Forever Summer - Melody Grace Page 0,1

life. Price: $1 to the right owner …

Who could resist a promise like that? Evie found herself clicking through to the website and filling out an application. She’d never expected it to ever come to anything, but a few weeks later, she’d gotten a call from a lawyer to say the offer was for real. The inn was hers, as long as she restored it to its former glory.

Of course, Evie was no fool, she knew that between property taxes and renovation costs, she’d still be spending her entire life savings getting the place fixed up and ready for business, but it seemed like a price worth paying. She could just imagine happy guests sitting out on the porch, drinking icy lemonade and planning their vacations around town. Bedrooms with crisp linens; open windows, sunshine, and a salty sea breeze. Being surrounded by a bustle of activity, building something new, instead of staying stuck in place with only memories to keep her warm.

Now, she took in the crumbling structure and tangle of weeds and saw those plans melt away into the blackberry thickets.

Was she in way over her head?

She pulled out her cellphone and called the lawyer. He’d already left for the day, his perky assistant relayed. “Would you like to leave a message?”

What was she going to say? I’ve changed my mind, please take it back?

But that wasn’t an option, the contract made sure of it: Evie had promised not to sell the place for five years. At the time, the lawyer had explained it was to stop her turning a quick profit to a developer who would just raze the place to the ground. Now, she wondered if it was to keep her from climbing back in her car and driving straight back to Boston as fast as her beat-up old station wagon would take her.

“No, thanks.” Evie hung up and found the only other contact she had in town. Noah Montgomery, the mysterious local who was handling things for the owner, had been spectacularly unhelpful so far, responding to her emails with nothing but gruff, taciturn replies. She’d decided he must be a grizzled old fisherman type with no time for newfangled technology—or her perfectly reasonable questions—but she’d take anyone she could get right now.

The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer there, either.

She was on her own.

OK then. Evie took a deep breath and climbed the front steps, careful to avoid the massive, gaping hole in the porch. The lawyer had sent her a package with the keys, but she could see already see she wouldn’t need them: the door was ajar. So, she braced herself and stepped over the threshold.

Inside, the large foyer was dim, so she flipped the light switch to take a better look, but nothing happened. No electricity, then. Luckily, the last rays of sunset was still spilling through the big windows, so Evie resisted her urge to turn tail and delved deeper into the house, moving past the grand staircase and down the main hallway, with its peeling floral wallpaper and scuffed wooden floors.

She checked each door in turn, finding a rabbit’s warren of closets and small, quaint rooms: a library, with a few musty old books still rotting on the shelves; a sitting room with an old-fashioned fireplace; and long dining room with a tarnished chandelier swooping over the faded spot where a table must have stood. The kitchen was an explosion of yellow-and-orange-patterned linoleum tiles and cracked Formica countertops, and upstairs, she found six dusty bedroom suites with views of the ocean or of the tangled, overgrown garden out back.

Evie made her way back downstairs, her mind already buzzing with possibilities. It was a project, alright. The place hadn’t been touched in a decade, at least, and the only things brave enough to have stuck around were the spiders, stringing their webs across every corner. But if she looked past the dust and grime and ignored the broken bannisters and health-hazard bathroom floors …

It could be something wonderful.

Evie gave a rueful smile. She’d wanted an adventure, hadn’t she? Well, here it was, in all its run-down glory.

And for better or worse, it was all hers.

An hour later, things were looking up. Evie had taken over the living room, moving the old furniture to the side of the room and setting up her sleeping bag and blankets in the corner. She hadn’t imagined the place wouldn’t be safe to sleep in for the night, and it was too