Page 42 of This Moment

“Let me take your coat, and I’ll hang it in the coat closet.”

Cadie slipped out of her coat and handed it to me.

After hanging up her coat, I pointed to a door. “Um, to the right is a half bath,” I said as I opened the door to show her the bathroom. “This hallway will take you to the first guest bedroom.”

We walked down a small hall and into the first bedroom. It was decorated like the main part of the house, with exposed wood from floor to ceiling. There was a queen-size bed, and the large picture window had a view of the lake.

“This door is a bathroom. It’s not connected to the bedroom, so my mother always called this the backup room.”

“The backup room?” she asked.

“Yeah, if someone showed up late or came to visit last minute, they went into this room.”

She nodded and followed me into the bathroom. It was my least favorite bathroom, and I felt my mother made it that way on purpose.

“Back out here is the living room.”

“Wow, look at that fireplace! It is massive!” She gasped when she looked up. “You have a moose head on the fireplace!”

I laughed. “We do.”

Turning to look at me, she asked, “Who killed it?”

I studied the moose and replied, “I think my grandfather, or maybe one of my father’s brothers, I don’t remember. It wasn’t my father. He hates to hunt.”

“And you?”

With a shrug, I said, “I like to sit and watch them. Not much of a hunter myself.”

Cadie looked around. “All the wood. It’s breathtaking.”

“Yeah, this room is mostly for show, as you can tell by the furniture. It’s not very comfortable to sit in.”

She pointed. “That nook looks comfortable.”

I laughed. “Macy used to love to sit there and read.”

“I can see why. Look at that lake view!”

“Those doors slide open so you can walk out onto the deck. Kind of feels like it brings the outdoors in.”

“I bet,” she replied.

I nodded and started toward the kitchen. “You have to walk through the dining room to get to the kitchen if you’re in the living room; otherwise, just turn to the left once you walk in, and the other entrance is near the steps that lead upstairs. It’s not an open floorplan like most of the homes today. My grandfather built this in, I think, 1947, maybe.”

She nodded and took in the dining room. “The table is huge!”

“Yeah, too bad we hardly ever sit at it.”

Cadie frowned. “That’s a shame.”

“This is the kitchen.”

We walked into the large open kitchen. “We spent much of our time in this area of the house.”

“The wood on the ceiling! And those beams!”

I glanced up to the tongue and groove wood ceiling. Large beams ran crisscross across the length of the kitchen and small family room.

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