Episode 19: Puppy love

"Our parents always had a lot of money; Grandfather had a chain of hotels all over the world as well as a lot of business interests in countries that always seemed to be at war. When he died, Father took over the business. He met Mama in Europe somewhere and they always lived there. When we were born, not that we remember it, we were always shuttling between the French Riviera, Biarritz, places like that. Mama died in a skiing accident, somewhere, when we were very young."

"Father is a successful business person. He is nice to us and everything; when he's in the country, he's always taking us to places like Disneyworld, SeaWorld and places like that but that is maybe two weeks out of every three months. He feels like he has to 'make up' for the fact that we have no mother to take care of us so, if anything, he works even harder now than before to make sure we never lack for anything. But we hardly ever see him. We were raised by servants and tutors hired by Father. Apart from the kids at summer camp, we've only known one boy our age, the son of our old chauffeur but he left when his wife got cancer."

That night, in their tent after lights out but before Lisa had come to bed as well, Linda, Karen and Heather spent a lot of time talking quietly with each other.

The following morning at dawn, when Lisa first stepped out of her tent, Ginger was already up, sitting pensively at one of the picnic tables.

'Hey, Ginger. What's up? How come you're up this early?"

"Couldn't sleep..."

"Was it Karen and Heather's story, last night?"

"No ... their story was interesting and all that; people are always saying that if they had more money, they'd be happier but here we have two people with more money than they know what to do with and they're no happier ... if anything, I'd say they're worse off that we are. It's kinda sad, somehow. But that isn't it."

"Oh? I'm putting some water on for coffee ... can I make you a hot cocoa?"

"You know what ... I think I wouldn't mind trying some coffee too ... I'd like to talk with you and it's not a hot cocoa kind of talk."

"Oh... ? Alright ... Give me a minute, then, and I'll be with you."

After she had poured some boiling water into the coffeemaker and pushed down the piston, she poured two cups of coffee, added milk and sugar to both and handed one cup to Ginger. Usually, she took hers with just a bit of sugar to cut the bitterness but she figured that Ginger would need some companionship rather than a kick in the stomach.

"Let's walk down to the beach; we'll be quiet there and I'm sure the sun shining over the lake will be just lovely."

To one side of the beach, there was a massive orange granite boulder fully exposed to the morning sun. They sat down on the sun-warmed stone and sipped their coffee. Lisa was in no hurry.