Prologue
“Ivory, I can’t believe you made me do this,” I stood out in front of the worn down building that I had just inherited. “This is gonna need so much work,”
“Well I’m sure you can find someone in town to help you fix it up,” she laughed from the other side of the phone.
“Really? This is how you do me?”
“Well, what else do you have to do?” Ivory asked. “You need a distraction,”
She was right, business was slow and the last thing I needed was to stay at home and be depressed about my break up with Sean.
“Yeah but this is way more than a distraction,” I turned around to look at the small quaint, quiet town.
I hadn’t been here in years and here I was back in Comfort, where my mom met my dad and where my grandmother’s bed and breakfast was the most recognized building in the town. This place would come alive during the Winter Festival and people from miles around would come and stay at my grandmother’s place.
Now she has passed on and left this old, run down building to me. Comfort was still small and quaint, but it seemed like life had been sucked out of it. Old decorations had hung on the bed and breakfast, begging to be taken down. I walked around the tattered porch, weathered boards creaked as I walked slowly around the full outside porch. The wind blew from around the corner, signaling snow was on the horizon, which meant I needed to get to work before it started snowing.
The banisters were a shade of grey, weather beaten by the years of neglect. The windchimes rang in the distance, hanging for dear life at the edge of the porch. Memories came back of me running on the very same porch when I was little.
We used to come down for my winter break from school and I would spend hours out here on the porch. My grandmother would decorate the outside just as much as she would inside. An old Christmas tree leaned against the back wall of the house, begging to be destroyed. I can only imagine the sights it must have seen back in the day.
I heard footsteps approaching as I walked back towards the front of the place. As I reached the front, I saw two older ladies climbing the stairs.
“Hey, you’re trespassing,” one of the ladies stated as she reached the top. As the other woman reached the top, the other held onto the railing catching her breath.
“I’m not trespassing. I own this place,” I said, glancing back and forth to both of them.
“You own this place? How?” The other woman said standing in front of the door.
“It was my grandmother’s place. She left it to me,”
The ladies eyes widened and they looked at each other and back at me simultaneously.
“You’re little Nadia?” One of them asked, pointing at me while the other covered her mouth in disbelief.
“Yes. I take it that you knew my grandmother?”
“She was our best friend!” They exclaimed in unison.
“Oh okay,” I knew my grandmother was loved very much in this town, but I didn’t remember them. I’m sure I would if I tried hard enough to remember.
“I’m Bertha and this is Diana,” Bertha said smiling.
“Wait until Nadine hears about this?” Diana quipped.
“Who’s Nadine?”
