CHAPTER
FIVE
Rose
stood on Emily’s doorstep. No, wait...She had to correct herself.
Emily must have told her a hundred times and in no uncertain terms
that she was not allowed to think of this place as Emily’s home or
Emily’s yard or Emily’s porch. This was now their home.
After the sale of Rose’s house, she had gone over with her friend
and an accountant to make it all work out. Rose’s house was nowhere
as big as Emily’s but she had made some wise investments with
Christopher that allowed her to live quite comfortably and without
ever having any money worries. Somehow Rose, Emily and Herman
Swartzkoff, her long term accountant worked it all out, putting some
of the profits into the many necessary renovations that would begin
this new venture of theirs, the house. She had worked out with the
accountant a will that provided for her two children.
“So,
as is written on many a teabag, today is the first day of the rest of
my life,” Emily said as she raised her hand to knock on the front
door, but stopped herself just in time. Who knocks on their own front
door?
As
soon as she opened the door, Miss Sassypants stood waiting regally
two feet from the entrance, like Cerberus, the mythical three-headed
dog to the Underworld. “Hello, Sassy,” she said softly. “Hope
you’re ready to share the house with me.”
Emily
came in from the kitchen’s back door wearing her typical gardening
outfit. A wide brimmed sunhat that covered her fair skin from the
sun, and a cotton sundress covered with a light purple flowered
gardening apron that was threadbare in places from years of use. In
her hands she held a bouquet of irises and forsythia that she placed
on the kitchen table.
“Rose!
Just a second. Let me wash my hands and I’ll bring us in some
coffee. Why don’t you take yourself out back on the porch? Hope you
didn’t eat anything yet.”
Rose
dropped her suitcase by the stairs and went back outside again,
settling herself comfortably in the cushioned wicker chairs and
marveled at Emily’s gardening magic. She didn’t even know the
names of the flowers and plants that grew abundantly around the
house. She’d always thought of it as what the Garden of Eden would
look like. A slight pang of anxiety struck her at the massive change
her life was about to undergo. This wild idea of opening up a bed and
breakfast, combining their homes into one abode for them both and
well, just the change in store for each of them had seemed so utterly
perfect and foolproof that the moment they’d begun talking about
it, they just ran full steam ahead with their plans, vaguely
wondering about and dismissing any potential problems. One major
obstacle could be that both of them had lived single lives for a
while and grown quite used to the independence of it all. This house
was large enough that there was plenty of room for them each to have
necessary solitude when required, but still, it would be a different
way of living.
And
the bed and breakfast….neither of them had one iota of experience.
What if they made major costly renovations and everybody hated their
home and….them as hosts?
At
that moment, Emily came in carrying a tray full of coffee, orange
juice and Irish scones. She placed it on the wicker table beside
their chairs and her smile was so wide and warm, that every bit of
anxiety flew out of Rose. This was her best friend who had helped her
out of every major problem in her life. There were some things that
Emily knew that Christopher never had known. Yes, this would be a
change, but as they had discussed from the very beginning, change is
what they both desperately needed. Rose's mind drifted to a
conversation from the year before...
“We’re
not getting any younger, Emily,” Rose said last Christmas as they
sat drinking spiced wine before a roaring fire. “Don’t get me
wrong. I love my life. I love this town. I keep busy writing,
volunteering and the days seem to just fly by so that I’m never
bored. But something has been nagging at me lately that I can’t
explain….”
“Well,
I know just what you’re talking about,” Emily said. “We’ve
both turned 60 and it has a feeling of turning a corner where things
start to get smaller. Before the world was open for us to do
anything, but now we know there are limitations.” She took another
sip of wine. “I’ve thought about that lately, too.”
Rose’s
face matched her name at this point, being all red and rosy from her
drink. “Then let’s do something before it gets too late. Let’s
do something that will not have every day exactly the same, no matter
how much we say we love every day. We need change, don’t we?”
Emily
laughed. “Like bungee jumping or something? Sail around the world
in a small boat….or take a cruise and gain thirty pounds from the
buffets?”
Rose
frowned. “Not like a vacation. No.” She shook her head. “I
don’t know what exactly. Never mind. I guess it’s the wine
talking.”
Emily
took another sip. “You know this house used to be a guest house at
one time. My father mentioned it. Not quite sure he could imagine a
passel of strangers coming in and out. He was a bit of a germaphobic,
I think.”
Rose
jumped off the couch. “That’s it, Emily! That’s it, exactly.!
Let’s open up a bed and breakfast. We would meet all kinds of
interesting people that way.”
Emily
held her glass in mid-air. “Bed and breakfast? You mean in this
house?”
“Well,
we’d do it together. I guess we could sell our homes and buy
something else or….”
“No,”
Emily said quickly. “You sell your house. I’ve seen the way you
get to moping around that house with all those memories. You want
change, I think you need to leave there. We’ll combine our money
somehow, do some renovations, put the house in both our names and run
the place equally. Only way it will work.”
And
from that day, it was nothing but plans and more plans.
