Part 2
My hand tightened briefly around the suitcase handle. Then I understood the urgency of the past few weeks: Nolan’s willingness to accept our terms, his impatience with the lawyers, his repeated questions about how soon I could sign.
He had even passed up a closer review of the property that had come to me through my grandmother. At the time, I had taken his haste as another insult. Now it made a different kind of sense.
“They have a lot to celebrate, then,” I said.
Denise stared at me. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What would you like me to say?”
“That he’s an idiot. That she’s—” She stopped herself because a family with two children was passing us. “They’ve rented the biggest ballroom at Harrowgate Hall. My husband heard they’re taking over practically the whole place. Apparently, an ordinary wedding won’t do.”
“Nolan told me she wanted something grand.”
“Oh, she wants everybody to see what she got.”
The announcement on the loudspeaker changed, and people began moving through the gate.
“I need to board,” I said.
Denise looked as if she wanted to keep me there until I gave her some evidence of injury she could tend to. I kissed her cheek instead.
“I’m going to a house with a garden. They’re going to a ballroom. We don’t have to want the same things.”
Once seated, I sent Denise the new number I had arranged before leaving. Then I removed the old SIM card. I had already blocked Nolan, but keeping the number felt like leaving a door unlocked and pretending I wouldn’t notice if someone opened it.
I bent the little card until it broke and dropped it into the trash at the end of the car. By the time I returned to my seat, the train was moving.
The journey and connections took most of the day. I read a novel by an author I had once loved and stopped myself whenever I caught my mind drifting toward wedding costs or a pregnancy announcement. Those facts belonged to a household I no longer lived in.
At the station in Maine, I stood still long enough to feel the cooler air on my face. My shoulders ached from carrying the bag Denise had packed, and I was hungry. Both seemed like manageable problems.
The taxi driver loaded my suitcases and asked whether I was visiting Alderhaven.
“Moving there,” I told him. “My grandmother left me her house.”
He glanced at me in the mirror.
“Then I suppose this is a homecoming.”
“I suppose it is.”
“You’ve picked a good time. Still some warm afternoons left before we start complaining about winter.”
We drove past boat-storage yards and stands selling late corn, then along narrower roads edged with maple and spruce. I lowered the window a few inches. Somewhere beyond the trees was the ocean, close enough that I could smell it beneath the damp leaves and cut grass.
When we reached the house, the driver helped set my bags beside the gate. Its green paint had weathered thin along the top rail. I remembered sliding my hand over that same rough wood as a child while my grandmother reminded me not to catch a splinter.
The house was small, two stories of old stone with a slate roof and a narrow balcony over the garden. A climbing rose had reached the upstairs window. The hydrangeas were beginning to change color at their edges, and the apple tree beside the path was carrying more fruit than its branches seemed designed to hold.
My grandmother had arranged for a local company to maintain the house and grounds, and the estate had kept that arrangement in place. There were no weeds choking the steps, no sour smell of a building shut up too long. Someone had even cleaned the outside of the windows.
The key resisted for a moment before turning.
Inside, the rooms held the familiar things without looking abandoned. The patterned chair stood near the stone fireplace. A folded blanket rested over its arm, and the wooden floor had the soft sheen my grandmother preferred to any high polish.
I set down my bags and walked into the kitchen. Her copper pans still hung above the worktable. I touched one of the handles, then opened a cupboard simply to hear the old hinge complain.
Upstairs, the bedroom window faced the garden. I opened the balcony doors and stood with one hand against the frame. The rooms weren’t asking me to preserve a marriage or defend a choice. They needed airing, groceries, somebody living in them.
I unpacked Denise’s bag and ate bread and cheese at the kitchen table before carrying my suitcase upstairs.
For the first week, I rested and dealt with practical things. I arranged utilities, learned where the grocery store was, and discovered that the back door had to be lifted slightly before it would latch. I slept longer than I had in months.
Then I began looking for work.
My portfolio drew on residential and commercial projects, including work for Nolan’s firm, and I had completed a master’s program in interior design. I wanted to use those skills again. I didn’t want another life organized around proving I could tolerate pressure.
I sent applications to several small studios in and around Alderhaven. Three days later, Hearthline Interiors invited me for an interview.
The studio occupied a converted carriage building behind a narrow lane. I almost missed the entrance because a tall viburnum spread across part of its sign. Through the window, I could see rolls of plans stored upright in a wooden crate and fabric samples clipped to a line.
Grant, the owner, was about forty-one. His brown hair looked as if he had run his fingers through it several times while thinking. He cleared a space on the meeting table for my portfolio and asked before turning each page, giving the work more attention than I had received in a long time.
He paused over photographs of a renovated apartment.
“You kept the original doors.”
“They were good doors. The client thought everything old had to go.”
“How’d you change her mind?”
“I asked her to live with one restored door for a week before she ordered replacements.”
He smiled. “That’s usually better than a speech.”
We talked about materials, difficult rooms, and the difference between an expensive finish and a useful one. Only after that did he ask the question I had expected.
“With your training, you could apply to much larger firms. Why here?”
“My grandmother’s house is here. I wanted to come back to it.” I glanced toward the open window, where a delivery cart rattled over the lane. “I’d also like to have a life after work. A garden. Time to cook something because I want to, not because somebody expects it waiting for him.”
I stopped before explaining more than I intended.
Grant didn’t pry.
“I built this studio because I wanted that too,” he said. “Good work doesn’t need a city block full of offices around it.”
By the time I left, we had spent longer discussing the feel of a welcoming room than reviewing my résumé. He had listened without trying to turn the conversation into a contest.
The next afternoon, I was watering the herbs beside the kitchen steps when my phone rang. I tucked the watering can between my feet so I wouldn’t spill it.
“Claire? Grant at Hearthline.”
“Hello.”
“I’d like you to join us. We’re working on an older hotel, Beacon House, and I think you’re the right person to lead the interiors…”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