said, picking up her bags and calmly walking down to the garage.
Foster’s Island sat in the western corner of a shallow, kidney-shaped body of water in the town of Anderson, Massachusetts. In the 1940s, farmers had dammed up the lower eastern runoff, turning swampland into pond. The western side of Foster’s Pond retained its marshy appearance, while the dam had become a famous local postcard image of solid stone and concrete, with a gentle waterfall tumbling down the spill.
Very little remained of the original Weir farm. The developers who’d taken the farm in the land grab of the late ’90s had scraped the topsoil down to the clay, hacked down the ancient fruit orchards and grape vines, and had leveled the rambling New Englander in whose kitchen Sunny first explored her love of cooking. Her grandmother, too, had been a strong and powerful woman. Rachel Weir had run the farm and cared for a sick husband after Grandpa Wally came down with the Big C. She’d also raised Sunny while still managing, every night of every week, to put a delicious, sunny-bright meal on the table.
“And I didn’t have to strap on a dildo in order to appreciate her cuisine,” Sunny huffed under her breath, channeling her Inner Bitch.
The farm was gone, and a neighborhood of nondescript houses you could find in any uppity development now stood there in its place, each wreathed in lawns too green to believe as being real. Only the boathouse remained, and it still contained Grandpa Wally’s old row-boat—now equipped with a motor. Sunny had managed to hold onto that, and by the time her star had begun to rise, she’d purchased the island, with its house and outbuildings, from the town of Anderson. In seven seasons of Sunny’s Side Up , she’d traveled to Paris, Provence, Madrid, and a dozen other culinary capitols. But Massachusetts would always be more inspiring to her, because it was home.
Sunny pulled up to the boathouse, a weathered but sturdy structure likely more solid than the houses rising through breaks in the trees at the far side of the road that used to be Weir farmland. She’d made her escape without so much as one click of the camera, and fate smiled down on her here as well, not a money-grubbing shutterbug in sight. She’d packed lightly. A few canvas shopping bags filled with the decadent essentials—lemons and limes, bottles of seltzer water, fresh asparagus and salad things—quickly filled the spaces between the seats where she and Grandpa Wally once sat in her sepia-colored memories.
Sunny started the boat’s motor. Since buying Foster’s Island, which could only be accessed by boat six months of the year, she’d conceded she was a passenger, not a rower, and headed out. She checked her cell phone. The two bars at the boathouse had dwindled to one halfway across the water. No coverage. No wireless internet. No distractions, like Joseph.
“Heavenly,” she said aloud.
Wind swept around her, carrying the earthy smell of the woods and water, the wildflowers growing in little sheltered corners of the island, and the late-morning sunshine. Such a sunny day, she thought with a smile. In more ways than one.
The island rose before her, three acres of former hilltop, studded with ancient sap pines, hemlocks, skeletal white birch, maples, and various wild berry patches—blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry. Over the past few years, the perennials she’d planted around the house became actual gardens. Even from the distance, vibrant pops of yellows and crimson glittered through the layered green foliage. The clematis had climbed partway up the side of the house, she saw.
The house was a two-story cottage, sitting atop a stone cellar. Gabled roof, brick fireplace, a wraparound deck complete with Adirondack chairs. One of Sunny’s favorite memories of growing up on the farm was the day the Indians came chugging down the road— it was a dirt road back then—in a big pickup truck whose bed was stacked full of
Foster’s Island sat in the western corner of a shallow, kidney-shaped body of water in the town of Anderson, Massachusetts. In the 1940s, farmers had dammed up the lower eastern runoff, turning swampland into pond. The western side of Foster’s Pond retained its marshy appearance, while the dam had become a famous local postcard image of solid stone and concrete, with a gentle waterfall tumbling down the spill.
Very little remained of the original Weir farm. The developers who’d taken the farm in the land grab of the late ’90s had scraped the topsoil down to the clay, hacked down the ancient fruit orchards and grape vines, and had leveled the rambling New Englander in whose kitchen Sunny first explored her love of cooking. Her grandmother, too, had been a strong and powerful woman. Rachel Weir had run the farm and cared for a sick husband after Grandpa Wally came down with the Big C. She’d also raised Sunny while still managing, every night of every week, to put a delicious, sunny-bright meal on the table.
“And I didn’t have to strap on a dildo in order to appreciate her cuisine,” Sunny huffed under her breath, channeling her Inner Bitch.
The farm was gone, and a neighborhood of nondescript houses you could find in any uppity development now stood there in its place, each wreathed in lawns too green to believe as being real. Only the boathouse remained, and it still contained Grandpa Wally’s old row-boat—now equipped with a motor. Sunny had managed to hold onto that, and by the time her star had begun to rise, she’d purchased the island, with its house and outbuildings, from the town of Anderson. In seven seasons of Sunny’s Side Up , she’d traveled to Paris, Provence, Madrid, and a dozen other culinary capitols. But Massachusetts would always be more inspiring to her, because it was home.
Sunny pulled up to the boathouse, a weathered but sturdy structure likely more solid than the houses rising through breaks in the trees at the far side of the road that used to be Weir farmland. She’d made her escape without so much as one click of the camera, and fate smiled down on her here as well, not a money-grubbing shutterbug in sight. She’d packed lightly. A few canvas shopping bags filled with the decadent essentials—lemons and limes, bottles of seltzer water, fresh asparagus and salad things—quickly filled the spaces between the seats where she and Grandpa Wally once sat in her sepia-colored memories.
Sunny started the boat’s motor. Since buying Foster’s Island, which could only be accessed by boat six months of the year, she’d conceded she was a passenger, not a rower, and headed out. She checked her cell phone. The two bars at the boathouse had dwindled to one halfway across the water. No coverage. No wireless internet. No distractions, like Joseph.
“Heavenly,” she said aloud.
Wind swept around her, carrying the earthy smell of the woods and water, the wildflowers growing in little sheltered corners of the island, and the late-morning sunshine. Such a sunny day, she thought with a smile. In more ways than one.
The island rose before her, three acres of former hilltop, studded with ancient sap pines, hemlocks, skeletal white birch, maples, and various wild berry patches—blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry. Over the past few years, the perennials she’d planted around the house became actual gardens. Even from the distance, vibrant pops of yellows and crimson glittered through the layered green foliage. The clematis had climbed partway up the side of the house, she saw.
The house was a two-story cottage, sitting atop a stone cellar. Gabled roof, brick fireplace, a wraparound deck complete with Adirondack chairs. One of Sunny’s favorite memories of growing up on the farm was the day the Indians came chugging down the road— it was a dirt road back then—in a big pickup truck whose bed was stacked full of
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