When Bette Dillehay was a newlywed some decades ago, she and her late husband Rob lived in a small cottage at Iron Point on the banks of the Piankatank River in Mathews. From their vantage point, they could sit on the shore and look out all the way out past Stove Point and Gwynn’s Island to the Chesapeake Bay. But the Mathews natives weren’t destined to spend their lives in a small town. When they were offered jobs in Richmond, they left their tiny cottage and spent much of their lives in the state capital, with Rob teaching and Bette working her way up the corporate ladder and both eventually ending up in state government. Some years after they moved, the Dillehays had an opportunity to buy a small, fairytale-like second home, again on Iron Point Lane, but looking out on Warehouse Cove. They were very content to spend weekends there, but there was little space for family and others to visit. Then, in late 2000, a friend told Bette that the cottage she had lived in as a bride was slate...