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“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I’ll go check it out. But only to set up selling my half. Who knows, maybe this Remigius person will want to own the whole thing and I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Or this could be the thing you’ve been looking for. The new adventure now that?—”

“Don’t, Mom.”

“Honey, whether you talk about it or not, it still happened, and the sooner you start living again, the sooner you’ll find something else to love.”

“I won’t love anything as much as I loved playing ball.”

“Maybe, but how will you know if you spend your days cooped up in your old room playing video games online with ten-year-olds?”

“They aren’t all ten.”

She cocks an eyebrow as she takes another sip of tea. “Okay.”

I pull into the driveway of the estate. The large ornate gate that would have once kept the grounds closed off sits propped against the overgrown hedges, leaving the driveway open. From here, I can see the estate itself, looming in the distance, a huge white manor. As the car bumps along down the dirt drive, the tires kick up stones that rattle against the underside of the car, leaving a trail of dirt smoke behind us.

A giant oak stands in the middle of long grass to my left, a broken rope hanging from one of its branches, and memories of a tire swing come to mind.

It’s kind of creepy keeping the rope hanging up there all frayed at the end. That will have to come down before we list it for sale, and the lawns will need a proper mow, I think, before pulling up on the manor itself. I don’t get out, just sit in the idling car, staring out the windshield at the enormous three-story house.

I remember walking up the large steps with my mother, dragging a suitcase behind me like it was the heaviest thing in the world, and I can’t help but smile as I gaze up at the painted brick facade. Thirteen large windows overlook the grounds, most of them the same, shaker style with clear glass, but to the right where the building juts out a little like an L shape, there are two that are tinted. I guess if my room was on the ground floor, I wouldn’t want people walking past to be able to see in either.

The huge white door has a stained glass window set at the top that runs completely across it and depicts woodland or at least trees of some kind, and the whole thing is framed by an ornately carved trim, also painted white. It’s actually quite pretty. A memory flashes of my mother holding me up to peer through the glass. We used to truly love this place.

“No. This is not a trip down memory lane, this is a means to an end. I’m here to look over the place and figure out how to sell it, then get back to Philly to figure out what the hell is next in my life. The only thing I do know is, this is not it. I can’t run a hotel. How would that even work?” I ask myself as I pull around back. While the front of the manor looks to have been painted at least within the last few years, the rear has definitely seen better days. The paint is peeling from the brick in too many places to count, and one of the upper windows has been boarded up in sections instead of replacing the small glass panels it’s lost over time.

“Great, more work to do before this thing can be sold.” I mean, I guess I could list it as is and see what offers come in, or this Remigius person might be keen to buy me out, but itwouldget a higher price if it was in better shape. While the windows at the front were set in even numbers, at the back, there’s a long lower window to the right of the stairs of the back entry. No fancy stained glass on this side. The door is plain wood, but it does have two carved framed sections and a large brass handle that gleams in the afternoon light.

I pull in beside three other cars out back and switch off the ignition.

“Okay, let’s get this over with so I can get back to…” I can’t finish that sentence because as much as I hate to talk about what I’ve lost, I did lose it. Now I have nothing. No career, no job, nothing. Maybe this can at least be a distraction from the shit show that my life has become? An ache radiates through my shoulder, and I try to massage out the pain, but I know it’s not going anywhere. It’s been a constant reminder of everything I had to let go of. Everything I left behind in Savannah. My hopes, my dreams, fuck… my whole damned life. Well, one thing is for sure, nothing is going to change sitting in this car staring up at the place.

Time to see what this old place has to offer.

ChapterTwo

Rémy

The kitchen feels different without Jack here. It’s quieter, too. Normally, by this time through the dinner service, he’s sitting on the wooden stool opposite me, dipping spoon after spoon into a ganache or pastry cream.

“Just one more taste, to be sure it hasn’t spoiled in the last few seconds,” he’d say. The memory brings a smile to my lips and a tear to my eye.

This place will never be the same again. And what’s worse, I have no idea what it will be, because while I’m so honored that he thought to leave me part of Buxton Estate, he also left it to his nephew, Nate. I remember playing with him in the summers he spent here as a child, and my stomach does a flippy thing as the images surface. I may have had a little crush. But that was all it was. Maybe it could have been something, if we had continued to get to know one another better. But he stopped visiting during the summer and definitely hasn’t been here in the last three years since I made the move to the US.

While he may have been content to leave this place behind him, I couldn’t wait to get back here. And now Buxton Estate has become my home.

I was born in the States, or so I’m told, but grew up in France with my very proper French mother and father. They both worked hard. My father is a bank manager for one of France’s oldest banks, and my mother teaches ballet. Neither of my parents could take eight weeks off work during the summer, and a trip abroad was a good way for me to perfect my English and gain what they referred to as real-world experience. I was eight the first time I traveled here. I didn’t care what they called it. I called it an adventure on a plane to stay with my favorite person in the world. Aunt Seline.

She moved to the States to get married after falling in love with the former groundskeeper of the estate, my uncle Vernon. She worked here as a maid for almost thirty years, but now she manages the whole housekeeping team, six in total, seven if you count the new groundskeeper, which he won’t, but she definitely will.

Buxton Estate is special. It’s been in the care of a Buxton for generations; Jack was born here. Or out in the fields beside the large oak, as he used to claim. Surely that has to mean something to his nephew. But what if it doesn’t?

I try to distract myself by working. The kitchen is always where I find myself happiest. And this one is perfect. It used to be an old butler’s pantry, set off to the side from the main kitchen. It was being used mostly as another storeroom, but when my desserts started to encroach on Chef’s bench space, Jack had it cleared out and I was free to make it my own.