock, Jimmy Buffett or otherwise.