Maybe I’d be brave enough if I lost a few more pounds.
I was pretty sure I’d lost at least two wrestling my blanket. I certainly breathed a little hard. I lay on the floor for a moment, resting. I could do that most of the time without screwing it up.
The ceiling overhead soothed with its glow-in-the-dark pattern. Using a luminescent paint, I’d traced the odd symbols etched in the beams that held up the roofline. Those marks were repeated throughout the house, along with other symbols. I had no idea what they meant or if they were just decorative. I enjoyed looking at the pattern they made. Especially in my room. At night, if I stared long enough, I’d swear they moved. The sigils appeared as if they floated and formed shapes that I could almost understand.
Crazy. Just like my recurring nightmare about Maddy the lake monster was nuts. I’d recently debunked the whole haunted lake myth.
Can you believe, when I first moved into my grandma’s cottage after my house burnt down, the whole town actually believed we had a mythical creature problem? Even I’d almost succumbed to the mania for a bit until I discovered a company had taken over the old mill in town and was experimenting with a new geological digging tool. Lo and behold, in the dark, at night, their machine to mine lake mud looked just like a monster.
People, being superstitious by nature, freaked out. It didn’t help that Airgeadsféar—the company with an unpronounceable name—was so secretive. Especially with their business dealings. The company had snatched up more than three-quarters of the properties in town. The inhabitants that remained were either determined never to move or were holding out for a bigger payout.
I belonged to the former category. The cottage I’d inherited from my grandma wasn’t for sale. As for the store I’d purchased with the funds I’d recently acquired? Mine. All mine. Not that I had any idea what to do with it.
For a brief time, I’d entertained this grandiose idea of opening my own bookstore, only the town had one already and wasn’t populated enough for two. Serving food, even coffee, didn’t appeal. If I wanted to make tips, I could waitress part time for Orville at Maddy’s, the local diner.
There was a grocery store already, plus a hardware shop, leaving me with few options. I couldn’t cut hair or do nails, and I had no sense of style according to my friends.
Nor would I open up a psychic shop like my daughter, Winnie—born Wendy Abigail Dunrobin—kept suggesting. Although, with the townsfolk believing I was descended from witches, it might actually work, but I was keeping that as a last resort.
“You okay up there? I heard a thump,” Winnie shouted up the stairs from the first floor.
“Fine,” I hollered back as the child of my loins checked on my wellbeing.
We’d come a long way in the last few months. From her living in the United States still and barely speaking to me to her moving in. It wasn’t always the smoothest of arrangements. We still had work to do repairing our relationship, but we were closer than I could have ever hoped.
If only I could get to the same level of understanding with my son.
One kid at a time.
I untangled myself from my comforter and noticed the time. Just after seven. Winnie would be going to work soon. It was more than a thirty-minute drive into the next town. I hated to think of her driving that far on a single-lane highway once the snow started flying, but there weren’t many other options.
Since my shop wasn’t yet open for business, I couldn’t exactly hire her, and Winnie insisted on having her own funds. I was fine with that, as I only had a limited amount that I’d have to dole out carefully just in case the new career as a shop owner didn’t pan out.
I could get by for at least a year if I kept things lean. But I really didn’t want to deplete the stash left from the divorce. I needed this store to make some money. And soon.
What was I thinking?
Not for the first time since making that leap, I questioned my decision. What made me think I could run a business? I’d been a homemaker for most of my adult life. I’d never managed anything other than a household. And I did a kick-butt job at it. So good in fact that both my children basically stopped talking to me and my husband had an affair and left.
I’d failed my marriage, my kids, and myself. What made me think I could actually do this?
I splashed water on my face as the familiar panic had me wishing I’d never bought the shop. It was a lot less stressful working for someone else.
Maybe I should accept the offer to work at the gas station. Darryl, the owner—and one of the guys who made my lady parts tingle—had offered me any shift I wanted. But if I worked for him, then I’d have to say no to his casual offer of dinner. I knew better than to date my boss. And I really wanted to date Darryl, so that job was off the table.
I could always talk to Orville. Despite Marjorie going back to work, he’d said I was welcome to pop in anytime if I needed some extra cash.
If the shop failed, I at least had options. Was it wrong to miss the days no one in town would let me work or pay for anything because they thought I was a witch? In retrospect, I should have enjoyed it more. But no, dumb me had to prove I wasn’t a hexing sorceress and that nothing bad would happen to them if they treated me like a normal person. On the contrary, bad things only seemed to happen to me.
After rinsing my face, I brushed my teeth then winced as I went after my hair. The shower the night before hadn’t rid me of the paint that had dried strands of it together in clumps.
Since I couldn’t afford to hire someone to renovate the interior of my new shop, I did it myself. Nothing major, though. My skills went no further than cleaning and painting. The first I did well, the latter… I somehow always ended up covered in it. Winnie teased I didn’t need to buy rollers. I could just rub myself on the walls. Brat. Even if it was true.
I pulled my hair up in a sloppy bun, a style I’d have eschewed not so long ago, but I rather liked how it looked. It went well with my baggy sweatshirt and leggings.
As I emerged from the bathroom, Winnie yelled, “You having breakfast? Or is this a fasting day?”
My belly grumbled, but it did that every morning. “Just coffee for me,” I shouted down. I’d added an extra element to my low-carb dieting. Intermittent fasting. Having read many articles and following a few blogs and vlogs, I felt as if it were the next step in my weight loss journey. More than eighty pounds gone now.
Well, technically, three hundred and ten if my weighty ex-husband counted. I never realized just how much Martin held me back until we divorced. At the time, I didn’t take it well. But now… I wish he’d dumped me years ago.
Putting on my pants, I realized they were too loose to stay up on their own. Might be time to scale down another size. I hadn’t been this small since I got pregnant with my first kid. The addition of extra physical work prepping the store also meant I was in the best shape I’d been in a decade. If not more.
I ended up using a thin fabric scarf that my best friend, Trish, had given me as a belt. But that was only a temporary solution. I’d need new clothes. The question being, would I dress like a mom, as I’d been doing for so long, or opt for something more daring? I’d gotten a few shirts in bold colors that had some shape that accentuated my positives.
Maybe time for some jeans? I’d not worn them in awhile, preferring the stretchy variety of pants. In my younger days, I used to live in denim. Time to rediscover that love.