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The moment I laid eyes on it, my heart sank.
I knew the salty sea air would have done damage to it, but it was in worse condition than I could have imagined. We’d neglected it entirely since Grandpa had closed its doors four years ago and boy, it looked it.
This was not how I remembered it all. The veranda wasn’t supposed to be missing fencing posts. The columns that held up the roof shouldn’t have been flecking paint, and the gazebo wasn’t meant to be covered in thick ivy and other weeds I couldn’t name.
There shouldn’t have been roof tiles on the ground. Roof tiles were for the roof, not the paving slabs of the pathway that circled the building.
Windows being boarded up? No. That was wrong, too. So was the overgrown landscaping and all the paint on the cream panels flecking and peeling away. The downstairs windows were all supposed to have blue shutters, but some were on the ground, and I was pretty sure others were missing entirely. Spandrels were rough and dusty, and all the decorative items that made the property look so fancy, like the roof details and the weathervane, were rusting and breaking.
It was dirty.
Dirty, destroyed, and gut-wrenchingly damaged.
This did not bode well for the inside.
I took a deep breath and got out of the car. I didn’t know who’d boarded up the windows, but I was thankful for that, at least. It would give some protection to the inside.
How much was this going to cost?
Was the one hundred grand he’d left me even going to be enough?
I didn’t know how much windows cost, but I’d bet it was expensive. Not to mention tile repairs for the roofing and new fencing and—
No.
Freaking out right now wasn’t going to solve this problem. I wasn’t here to solve it; I was here to get the lay of the land and see what sized task lay ahead of me if I was to restore this to a fully working bed and breakfast again.
Was that even what I was going to do?
Of course, it was. What else would I do? Sell it? No. That would be an insult to my grandfather and to those before him who’d worked so hard to make this place a success. I simply couldn’t. I would never forgive myself if I let go such a large part of my family history, not to mention a place that had brought me such happiness through the years.
Yeah, that’s the spirit, Lottie.
I could barely believe this was what it looked like. I had so many incredible memories here—this place was home to so many of my ‘first’ things. My first birthday party—both actual and the one I could remember—my first sleepover, my first broken bone, my first kiss, my first…
Well, I’d lost my virginity here, too.
I just didn’t want to think about that. All of that—and thinking about Noah—was going to send me down a memory lane that probably had ghosts and ghoulies in the shadows, and I was already hurting enough without thinking about the boy who’d broken my heart.
I grabbed my phone and snapped a few pictures of it like I’d promised Dad, then locked my car and slowly walked towards the building. Was it even safe for me? Would the stairs collapse under my feet? Would the veranda hold my weight, or were the white-painted floorboards rotten?
I approached it hesitantly. The stairs were a grey brick and looked solid, so I walked up a little further and peered at the veranda flooring. Weeds grew through the floorboards, and they were scratched and scraped, some broken and rotting in the corners, but it looked largely okay.
I still tested it with a few careful footsteps before I decided to trust it.
Animals had taken over, it appeared. There was an abandoned bird nest in the corner, and the lower walls bore the same scratches as the floors.
At least the door was still on its hinges.
It was a strange thing to be grateful for.
I’d take it as a win.
I flipped through my keys to find the one for the bed and breakfast, but it wasn’t there. With a frown, I checked all my pockets and even went back to my car to check for it, but no.
I closed my eyes.
I’d left it on the living room table, right next to the box that contained all the other keys for this place. Grandpa had never labelled them as he’d known exactly what they all were, but that wasn’t a skill he’d passed to me, and I’d been a little overwhelmed when Mr. Porter had handed me the Tupperware box of keys.
