“What have I done?” I whisper to my empty, perfect apartment with its fake plants and absence of personal photos.
My phone buzzes again. Abby.
Are you alive? Call me when you’re done panicking. I’ve been researching Maple Glen. It’s actually kind of cute in a Stars Hollow meets Twin Peaks way. Also, I found the contractor on Instagram. You’re going to want to see this.
I’m about to call her when another email notification appears—this one from HR, with severance details. It’s not terrible money, but it’s not enough to recoup what I’ve just spent on a whim and wounded pride.
I drop back onto my pillows, staring at the ceiling.
TheWelcometo Maple Glensign appears through my windshield wipers like a prop from a movie I didn’t agree to star in.Population 2,943,it announces in cheerful lettering beneath a painted maple leaf that’s flaking at the edges. Rain streaks down my rental car windows, turning the world into a watercolor of greens and grays.
“You have arrived at your destination,” my GPS chirps with the confidence of someone who hasn’t made a series of catastrophically bad decisions.
“Not yet,” I mutter, squinting through the downpour at the quaint main street. “But definitely approaching the crime scene.”
My phone buzzes. Abby, checking in for the seventeenth time since I left LA yesterday.
Have you seen it yet? Remember, it’s not a disaster, it’s a JOURNEY. Also, did you look at the contractor’s Instagram? That beard is ART.
I haven’t looked up Owen Carver. It felt like adding another surreal layer to the whole mess—stalking the man who’s supposed to help me turn a drunk auction purchase into something habitable. Besides, I’ve spent the past five days spiraling through panic, paperwork, and haphazard packing. I sublet my apartment to a friend of Abby’s, put everything I own in storage, and drove north with whatever fit in my car. Which wasn’t much.
Another text:
Send pics of the house! And the town! And the hot lumberjack! I need to live vicariously through your breakdown!
I text back one-handed as I pass what appears to beallof Maple Glen’s downtown in about 45 seconds:
Just arrived. Town looks like it was designed by the Hallmark Channel. Will update when I see the house. If you don’t hear from me in 3 hours, I’ve either been murdered or the house collapsed on me.
The GPS directs me to turn right, and suddenly I’m leaving Main Street behind, winding uphill through trees that seem like they’re closing in. The houses thin out. The rain intensifies, drumming on the car roof like a countdown.
“In 500 feet, turn left onto Pinecrest Road,” the GPS announces.
Pinecrest Road turns out to be less a road and more a damp suggestion—narrow, unpaved, and winding through dense woods. My little rental sedan bounces over ruts and puddles, and I send a silent apology to the rental company. And also to my spine.
“In 200 feet, you will arrive at your destination.”
I round a bend.
And there it is.
My property. My house. My catastrophically impulsive life decision, squatting in a clearing like it knows exactly what it is.
“You have arrived,” the GPS says, with what I now recognize as thinly veiled mockery.
I put the car in park and stare through the rain-streaked windshield.
Oh.
Ohno.
The listing said“charming”and“needs TLC.”What I’m looking at is neither charming nor fixable with tender lovinganything. It needs an exorcism. Or a controlled burn.
The house—let’s use that term loosely—leans in the clearing like it’s bracing for impact. The paint might once have been blue, but now it’s a grayish-green patchwork of peeling wood. One window is boarded up. Another has a spiderweb crack across the glass. The porch sags in the middle like it gave up halfway through trying. Honestly, relatable.
“This is fine,” I say out loud, voice brittle. “Totally, completely fine.”
I grab my umbrella from the passenger seat and step out. Immediately, my platform sandals sink two inches into mud.
