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and banging open the door. Inside, I went from room to room, still barely believing it.
    George was running water into a pail in the kitchen. He turned when he heard me. “Something wrong?” he asked.
    â€œThey’re all…they’re all the same!” I laughed.
    â€œWell, a course they are. It’s a cottage colony.”
    â€œNo, I mean they’re exactly the same! Exactly!”
    George put his pail down to study me. “And you like that, huh?”
    â€œYes, sir. I like that a lot.” Which was an understatement.
    George broke into a slow smile. “I could use a break, Stella by Starlight,” he said. He sat at the kitchen table and patted the chair beside him. I sat down. He started to pull out his pipe but seemed to have second thoughts about smoking in here and took out a couple of toothpicks instead. He offered me one, and I put it in the corner of my mouth the way he did and tried to act as though I chewed toothpicks all the time.
    â€œAll right then,” he said when he had worked thetoothpick to where he wanted it. “My parents built this place before I was born. In the forties, right after the war. The soldiers were back, everybody was getting married and having babies. People wanted to go on vacations again, and they sure loved to go places in their big cars. But things were still scarce after the rationing and all. My mother drew up one set of plans, handed them to my father, and said, ‘Buy four of everything. It’s cheaper that way.’
    â€œThe cottages are sixteen feet square—no bigger than your average living room. Lumber came in sixteen-foot lengths then, so no waste. The bedrooms—now the bedrooms are an architectural marvel, as far as I’m concerned. They’re six feet by eight feet. But they’ve got everything you need: a place to sleep, a place to hang your clothes, a shelf for books, a light to read by. And the bathrooms are only four feet wide. I tell you, my mother was a genius. She insisted everything be plain; you can see that. She knew people wouldn’t mind that in a vacation place. Look at this.” George pointed to a cabinet behind him.
    I nodded.
    â€œThat’s knotty pine for you. It’s cheap, ’cause the knot-holes bleed sap through forever. Probably ten coats of paint on these cabinets. And it still bleeds through.” He leaned back and gazed around the cottage. “I keep wondering if I should update, put in televisions or internet, modernize.But everybody who stays here says no, don’t change a thing, it’s so peaceful. So there you are. Plain and simple, and all exactly the same, since 1946.”
    â€œAnd then you were born?” I prompted. I wasn’t ready to stop listening to him.
    George shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, nodding. “Yep. I was one of those babies everybody was having after the war. Boomers. I’m sixty-four—probably too old to be fishing for a living, but too late to learn anything else, I guess.”
    I rolled my toothpick to my other cheek. “Sixty-four’s not too late to learn things,” I said. “How old was Louise?”
    I felt my face drain. “I mean how old is she? I mean, was she when you met her.”
    George didn’t notice. “Oh. She’s been managing the cottages for…oh, maybe twenty-five years. More. I don’t even know. Since my folks died. But I guess you’d better ask her that question…. I’m not telling a woman’s age on her. I may be old, but I’m not a fool.”
    George got up then, and I followed him to the door. And then I realized something important. “My mother stayed here for two years, about twenty years ago. She was about eight or nine. Do you remember her?”
    â€œTwenty years is a long time ago,” George said, leaning against the door frame and squinting into the sun. “I waslobstering then—gone a lot.