AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Today’s stop involved going to an estate that was once owned by extremely rich people, but was now a museum and place where influencers could take pictures for their social pages.
I was more interested in the museum part than the photo op part.
“Why aren’t I rich?” Natalie asked as we walked through one elaborate room after another.
“I guess you just didn’t think ahead and decide to be born with generational wealth,” I said. Honestly, I couldn’t really talk. My family had decent money. If I was in a bind, really in a bind, they would bail me out. If the cabin fell apart tomorrow, I would have a place to go. I had a job based on the kindness of my uncle, Todd.
I wasn’t this rich, but I was doing fine.
“I don’t know if I could live like this, though. Have all of those people tending to my every need? Weird as hell,” Natalie said.
“I wanted you to see the house, but what we really came for is this,” she said, when we reached the end of the tour, that conveniently was next to the gift shop. There was also a tearoom.
“Wait, really?” I asked as she led me toward the hostess to ask for a table for two.
It was an actual high tea service, complete with scones and tea and clotted cream and so many jams and jellies and cakes and delicious things that I wanted to shove everything in my mouth at once. It was only the classy atmosphere, and the amount of people who would have stared, that stopped me.
“This is amazing,” I said, biting into yet another scone.
“We can get some for the road,” Natalie said. That sounded perfect.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” I said as we walked out with a box of scones and a jar of jam. This had been an excellent idea.
“You’re welcome. I knew you’d like it, and I was dying to come here too. Gretchen never would have.”
Or she would have and hired a photographer to take maternity shots.
It was an effort to get back in the truck. I really was sick of driving at this point, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. Rain pattered on the windshield and I made sure to go in the slower lane on the highway. I’d rather have a longer trip that was safer, personally.
We blazed through another podcast, this one about a shady CEO.
The beads from the friendship bracelet dug into my leg. It was still in my pocket. I couldn’t stop glancing at the one on Natalie’s wrist every time she moved her arm.
It was sweet. When we were kids, we’d always made each other things like that, stringing beads on the porch in the summer with glasses of pink lemonade.
“It’s going to be strange, to be back. I feel like I’ve been gone for so long. It was different when I visited. Now Castleton is going to be my home again,” she said.
“What are you going to do with all your stuff?” I asked.
“Most of it’s going in the basement or the garage until I can get my own place. Who knows when that will be.”
The rain got so heavy at one point that I took the next exit and we waited in the parking lot of a grocery store for the weather to let up.
“She was a lot like you,” Natalie said, out of the blue.
“Who?” I asked.
“My ex,” she said, leaning back in her seat and turning to face me.
“What made you think of her?” I asked.
“The rain,” she said. “She loved the rain. I’d never met anyone who was willing to walk around outside in the rain, completely unbothered. Didn’t even own an umbrella.”
I didn’t want to talk about her ex-girlfriend.
“What about her is like me?” I asked.
Natalie thought about that for a moment.
