In the book it’s described, “The Nugget, as it was named, was an exceedingly knobby house that looked as though each room had been added on without much thought. It looked this way because that was exactly how it had been built, with the original one-room fisherman shack expanded by different owners until it reached its current shape. […] Inside was a big kitchen, a small living room, two small bedrooms, (one of which was Papa’s office), and a sleeping loft with four beds and a ladder to get up and down. There was a bathroom too, of course, off the kitchen. An outdoor shower in a shady wooden stall and a back deck, where rabbits and even deer sometimes wandered, completed the property. It was tiny. And it was often very hot. It was impossible to keep mosquitos out as the screens were all tilted. It was, as far as Jax was concerned, a perfect house.”]

I don’t own a beach house, but we have rented many over the years. Some are fancy, others kind of ramshackle. Sometimes the owners leave board games and puzzles (often missing one or two key pieces!), or have long-outdated family photos stuck on the walls. One house we rented had a tiny bathroom on the top floor, where all the kids, grandkids, cousins, and friends signed their names in Sharpie on the walls! My kids signed their names too, though we never rented that house again. The Fletchers have the Nugget, a family house on Rock Island that Papa and aunt Lucy have been going to since they were little. Now Sam, Jax, Eli, and Frog get to make it their own. Personally, I think the best part of a beach house is that the rules are different: we can eat more marshmallows, stay up later, read way past bedtime…whatever we want! The worst part? That’s easy. Earwigs.