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A month after Luka’s arrival, the summer help began to show up, like the two young women standing before my desk.
“I’m Olivia Vandenberg. Welcome to the Ranch.” I stood and shook hands. One was tall with pale blue eyes and long, blond hair cascading over her shoulders. The other was short and petite, with brown hair cropped into a bob and eyes so dark they were nearly black.
“Ingrid Norgaard?”
The tall beauty spoke up. “That’s me.”
“Ingrid is a beautiful name.”
“It was kind of a stupid name for a kid,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re growing into it. And you must be Greta Schneider.”
“That’s me.”
And because I said something nice about Ingrid’s name, I felt compelled to do the same. “And Greta is a lovely name, too.”
“Yeah, right,” Greta replied.
“Welcome, ladies. Greta, you’ll be working in the kitchen with our chef Sam and serving in the cookhouse for all three meals—food setup, take down, and dishes. You’ll also be cleaning cabin rooms between guests. We don’t do a daily service. Kathy Stokes manages the cookhouse/dining hall and housekeeping. She’ll be setting up your schedule, getting your name badges and training you. I have to warn you, the food here is delicious and there’s lots of it. I gained five pounds my first month.”
“Great,” said tall, slender Ingrid, sounding seriously enthusiastic.
“Great,” Greta said with a sarcastic tone. “Just what I need. Five more pounds.”
“Ingrid,” I continued, “you asked specifically to be part of the horseback riding staff, and your application says you’re experienced with horses.” I studied Ingrid’s paperwork, then looked back up at the tall girl. “You’ll be helping Brady Yates in the stables and on some trail rides. Also, as we talked about on the phone, you’ll be running a weeklong horse camp in July. The horse-campers are mostly girls age eight to thirteen. It’s a new program that filled up as soon as we advertised it. Brady says no way he’s doing it, so we need someone who is comfortable working with kids.”
“That’ll be fun,” Ingrid said. “I’ve already been researching ideas.”
“Good. We’re happy you’re here. It’s pretty simple living. No TV. No going out with friends.” I glanced at their applications. “You’re both from Bellevue. I see you both just graduated from Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. It’s a long way from private school to a wilderness camp. What brings you two to the wilderness? ”
They both nodded. “We wanted to try something totally different for the summer, before we go to college,” Greta said.
“And college will be?”
“Stanford,” they said in unison.
Good lord, would these two last even a week?
A knock rapped as the door opened and Luka began to walk inside. He stopped short when he saw the girls. “I am interrupting,” he apologized.
His politeness was sweet. “Not at all,” I assured him. “Thanks for coming by. We’ll be leaving in about thirty minutes to pick up supplies at the dock. Will you meet me out front by the pickup? Ingrid, Greta, this is Luka Novak, our kayak instructor and electrician.”
Luka nodded to the girls, who gazed up at him, then looked back to me.
“I’ll be there,” Luka assured me, then disappeared out the door.
Greta leaned into Ingrid. “He’s hot,” she whispered.
“He’s old,” Ingrid replied, then glanced at me wearing an apologetic expression. “We’ve spent the last twelve years in an all-girls school. Greta thinks anything that walks and has a penis is hot.”
“How crass,” Greta said in mock horror.
“He’s only thirty-three,” I said miserably. Younger than me.
“Like I said, old,” Ingrid said.
I looked at Ingrid for a heartbeat. “I suppose age is relative. Let me walk you over to meet Kathy. But first I’ll show you your room options.”
They followed me out the door, bickering good-naturedly with one another.
We looked at small rooms without bathrooms located above the dining room. “You use the communal bathroom and shower down on the main floor,” I said as they peered into the compact bedrooms.
“Next choice is close to the horse corral. Follow me.”
We trooped downstairs and out the back door of the dining room and followed a trail that led through a meadow filled with lush, green spring grass and wildflowers, to the horse corral. Set back from the horses on the fringe of the forest sat a small cabin, its wood weathered to a dark brown. The place appeared abandoned, and both girls gaped skeptically.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.
Greta pointed to a little building about twenty yards away from the cabin, with a half-moon carved into the front door. “Is that what I think it is?” Her voice dripped with disgust.
“Yup, I’m afraid so. It’s an outhouse. Like the rooms we just looked at, this cabin has no bathroom. It does have a kitchen sink with cold running water that drains out to the yard. There’s no electricity here. You’d be roughing it. Once again, you have to use the community bathroom in the main building.”
Here we go. The reality of what these two ingenues have gotten themselves into is sinking in.
Ingrid and Greta looked at one another and followed me into the murky interior. I pushed open curtains in the living room where windows opened toward the corrals. The kitchen had a small sink, countertop, a few built in cupboards, and a small, round, wood table with four wood Shaker-style chairs. The living room held a well-worn couch and a rectangular oak coffee table.
“The bedroom’s through that door.” I pointed.
The girls peeked into a small room with two full-sized beds on either side with a bedside table and battery lamp between. Ingrid opened the curtains on the single window that peered out toward the outhouse.
They returned. “This works just great,” Ingrid beamed.
Greta looked at her friend aghast. “Ingrid, what if we have to pee in the middle of the night? We’ll have to go all the way to the main building in the dark. No way am I using that.” She nodded toward the outhouse.
“I think we could pee just about anywhere outside here at night. Isn’t that right?” Ingrid looked at me expectantly.
“When you live in nature, the whole world is your toilet.” I smiled.
“Eww!” Greta scrunched her face.
“Come on, Gret,” Ingrid cajoled her friend. “It’ll be fun. It’ll be like camping, only more comfortable.”
Greta balked. “I’ll think about it, but this may be where we part ways. At least in the main building, I just have to go downstairs to use the bathroom.”
Ingrid turned to me resolutely. “I’ll take it.”
