Page 4 of (Not So) Famous in Paradise

“I’ve got orders to get out. Good seeing you.” I step away from the register and around Britta who’s at the espresso machine now.

“Britta will make your ebelskiver next, Lynette,” I call over the whirring noise to the customer behind Shaylee. “Plain?”

Lynette nods, and her ever-present tinfoil hat moves back and forth across the top of her head. Then I grab the waiting orders and walk to the dining room, putting Shaylee and her snarkiness behind me.

I’d never noticed her low-key passive aggressiveness when we were dating, but then Georgia pointed it out to me one day, and it was so obvious I couldn’t believe how blind I’d been. I broke up with Shaylee the next day.

I nod at Georgia, who smiles back before checking her watch and frowning.

We’ve got time. I know that. But Georgia hates to be late. Her leg bounces up and down. Even if it didn’t, I know how anxious she is to get started. We’ve been talking about this project and the show for years, ever since she inherited the resort from her Grandma Rose a few years ago.

That’s when she first asked me about what she should do with the old, run-down place. She thought about selling it, but even over the phone, I could sense the wheels turning in her head. By the end of our conversation, she’d come up with the idea to pitch a renovation show about the resort to a design channel.

A major cable network loved the concept but wanted to see what she could do with Little Copenhagen before they committed to the show. So, Georgia put her own money into renovating Grandma Rose’s house. But since she was working on another project, her friend Evie managed all the renovations, along with the social media that got people interested in watching more.

Evie’s viral Instagram reels proved that Georgia’s show will be a hit. The producers are all-in now, excited to film us renovating the other eleven cottages, though the budget they gave us is super tight.

The next house up is my Granny Neilsen’s. We’ve got twelve weeks to tear most of it down and build it again. Then everyone around here will be busy getting ready for the summer crowd. And after Memorial Day, this town will feel more like a crowded trip to Disneyland than a peaceful paradise. Shooting will start again after Labor Day.

As I pass by Georgia, carrying orders in both hands and balancing a couple more in my arms, I hear her describing the project to someone over the phone. Probably a reporter. She’s had a few home renovation magazines—like the one by those Chip and Joanna people—interview her about the project.

They don’t interview me. Even though Georgia insists I’m her partner, she’s very much the face of it.

Soooo, maybe Shaylee wasn’t being passive aggressive when she said she’d heard Georgia was renovating the Copenhagen. Maybe it’s me being sensitive about the fact I’m way underqualified to be Georgia’s partner.

I drop a couple of the orders at the table next to hers and overhear her explaining the history of Little Copenhagen. How it’s a couple miles outside of town where the original Danish settlers lived. They wanted to be near the lake, which they named Smuk—Danish for beautiful.

Even though I know the story forwards and backwards, I love the way Georgia tells it, so I stop and listen.

“So, it took about a minute for the original settlers to figure out that farming next to the lake was a no-go.” Her voice bounces in rhythm with her hands, which she always moves when she talks. “They moved away from the lake—anywhere that was flat enough to farm—but they didn’t tear down the rickety old shelters that were supposed to be temporary. They kept them to stay in when they fished the lake. Five miles isn’t far now, by car, but it was back in the day, on foot or by horse.”

I walk away as she’s talking about her Grandma Rose, who at nineteen years old noticed more and more people coming to Paradise for a week or two during the summer. She saw our town would only get more popular, so she talked a local bank into loaning her money. Once she convinced the families of the original settlers to sell her the land, she tore down the old shacks and created a summer resort called Little Copenhagen.

The rest of the story goes like this: the little summer homes, swimming pool, and cafes—including the original Britta’s, owned by my Granny Neilsen’s—were for locals, not vacationers. That’s the deal Grandma Rose had made with the families who’d sold their land. Many of them had opened businesses in town to cater to the growing number of tourists.

Since the local families spent most of the summer in town, it made sense for them to have places where they could stay. So, Grandma Rose signed seventy-five-year leases with them. She owned the land and cottages, but they, their children, and their grandchildren had a guaranteed place to go every summer, with the stipulation that the cottages couldn’t be rented out.

Was it a good business decision to bind herself to the very generous lease terms for that many years? Not really. But money wasn’t the goal. The goal was to hold onto the sense of community the families shared in the face of Paradise becoming a popular destination spot. All of them—including Grandma Rose—could trade off looking after each other’s kids because they were in closer proximity to each other. They could gather at night, talk over campfires on Little Copenhagen’s private beach, play cards, or just look at the stars.

For a long time, she achieved her goal of community. According to my mom, Little Copenhagen was idyllic, and though she passed away a few years ago, Grandma Rose is still a legend around here.

But twenty years ago or so, tourism here really took off. Suddenly Paradise and Smuk Lake became the place to be, and the population swelled by thousands every summer. Which meant locals could make more money selling their farmland to people looking to build big vacation homes than they could working it.

The families who’d lived in Paradise and come to Little Copenhagen for generations moved away. Or they built their own big houses from the money they’d made selling their property.

Even when Georgia and I were kids, staying summers at the resort with our grandparents, fewer families were coming to Little Copenhagen, and Grandma Rose couldn’t stay on top of the upkeep on the cottages. Rent for the houses stayed the same, but the costs for maintaining them kept rising, which meant they looked more run down every year.

But Georgia and I had loved spending our summers together at the resort.

I pick up the last of the ready orders, then glance at her. She’s still on the phone, but she raises her hands, palms up, in a question. I quickly drop off the orders, then swing by her table.

“Yours is on the way,” I tell her. “Britta was slammed when I got here this morning.” I gesture toward the long line in front of MeKylie’s register, then head back to the counter.

This crowd isn’t normal for mid-February. I suspect most people are here to get a look at the TV crew setting up before we get to work on the renovations. Everything is visible out the east-facing windows of Britta’s. Granny Neilsen’s cottage—a place as much a home to me as the one I grew up in—is the first house scheduled for on-air renovations.

I’m sorry to see the old place change, but Georgia and I are committed to keeping the feeling of hygge that Grandma Rose created when she built the resort. Even though, along with renovating all the cottages, we plan to build timeshare condos, we still want this place to feel like a big family.

The architecture of the new houses and the condos will keep the same simplicity and functionality as the old cottages. In most cases, we’re keeping as much of the original construction as possible. Everything will have the same mid-century modern feel that’s sleek and sophisticated, but also homey.

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