Chapter 2: A Little House in the Prairie
Sometimes, things have a funny way to happen before you can even register what on earth is going on. Hi, I'm exhibit A.
I was twenty-five back in the summer of 2023. I was living in Boston and I'd been waiting tables twelve hours a day for six months already, while trying in vain to find a job that would allow me to make ends meet. I couldn't afford a rent all by myself, so I shared a tiny apartment in Jamaica Plains with two friends. And by the end of June, ruthless math said that such as I was, my dwindling savings wouldn't last the summer.
That was when the diner manager put on his sad face and told me they had to let me go.
Great! Now what?
I was wandering around, trying to clear my head and come up with a solution for my desperate situation, when my phone rang. Blocked number? Fine. I would vent out on whoever the spammer trying to sell me shit. Serves them well.
"Miss Francesca Garner?" asked a formal lady. "My name is Ronda Williams, with the law firm Jenkins and Crown."
What? What had I done now? How come I always get in trouble without even realizing?
"Yes, it's me," I said cautiously.
"Doctor Jenkins has a document on your name. When can you come to our offices?"
What the hell was she talking about? Why would some fancy lawyer have something for me? Well, not like I had anything better to do.
"Tell me when and where and I'll be there."
Twenty minutes later, I paraded my cheap clothes into one of the most exclusive office buildings in town. The receptionist, straight out of a fashion magazine, asked me for an ID to confirm it was me and came from behind the front desk with a welcoming smile.
"This way, please."
She took me to a sober conference room with large windows to the street and a glass table to sit at least twenty.
"Have a seat, Miss Garner. Dr. Jenkins will be here momentarily. May I offer you a coffee, tea, water?"
"No, thanks," I muttered, puzzled by her obsequious ways. I was used to serve people like her, not the other way around.
Plain to see she would stand by the open door until I sat down, so I picked a chair a couple of seats from the head of the table. She flashed another smile and left, closing the door behind her.
My eyes slid to the windows and I let out a sigh, ready to wait for a couple of hours until the big-shot suit had a minute to waste on the poor girl in worn jeans and sneakers.
He walked in only a few minutes later, though, a classy elderly gent with a nice smile and a black leather binder in his hands.
"Miss Garner," he greeted me with a quick smile and a nod. "Coffee, tea?"
"No, thanks," I replied, forcing a smile back.
"Straight to business, then," he said. He sat at the head of the table, rested both hands on the binder before him and glanced down at it. "Tell me, Miss Garner, did your late mother ever tell you about Miss Grace Blotter?" he asked softly, looking up at me.
I nodded. Yeah, Mom had told me about this rich old lady, some big-time English professor, that had mentored her back in college. But I had no idea what it had to do with me. And how come this lawyer knew about Mom's death? Guess my questions reflected on my face, because Jenkins smiled yet again and replied like he was telling his grandchild a bedtime story.
"Your mother happened to be Miss Blotter's favorite student ever over the decades she worked at Harvard, and they kept in touch even after your mother dropped out of school. Were you aware Miss Blotter covered for your mother's hospital expenses?"
I shook my head, baffled.
"Well, she did. And back in 2017, only weeks before passing, your mother told Miss Blotter how hard you were working to become an author. So she promised to help you, and she did, anonymously."
I sat up, frowning. Could this old lady have anything to do with my scholarship? I'd gotten it pretty much out of nowhere, and it'd been the only reason why I'd been able to get my bachelor in English literature.
The lawyer nodded, always in his bedtime story mode.
"Yes, Miss Garner. Your scholarship was Miss Blotter's way to honor her promise to your mother."
I looked away, still frowning, and almost missed what he said next.
"Unfortunately, Miss Blotter passed too, last month. I called you as the keep and executor of her will."
"Oh," I managed to mumble, still wondering what did any of this had to do with me.
"Miss Blotter was single and had no children, so she left most of her fortune and estate to the Blotter Foundation, but not all: she included you as one of the beneficiaries."
My eyebrows jumped up. "Come again?"
Jenkins held back a chuckle, looking down to open the binder until he was able to wear a serious face again.
"Miss Blotter left you one of her family's houses, and a generous monthly allowance for as long as you reside there. If you ever decide to move out, the house will return to the Blotter family estate, you will lose any right to it, and the allowance will be terminated. The Foundation will cover all taxes, services and expenses of the property for you, as well as the housekeepers' salary and any and all repairs not derived from your use of the property."
I pursed my face like he was speaking in tongues, unable to compute what he was telling me. Jenkins read my utter confusion all over my face and nodded with another grandpa smile.
"Her intention was to offer you a place to live and the means to become an author. She loved this house dearly, and spent her retirement years there. She thought it was the perfect place to write."
