Mel and Chelyan walked together each morning and evening for the next ten days. Neither one of them asked the other any deeply personal questions, and basically no new personal information was offered during their chats. The main topic of conversation was their still-absent neighbors. There were exactly eight cottages between them. Chelyan also knew some of the neighbors on the west side of her cottage, as well as some on the east side of the Johnsons’ cottage, giving her roughly a dozen to fifteen families or individuals for which she could relate to Mel a variety of tidbits or interesting stories.
The families with children generally planned activities together and were only present at Bramblegrove Beach while school was out for the summer. The older couples and individuals tended to co
