Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
I don’t cry as I drive myself and all my worldly possessions across the state of Virginia and into the hills of my home state. I am numb, actually. Still in shock at how my life could be turned upside down in a matter of minutes.
Of course I tried to call Clarissa, but it went to voicemail and I didn’t leave a message because… well, it’s her parade and raining on it feels gross. At least for a few days.
I didn’t call my parents, either. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t even call Lowyn, even though I’m headed to Disciple right now.
I might be having trouble processing.
So I just… drive. And the next thing I know I’m pulling into my childhood home, just off the Loop Highway, in Trinity County, West Virginia. I cut the engine and sit in my driveway, gazing out at the rolling green hills and distant woods of the estate. Allowing myself a few minutes to come to terms my new reality.
What just happened? I was doing so well. I was on a trajectory and now I’m not falling, I’m… fallen. It is done. And I had no say in the matter whatsoever.
It doesn’t make any sense. What did I do to deserve this?
At least I have some place to go. That’s a lucky break. But I still can’t get over how a corporation that I’ve given my life to for seven years could just throw me away like this. I mean, what if I didn’t have a childhood estate to run home to? What would I have done? Rented a motel, I guess. You can’t just find an apartment on the turn of a dime in these times. It’s a process. Not a fun one, either.
“Count your blessings, Clover,” I tell myself. “Just be grateful that you still have this place.”
My childhood home sounds good on paper. An historic country estate in the hills of West Virginia sounds very fancy-fancy, as Lowyn would put it. And it is quite spectacular—a four-story, twenty-two-room Victorian Queen Anne-style mansion that originally started out as a one-room log cabin in the early nineteenth century, but was gradually added on to and converted into what it is today over a period of a hundred years.
The old cabin is still here. As it was originally built as an earth-sheltered home with three sides already underground and just one side open, it was a sensible decision to build the new house right on top of it. Today, that old cabin is only accessible by a trapdoor in the library. When I was a kid, it was my playroom. I loved it. It was like having a secret fort inside your house. Lowyn and I spent whole summers down there in the underground coolness because the AC units barely worked back then and don’t work at all now.
I sigh just thinking about those days. I had a great childhood filled with ponies, and horses, and rafting on the river. We had big summer garden parties, and lavish winter Christmas parties, and every year on Easter Monday—which is a school holiday in these parts—my parents organized a giant Easter egg hunt because, of course, Easter Sunday is Revival opening day and all us kids were required to be there working.
Egg hunts were pretty much the only way Disciple, West Virginia, celebrated that holiday. But it was fun. I love this estate so much, I bought it from my parents when they decided to sell it and move out of state. They let me buy it for a tenth of what they could’ve gotten for it because, well, no one in town was gonna pay that amount of money for a house—not even Jim Bob Baptist—and you’re not allowed to sell a home in Trinity County to an outsider, so they were never gonna get top dollar for it.
Add in the fact that the moment I went off to college, they went down to Florida and never came back, and well, this place turned into a bit of a mess. It hadn’t been kept up.
I hadn’t needed to tap into my Revival trust for college because my parents paid for all of that, so that’s what I gave them in exchange for the deed. One and done. An entire country estate for thirty-thousand dollars.
It was a great opportunity and certainly an amazing deal, but the place is a freaking mess, a top-to-bottom money-pit mess, and it’s cost me a small fortune to even get this far in the renovations. Which is not far enough to even start thinking about paint colors, let alone event planning.
I guess I will have to join the Revival again. The season is well past half-over now that September is here and that means it’s only one weekend a month until Christmas, but whatever I earn, it will be better than nothing.