"Oh."
"Take your time, think about it and call me back. You have two months to decide if you accept this arrangement. If I haven't heard from you by September, you will be removed as beneficiary."
Two months? Ha! I called Jenkins back the next day and we signed all the paperwork before the end of the week. On Saturday morning, I packed up to move to Hardwick, Massachusetts, twenty miles west of Worcester, were the house was.
As long as the internet held, I had no problem living in a rural area. Socializing is not my thing, so I couldn't care less about being alone in the middle of nowhere. Not to mention my roommates were lovely but too loud for my guts. I mean, I would get paid for living in a nice house and write! Hell to the yeah!
So I loaded my few boxes of stuff in my car, hugged Trisha and Padme goodbye and hit the road, leaving Boston to the west in a bright summer morning, like a pioneer of old.
According to Wikipedia, Hardwick had been first settled in 1737 and had a population of three thousand. It was one of those New England old rural towns, quiet and beautiful. The dream place for a writer looking for solitude to work and breathtaking scenery for relax and inspiration.
I was already loving it as I drove north across town, down Greenwich Road toward the Quabbin Reservoir. Only a few houses scattered away from each other, woods all around, the Quabbin a stone-throw away. Oh, my, if this was a dream, I never wanted to wake up.
Then I saw it: the place this woman I'd never gotten to meet had left me. I needed to pull over the shoulder to fight back a fit of laughter and tears. Because it was a three-story Victorian that looked like it'd been just built. It stood past the tall iron gates in the middle of a gorgeous garden, surrounded by woods on three sides, hardly a thousand feet away from the Quabbin.
How on earth had this ever happened? On Tuesday, I was crying down the boardwalk, wondering how was I to pay my third of the rent next month. And on Saturday, I was moving into a frigging Victorian mansion? I mean, c'mon. Had I fallen through some interdimensional crack? Who was Spiderman in this version of the multiverse? I actually pinched my arm to make sure I was awake.
I turned onto the driveway and spotted two lovely smaller houses at each side across the garden, built in wood and stone like out of a fairytale. Later on, I learned the one on the east side was the guesthouse, and the one on the west side was the housekeepers' home.
The housekeepers waited for me by the stairs to the roofed porch. Susan and Mike Collins, a middle-age couple, polite and suspicious of outlanders from the big city like me.
As soon as they welcomed me to Blotter Manor and introduced themselves, Susan put her husband to unload my stuff and invited me into the house to show me around.
I was speechless as she showed me the three parlors, the library, the dining room and the huge kitchen, the only part of the whole house that had been fully renovated and looked like any modern open kitchen with a dining area nowadays.
Up the dark oak stairs, the second floor had four large bedrooms, each with their own bathroom and big windows opening to the woods and the Quabbin, and a nursery for two children and a nanny. The late Miss Blotter's room was all decked in dark reds, and the moment I saw it, I knew I wouldn't set foot in there again unless my life depended on it. The one next door, decked in calming blues, called me like a siren, and I decided it was where I would sleep. Susan seemed to approve my choice, maybe glad I hadn't claimed the master bedroom.
The third floor had once been the servants quarters, but Miss Blotter had torn all the inner walls down to turn it into a large study, with massive bookshelves, a heavy desk under the biggest window and several loveseats around a coffee table.
"This was Miss Blotter's favorite room," said Susan, while I gaped around.
"I can totally see why," I muttered. "It's awesome."
I didn't say it, but I could already picture myself sitting at that desk with my laptop, writing until my fingers went numb.
"Why don't you and Mike live here?" I asked as we headed back downstairs. "Plenty of room, if Miss Blotter lived alone."
Susan hesitated, picking her words carefully.
"We love Blotter Manor, but we wouldn't feel at home living here." Her flat tone struck me as odd. "You'll find out in your own time that this is a very special place. With a mind of its own, you may say. It's the house that decides who's welcome under its roof."
I should've paid more attention to what she was hinting, but I was so excited I didn't even pause to wonder what her cryptic answer might mean.
Never mind. Like she'd said, I would find out soon enough. That very night, to be accurate.
Mike took all my stuff to the blue room, tapped his baseball hat at me and left. Susan had already made lunch for me, and she insisted in warming it up while I changed my clothes. When I joined her back in the kitchen, she pointed at a stick note on the fridge door.
"Our number. Please remember you can call, or knock on our door, at any time, be it day or night. We're here for you."
Here for me, be it day or night? A little too much? Yeah, another hint my radar missed.
She brought my lunch to the wooden table in front of a massive flat TV and left.
I was all alone in Blotter Manor.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone