Chapter One: The Dreamer’s Purchase
Lucy.
I looked at my mother with what I hoped was enthusiasm, though my smile felt like it had been glued on. She stood in front of the old inn with her mittened hands pressed together under her chin as if she had just been handed the keys to Buckingham Palace. My father was next to her, squinting at the crooked roofline with the same expression he used when reading repair bills.
“Isn’t it perfect?” Mom breathed, the words fogging in the cold air.
“It’s... something,” I managed. The “something” being a three-story monument to bad decisions and green moss. The once-white trim had turned the color of weak tea. A shutter dangled at an angle that made my eye twitch. The hand-painted sign read The SnowDrop Inn, the D half-flaked off so it looked more like Snow rop.
“It has character,” Dad said in the tone of a man determined to stay married as he patted Mom’s arm.
Character, sure, if mildew counted as personality. I pulled my scarf tighter and tried to see what they saw. A cozy mountain getaway for a family business. Instead, I saw the last of my savings disappearing into a bottomless pit of repair invoices.
Mom clapped her hands together. “Come on. Wait until you see inside.”
The foyer smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and more strongly of wet wood. A green shag carpet stretched from the door to a sweeping staircase, each step worn thin in the middle as ifghosts had been jogging there. A brass chandelier leaned to the left, like it was tired of hanging around. The banister’s varnish had been rubbed to a dull, sticky shine that collected dust like a hobby.
“Imagine this with Christmas decorations,” Mom said. “Garland, twinkle lights, guests sipping cocoa by the fire, carols—”
“Fire code violation,” Dad murmured, eyeing the ancient hearth. He tapped the stone with his knuckle and frowned at the hollow sound.
I tried to stay positive. “There is potential,” I said, and then under my breath, “buried somewhere beneath the paneling.”
We drifted into the reception room. Dark wood paneling boxed in the walls. The furniture was a time capsule of mismatched couches and chairs with upholstery that had once been fashionable around the same time bread makers were considered cutting edge. Through a pair of French doors I could see the hills outside. They were soft and white, the trees powdered with fresh snow. It really was beautiful, like a postcard pretending everything inside the frame was perfect.
Mom crossed to the French doors and pressed her palms to the glass. “The view alone will sell out winter weekends, and in summer there is a pool out back.”
“The one full of snow?” I dryly asked.
She ignored me. My mother had mastered selective hearing long ago.
“Here is what I am picturing,” she said, pivoting to face us and gesturing with the full flourish of someone announcing a Broadway show. “Wreaths on every door. Candles in the windows. A tree that goes right here."
She spun, pointed at a corner, then pointed somewhere else. “No. Here. William, which corner says ‘I am festive but tasteful’ to you?”
Dad squinted again. “The one that doesn't block the heating vent.”
“Practical,” Mom said, as if that were a charming flaw. “We will do both.”
My phone chimed from somewhere deep in my purse, a sound muffled by receipts and breath mints and two pens that didn't work but lived there out of habit. I dug it out and saw the name on the screen: Dexter Fitzwilliam, my former boss. The man who had never smiled once in the five years I had worked for him. The man who ran his architecture firm like a monastery where fun went to die.
Decline.
“Was that one of your sisters?” Mom asked, misreading my face.
“Something like that." I shoved the phone away before guilt could sneak in. I had left Dex Fitzwilliam and his color-coded life behind for good. I was done being the woman who fetched lattes and scheduled other people’s dreams. I was here to take a risk on mine. Or, at least, on my mother’s.
We toured the ground floor. A dining room with heavy chairs, a second sitting room with a fireplace brick-painted the wrong red, and a hallway that paused dramatically at a line of ceiling tiles, as if the building had tried to switch personalities halfway through construction. Every door we opened carried a new scent from old paper to dust, and a hint of cinnamon that made me suspect someone had tried to bake the smell of home back into the walls.
Mom narrated as we walked. “We will keep the paneling in one room to be ‘heritage,’ paint the rest. The front desk will be darling with a bell. Meri can run the desk until Lydia finishes her schooling. Kitty can help with social media and bookings. You can do books with your father.”
Dad perked up at the sound of delegation. “I can do numbers. Numbers are obedient.”
“Numbers are only obedient if you don't look at the cost of renovations,” I said, laying a palm on the wall. The texture under my fingers felt like a relic of someone’s good intentions that had gone bad with time. “Mom, do we have a budget that exists outside of your heart?”
She smiled, which wasn't an answer. “We have a small renovation loan to start off. I’m sure we will figure it out as we go.”
Small was a word with flexible meanings.
