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Teaching all day was exactly what Clara needed. It would distract her from the business of contesting the will.
It would also give her a chance to be away from her sisters and really think about their question. What did she want?
First period was a blur, a mess of papers and excuses for not having papers and following up on the sub’s notes. By the time second period began, Clara finally had a chance to sit at her desk, check emails, and sip coffee.
Her students sat quietly, completing their bell work, and Clara knocked out a flurry of housekeeping messages; there would be an assembly on Friday; tardy lunch students were being rerouted to the library; ticket prices for the promotion dance were going up, up, up! Get yours today!
It reminded Clara of her own middle school experience. The hope of being asked to a dance. The nervousness about starting high school.
Most kids who had older siblings, enjoyed something of a paved road—for better or worse. Amelia had it harder. Teachers had loved Kate. Or at least, that was Clara’s impression. To follow in her footsteps was to succeed a lovable queen to the throne. But then Amelia, with her creative energy and free spirit, set the bar low for Megan. Megan, more Type A but less lovable, simply enjoyed the experience of knowing almost everyone who was in the upper grades. It offered her a buffer. A reputation.
Then came Clara, twelve years younger than Megan. Most of her sisters’ teachers were retired or long gone by then, and no students had ever heard of a Hannigan child. They only knew about the Hannigan family. The earliest settlers of the area. The name was more like a story than an identifier of real people. It had turned Clara into an only child with a history. An odd thing to be.
Now, as she sat at her computer, finished with emails, neat stacks of papers to grade towering to the left of her keyboard, she felt an itch.
A list-making itch. Not the pros/cons type. More like the goal-setting type of list she’d forced her churlish students to compose months back at the start of the second semester.
She pushed her keyboard aside and pulled open the small notebook she kept for her personal notes. Shuffling through a few pages of shopping lists and one to-do list, she landed on a blank page with thin pink lines running orderly across.
At the top, Clara titled it: Personal Goals.
Beneath that, she pushed the tip of her Ticonderoga onto the start of a new line—a new word... a new sentence... anything.
But nothing came.
She flipped the page. On the next blank sheet, she added a different title: Hannigan Estate.
Beneath that, she found her rhythm, jotting down each of the four properties and even some of the belongings she recalled from the reading of the will. Lastly, she added a few mementos she had wanted to keep for herself, such as her grandmother’s afghans and a hope chest that she once heard about but never did see with her own two eyes.
Beside each item, she listed who she felt best matched with each property. To Clara, it didn’t make sense to sell the house on the harbor. At least, not yet. It was too important. Too historic. But also, too much work. Perhaps Kate was a good fit? She needed to move anyway. Of course, she’d wanted to downsize, but that was just because of the mortgage payment. If she had the house, then Ben and Will could visit. Megan’s daughter, Sarah, too.
Clara didn’t know what made sense for Megan. She was on the verge of divorce. Maybe she’d be better off with the house? Amelia was least likely to handle it. But she could handle something. She could handle low-maintenance rentals... like The Bungalows.
Would anyone want the cottage?
Clara thought back to what she knew of the cottage’s modest beginnings. Apparently, it was something that her mother and father began working on in the months leading up to Clara’s birth.
From what Kate had told her, Clara knew that Nora had asked Wendell to find, purchase, and break ground on a new home inland, something lower maintenance. And, he did. Of course, his project went unfinished, but Nora forged ahead, hiring people here and there and chipping in herself to pull off completion of the modest, pretty three-bedroom, two-bath that sat next to Birch Creek.
Then, nothing. With Wendell’s absence, the cottage sat there, collecting dust and overflowing clothes and furniture for a long time, until Nora decided to move in herself, leaving the place on the lake for one with easier daily upkeep, apparently.
It was a short walk to the school. So short, indeed, that sometimes Clara would steal away inside the cottage by herself and snuggle into the single iron frame bed that made its way there. In that bed, Clara would read and drift in and out of sleep until nighttime drew near, at which point she’d hurry home to an almost empty house.
Clara snapped to attention, inhaling sharply.
Yes. The cottage.
That’s what Clara needed.
The cottage with the afghans and the iron bed. The cottage that had been her hideaway for so long.
The cottage that was denied to her when Nora wanted her to live at The Bungalows and play property manager.
She needed the cottage.
It was settled.
After a quick set of directions to her students to put away their grammar textbooks and take out their journals, Clara tapped out a text message to the group chat with her sisters. She knew she’d be interrupting their meeting with Michael, but they had to have the information. They had to know to give her the cottage. Nothing else. Just the cottage.
All Clara needed was the cottage. If she could get that, then she wouldn’t necessarily have what she wanted, but she could figure it out. Clara Hannigan could solve the world's problems in that little place on the creek. She did as a kid. She would do it as an adult.
Clara would move to the cottage on the creek, and that is where she would figure out her life—away from the big house, away from the four-plex, away from the loud lake and the tourists and the noise of town. In her own little cottage.
Where maybe she could find that hope chest.