“A lot has changed. Especially in the past year and a half with the new mayor,” the driver said.
He turned onto Main Street. Just like every other part of town we’d driven through, nothing looked familiar.
ME: Just pulling up now.
ME: Parks, I lived here for the first ten years of my life.
ME: Nothing looks the same.
ME: Not even the house.
The two-story, brick-front home looked like it had just been cleaned up. The black shutters appeared newly painted. The landscaping boasted beautiful hydrangea bushes, a pair of holly shrubs, and a rhododendron. At each of the lower windows hung sturdy black flower boxes that exploded with gorgeous chartreuse potato vines, blue lobelia, red dracaena, and yellow million bells.
It made me wonder if there was a florist in town who needed some help from a disgraced and blacklisted flower junkie and event planner. Not that they need to know that I am disgraced. I could be anything that I wanted to be here. My lousy history didn’t have to follow me back. I could be successful, revered, impressive. An admired astronaut or lauded lawyer or even a talented teacher.
I laughed to myself. Or someone who loved alliteration way too much.
As I stared up at the house, Parker’s words from earlier played in my head on repeat before I hung up. Start of something new …
Whatever this trip to Hope Lake turned out to be, one thing stayed the same: I had to make the most of it.
Entering the house was a good place to start. And yet …
My grandmother, whom I had always called Gigi, loved her bright-red office door. She felt that it welcomed everyone into the practice. It did have an addition to it, though: a large bicycle wheel covered in white anemones, hanging from the front door like a wreath. It definitely wasn’t something I would ever think Gigi would pick out, but there it was. It seemed that my dad left the door the same when he took over.
As my eyes scanned the building, the sun winked against the familiar brass plaque just to the left of the front door. My chest warmed seeing that it still read THE DOCTORS BISHOP: DR. IMOGEN BISHOP & DR. ANDREW BISHOP. I wondered why they didn’t take the sign down to reflect Gigi’s retirement.
As I contemplated my next move, my phone buzzed with a response text from Parker.
PARKS AND REC: It’s been years, C. I’m sure a lot has changed. P.S. Glad you’re not dead.
ME: Yet we don’t know how my dad will react.
PARKS AND REC: Oh, please.
PARKS AND REC: I’ll probably hear his joyful crying from here.
PARKS AND REC: Call me after a nap.
PARKS AND REC: Love you.
ME: You too.
“Lady.”
Startled, I jumped. “Sorry, what?” I’d been so zoned out I had forgotten all about him.
“Are you going to get out or just sit here staring at the building?” the driver asked, turning around with an annoyed expression. “I got another call back in Mount Hazel.”
I shook my head to clear it. “Sorry about that. I feel like I’m lost. I mean I was lost in thought.” I stopped myself. This guy couldn’t care less about my life story.
Stuffing my phone into my purse, I slid out of the truck, the plastic bag I was sitting on stuck to my butt. I sighed, mentally measuring the distance between the sidewalk and the porch with ten steep steps leading up to the front door.
Just like before, the driver didn’t offer any help with my luggage, instead choosing to play Candy Crush on his phone. By the time I got to the last suitcase, I’d added his rudeness to the list of why I already hated it here.
After he’d pulled away, I sat on the top step, leaning against the pile of what made up my life. The town hadn’t quite opened up yet. There was a startling difference between the little shops of Hope Lake and those on my street in Brooklyn. There were no pull-down cages to cover the front doors. From my vantage point, it didn’t look like the doors were deadbolted or hardwired with a security system.
Across the street there was a grouping of small businesses, not a chain store in sight, which was refreshing. A tiny bookstore, a small café that looked like it sold coffee and ice cream. I made a mental note to visit that one later.
As I glanced around the office’s small porch, I noted that all the store signage was bright, cheerful, and free of cracks or chips, at least from where I was standing. Maybe it was an odd thing to focus on, but when you expect the place to resemble something out of a dystopian novel, you tend to pick up the small and odd details.
The one thing that was similar to New York was that the birds were loud, chirping away on the tree-lined streets surrounding the office/house where I’d be living for the next however many months.
Months.
I had a lot of unanswered questions. The living arrangement had been on the top of the list. Something about the unusual burst of flowers outside the office made me think, Maybe Dad has a girlfriend. It wasn’t something that we ever brought up. My parents’ personal lives after their contentious divorce was a no-fly zone that all of us respected. Right up until my mother’s death, I had no idea if she was seeing someone. It was something that neither parent ever brought up with me around.
If my father did have someone staying here with him, I wasn’t about to cramp their style by staying in the house.
Where am I going to go?
Know what would help?
A plan.
I ignored my darkening thoughts and stood up to stretch. There was a police car circling the roundabout that surrounded the town square. As the sun brightened the sky, burning off any remnants of the rain and fog, I found myself unable to focus on anything but one word.
Sleep.
That was the goal, at least. Except the policeman slowed his cruiser in front of the building, quickly flashing his lights for a moment, almost as if it was accidental. Or as if he thought I was a hardened criminal who had just robbed the place and decided to take in the sunrise with my stolen goods.
“Can I help you, miss? The doc doesn’t open until eight,” he said through the opened passenger window. He shifted, glancing around me to see the suitcases. “Ma’am?”
I didn’t want to shout, given that one of the ground-floor office windows was open. Descending the front stairs, I smiled at him, remembering him, sort of. He looked the same as he’d been back when I was ten, still pudgy around the middle, but his once-black hair was heavily salted at the temples now.
“Do you remember me, Officer Birdy?” I asked, smiling. I tried remembering the last time I had seen him. At school? Maybe at the house during one of my parents’ riotous fights? That wasn’t it. There was a memory scratching at the surface that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
He tapped the badge on his chest. “It’s Chief Birdy now,” he said proudly, his whiskery mustache still curled up at the edges when he smiled. “And you?” He paused to take a good look at me.
Twenty-one years later and I still had the same curly reddish-brown hair that never seemed to do what I wanted. At least with it shoulder-length, the waywardness didn’t appear so unintentional. Though I did still look a lot like Little Orphan Annie.
I smirked as my identity dawned on him. “My goodness, I dare say you’re Doc Bishop’s little Charlotte. I’d recognize you anywhere.”
His little Charlotte.
I guess that’s how people here remembered me. The only child of the prominent small-town doctor and his always-wandering ex-wife. I would forever be “little Charlotte,” regardless of my age.