Chapter 2
Grace woke up the next morning with a tumble off the narrow twin-size bed, her legs high in the air over her head. The thud sounded through the small room, but it was hardly the only noise that was breaking through the haze of her throbbing hangover.
“No matter how good being wine drunk is,” she mumbled to herself, the words garbled and misconstrued in her ears, “the hangover is always ten times worse.”
On the short nightstand beside the bed, Grace’s old cellphone blared the ringtone that drove her husband insane.
Scratch that – ex-husband. Early morning calls into the office used to drive him out of bed at the same time as her, though he had every right to lounge and sleep in as much as he wanted.
Perhaps that was what drove him away – a simple overload of small annoyances that grew into one heaping mess over a long period of time.
Grace’s hand smacked down on the old stand as she searched for the phone with her eyes squeezed shut.
The only form of light came from the hazy glow behind the curtains, but somehow it was enough to push her headache onto the verge of breaking into a full-blown migraine.
Once she managed to collect the cellphone, she swiped and slowly rested it against her ear, the cool surface calming the hangover rush for a split second.
“Hello?” Grace heard her own voice repeat on the other end, slightly muffled with static, but still managing to sound like the grumpiest woman on the planet.
Any other occasion might’ve found her trying to excuse her abrasive attitude, but Grace was in no hurry to make herself look good. At least, not yet.
“Good morning! Have I found Mrs. Grace Baker?”
Her grumpiness only flourished. “Ms.”
“Great, I –” the man’s pleased tone stopped short. “Excuse me?”
“You said Mrs. Grace Baker,” she repeated, the words piling up in her mouth like jagged pebbles. “But it’s Ms. Ms. Grace Baker.”
There was a pause as the man’s breathing produced a static sound on the other end.
It remained till he was awkwardly laughing, brushing off the interaction seamlessly.
If Grace wasn’t hungover, she probably could’ve done the same without batting an eye.
But she was hungover and her reasons for drinking were showing no signs of disappearing.
“Excuse my mistake, Ms. Baker.”
“H-Honestly, just call me Grace.” She sat up suddenly, realizing how comfortable the conversation was becoming. The movement sent her insides rushing toward the pit of her stomach in a nauseous swirl, but she swallowed it down as fast as she could. “Can I help you with something?”
“Oh!” The speaker cleared his throat before bellowing, the sound forcing Grace to jerk the phone as far away from her ear as she could. “Congragulations, Grace! It is your lucky day! And the perfect weather to be a new homeowner, if I do say so myself.”
Grace stared at the pattern in the rug below her bare feet, her thoughts desperate to keep up, but routinely falling behind.
All she could utter was, “Uh-huh” in a way that was affirming enough to make the stranger keep talking.
Grace remained stuck in place, her bottom beginning to ache from the hard floor, listening to the man without really understanding what he was actually saying.
“You got yourself an absolute steal, Grace.”
“A steal?”
“The market we currently live in works against single women like yourself. Managing to find a home with as much square footage as the Lantern House, with a view like the one Holiday Hollow offers, with a price well under ten thousand is practically impossible. Like I said –” she could almost hear the beamed smile in the man’s voice “ – it is your lucky day!”
Grace pinched the bridge of her nose. What did I do last night?
Her eyes snapped around the hotel room, searching for any sort of evidence drunk-Grace might’ve left behind.
She had been known to do things sort of out of character when under the influence of something as convincing as merlot, but Grace wasn’t planning on having a ‘lucky day’ for another few years.
There was too much wallowing to do before then, too many pity-parties that she was expected to attend.
Something working out and being in her favor was so unlike life it brought an unsettling chill to Grace’s spine, as though someone was watching her.
Chink!
Grace jumped almost a foot off the ground, landing roughly against the edge of the bed.
The window still rattled from the impact of the sharp sound as she inched closer to it, slightly staggering.
She tested the curtain, pulling it back and expecting to see the glass shattered onto the sidewalk outside.
But the window was untouched, despite the sound still echoing through her head like a clapping pair of cymbals.
It was simply a ball, rolling on the ground from some child’s playing.
“Now,” the man continued on the phone, “your bid was over the market price, but since the owner decided to offer the property to you before other bids could be listed, the owner has requested that the surplus be returned to you. That’s an extra thousand back in your pocket, Grace.
I’d love to have some of that luck you’re collecting today! ”
“Wait,” she murmured. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
Grace stood in the middle of the hotel room, her heart racing.
The events of the previous night flashed behind her eyelids like a series of photographs.
There was her laptop, the multiple bottles of wine, scrolling through real estate sites before landing on one that almost felt like it shouldn’t exist. And that one house – The Lantern House – sitting on the shore of a tranquil lake, a light rainfall still lingering on the angular rooftop, dripping slowly down the leaves.
Grace clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, god. I won the house?”
“You got it, Grace!” His voice lowered as he added, “though maybe I should’ve started with that.”
Her legs trembled and quivered till she fell onto the bed, her eyes as wide as they ever had been before.
Grace used the majority of the finances she had left to place a bid on a house in the middle of nowhere, in a town she had never heard of, with no one who would know her name.
Fear drove away any sort of excitement that might’ve convinced her to put out a bid in the first place.
It was the most reckless thing she had ever done, and she was running out of time to get herself out of it.
The moment she opened her mouth to argue, the man was listing off more information.
“The Lantern House was fully furnished recently,” he continued, as though he was reading off a list of notes.
“With state of the art kitchenware and gorgeous aesthetics that match the gothic nature of the area. If you haven’t already noticed, we are quite fond of our aesthetics here in Holiday Hollow.
And all sorts of tastes are welcome here. ”
Something about his tone told Grace that there was a hidden meaning between the lines, but she deliberately chose to ignore it. “Look,” she began, her voice more high-pitched than she expected it to be. “Look, I had a…busy night last night, and silly me decided to –”
“No matter, Grace. The owner heard your plea and felt bound to offer you this house. I don’t think you even understand how lucky you are.”
She pulled the phone away slightly, letting her head fall into her other hand.
“Not more of this ‘lucky’ nonsense,” Grace murmured as she hopelessly nursed her growing headache.
The man on the other side was already diving back into providing more information, already discussing the different payment options they like to offer.
Grace climbed over the bed till she reached her laptop.
With the phone pressed between her shoulder and ear, her eyes narrowed as she pushed it open, letting the bright white light illuminate her face and blind her.
Before Grace had a coherent thought about what she was doing, her fingers were typing out Enchanted Estates in the search bar.
The house appeared before her eyes, the bidding already closed off.
That managed to strike a chord in her, as though she had signed her life away without realizing it.
But as the panic started to seep into the corner of her eyes, she began to scroll, and was instantly lost in the series of pictures showing the house.
She hadn’t seen anything like it before.
Any other house close to that price range would hardly capture such a nostalgic feeling within her.
Whatever else she came across would be a dump in comparison, a work in project that would require more money to repair it.
But the house in Holiday Hollow looked as though it was plucked from the pages of a storybook and dropped in front of Grace.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen.
But there was one thing that Grace was growing more and more sure of.
Grace would be foolish to turn it away. Where would she get another opportunity like it?
The price alone made it a steal. Maybe the owner read her drunken words and pitied her enough to hand over someone as priceless as that house.
For once in her long life, Grace was rather glad that someone pitied her.
The man on the phone had just finished explaining the deposit process. “How does that sound?”
“Good,” she murmured. “Whatever you say – I can actually do the entire thing.”
“The entire bill?”
Grace nodded, her eyes stuck on the photos.
“It’s the one thing I got out of my divorce.
A pile of cash big enough for this kind of purchase.
” She scrolled further down the page, reading the vague lines written about the town the house was located within.
“Can you tell me more about Holiday Hollow? I don’t think I’ve heard of it before. ”
“I doubt you would’ve! Though it’s a…diverse town, we aim to keep to our own business. We are very safe because of it.”
“You mean to say that no one knows about this place? Even though it seems like it's a fairytale?”
The man let out a hearty laugh. “Holiday Hollow receives its fair share of tourists during the busy seasons, Grace. But we don’t decorate and celebrate for the sake of attracting outsiders.
We do it because it is what we do! It’s a town that barely reaches a population of eight thousand – we sure do enjoy our simple things. ”
‘Outsiders’ clung to the man’s tongue in an unusual way, like it meant something that Grace didn’t yet understand. She pushed past the chill that found its way to her spine and carried on, eagerly listening to everything he had to tell her about her new home.
“You’re luckier than most, Grace,” he chimed.
“And why’s that?”
“The lake that the Lantern House is positioned on has something to do in every season! A recently tinkered and repaired boat comes with the house, and you’ll be able to go fishin’ on the lake, if you so please.
During the winter, the surface freezes real good, and you’ll find that the entire town will be outside your window, skatin’ away. ”
The more Grace heard about her new home, the more she couldn’t wait to see it. Maybe it was just a sales pitch, but he was doing a fine job at making sure she didn’t back out of the deal. By the end of the phone call, Grace was ready to be in the house by nightfall.
“When can I move in?” she blurted, embarrassed at how fast it came out of her.
The man showed no sign of teasing her. “As early as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Why not? I’ll get the appropriate paperwork emailed to you, and once you sign it, the legal stuff will be done. Tomorrow, you’ll have a key in your hands.”
“That sounds perfect!”
“Great! I’ll get those sent over you. Enjoy the rest of your day, and we’ll see you in Holiday Hollow tomorrow!”
“Bye,” she said, clicking her phone.
The phone call felt as though it was over as fast as it started. It had, in reality, gone on for almost an hour and a half, but reality had nothing to do with feelings. To Grace, everything happened in the blink of an eye, her life flipped on its head over a bottle of wine and one drunken night.
No. Not over a bottle of wine. Over the end of her marriage and her life as she knew it. That’s when everything really started changing.
Now, sober and with something to look forward to.
Her thoughts became clearer and crisper in a way they hadn’t been for some time, and it brought the past back with a rush of pain.
Eight months ago, her ex-husband slid a stack of divorce papers across their long mahogany dining table.
Simple pages rendered her speechless, devoid of happiness, deflated – someone she was incapable of recognizing.
But now? Suddenly there was a smile stretching across her face, one that she was in no hurry to remove.
Who did she have to take it off for? That thought made her pause.
There wasn’t a soul around, and yet, she felt embarrassed by her own achievement.
Ashamed by her relentless excitement. For the slightest bit of happiness.
Because that’s how she’d learned to be in her marriage.
Ashamed of everything. Always thinking she was in the wrong, no matter what she did.
That was her entire marriage summed up. Moments spent being ashamed of living, desperate to fit her partner’s mold, only to realize that any shape she took would never be enough to satisfy him.
But now, with a new future resting on the horizon, Grace told herself that she would never have to change herself for anyone else, not ever again.
The Lantern House was a new start, a second chance.
Holiday Hollow was her chance to live the life she had always wanted – even if she wasn’t quite sure what that meant yet.
She leaned back against the bed, the smile becoming permanent as she quietly whispered to herself.
“My lucky day.”