Sheila Roberts - The Cottage on Juniper Ridge

“Of course it’s not,” Jen said, and shied away from the image of a very bored Jordan trailing them through the gingerbread house exhibit a couple of weeks before, texting her friends at every opportunity. When Jordan was little she’d loved going out with the big girls. Now that she was thirteen, not so much. But, Jen reminded herself, she hadn’t been excited to hang out with the adults when she was that age, either.

“Oh, well,” Toni said. “That’s enough downer talk. Let’s figure out what we’re getting Mom for Christmas.”

Talking about Christmas plans should have lifted Jen’s spirits, but only served to sic her to-do list on her and make her edgy. She hurried through lunch, gave her sis a quick hug and then speed-walked back toward the Columbia Center building.

When she got halfway there, she stopped in midstride. What was she doing? Why was she running like a gerbil on a wheel? She didn’t want to go back to work. She wasn’t going to go back to work.

She whipped out her cell phone and called her supervisor. “Patty, I’ll be at home for the rest of the day.”

“Are you okay?” Patty asked, concern in her voice.

She was probably just concerned about whether Jen had found a caterer for the office party yet.

“I’m sick. It must’ve been something I had at lunch,” Jen improvised. No lie, really. She’d had something at lunch that made her sick—a conversation about her life. She needed a break and she needed it right now.

“Okay, well, feel better soon,” Patty said. “Let us know if you’re not going to make it in tomorrow.”

The only way Jen was going to feel better was if she got a new life. She went home, flipped on her faux fireplace and settled under a blanket on the couch with the book her sister had given her, starting with page one. Again.

When was the last time you enjoyed your life?

“My honeymoon,” Jen muttered. No, wait. She’d enjoyed her life since then. She’d enjoyed it...the first week after she bought the condo, when she was spending money she didn’t have to furnish the place. The fun had lasted until she saw the credit card bill.

If it’s been a while, then chances are you’re due for a change.

Well, there was an understatement. Jen read on, learning about the author’s big life change, how she’d lost her second husband and had to start over. Left to figure out her finances and the rest of her life, Muriel Sterling had sold her big house that she owed a fortune on and rented a friend’s cottage.

It wasn’t easy letting go of that house. It represented so much—the new life I’d begun with my second husband, security, happiness. But I quickly learned that two stories of wood and stone don’t make a life. And owing money on that place certainly didn’t make me secure. What I needed was freedom, not merely from debt but from the past and from my unrealistic expectations. I needed to be free to start again.

Free to start again, huh? Jen read on.

And so I ask you now, do you need to start over? The only way to do that is to get free.

Get free? She’d just bought this place. But did she own it or did it own her?

She shut the book and looked around her living room. Her couch was white leather and had a matching beaded chair. Her Beckworth coffee table, handcrafted from exotic demolition hardwoods, was her pride and joy. It hadn’t been cheap but she loved it. Her decorations were from Crate and Barrel. They hadn’t been cheap, either, and she had the high credit card balance to prove it. She really liked this living room. She especially liked the fireplace. Her parents’ house didn’t have one and she’d always been taken with the romantic image of reading by a cozy fire on a cold day. And even though the fire going right now was electric, it was still pretty, and it gave her living room the perfect finishing touch. Except she rarely had a chance to enjoy it.

She really liked her bedroom, too, which she’d dolled up with a vintage brass bed, a pink comforter and a spectacular multicolored gypsy chandelier. It should have been a retreat, a place for sweet dreams, but often she tossed and turned on that vintage bed, thinking about everything she had to do.

The kitchen was another work of art and she enjoyed looking at its sleek granite countertops. But she hardly ever cooked in there.

She gazed out the window at the Seattle skyline. Buildings everywhere and gray skies.

“What am I doing here?” she asked herself.

* * *

Toni was up to her eyebrows in gift bags and wrapping paper when her sister called. “Hey, I was beginning to think you’d run away,” Toni said. “I haven’t heard from you since we had lunch.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“What a surprise.”

“What are you doing this weekend?” Jen asked, ignoring her sarcasm.

“With ten days to go until Christmas? Shopping.” Most of her shopping had been done by November, but she still had a few last-minute things to purchase.

“Want to go shopping in Icicle Falls?”

“What?”

“I want to check out Icicle Falls. We can go up Friday and spend the night. Come back late Saturday.”

Toni wasn’t spontaneous. She was a planner, and she had her weekend all planned. She was going to the gym on Friday, then out to dinner that night with her husband. Wayne was a programmer and sometimes it seemed he was married to his computer instead of her. But come Friday, they were going to have a romantic night out whether he wanted to or not. She’d already told him to program that into his computer. Then Saturday she’d finish up her shopping.

“I can’t go until after Christmas.”

“Come on. Please? My treat.”

“You can’t afford to treat.”

“Okay, we can go halfsies, then we can both afford it.”

Toni propped the phone between her shoulder and her ear and set to work, using a pair of scissors to curl the ribbon on the package she’d finished wrapping. “Why are you suddenly in such a tear to go to Icicle Falls?”

“Because I think I might want to move there.”

Toni dropped the scissors. “What? What are you talking about? You just bought a condo!”

“I know. And now it’s on the market. My Realtor is holding an open house this weekend.”

All right. Spontaneous was one thing, but this was crazy. “You can’t put your place up for sale just like that,” Toni protested.

“Yes, I can,” Jen said, her tone of voice deceptively sane.

“No. You can’t. You don’t have any equity built up. You won’t make a cent.”

“I don’t need to make anything. I need to get free of my debt. Never mind the cheese, let me out of the trap.”

Toni frowned. That didn’t sound like something her sister would say. “What’s this all about, anyway?” And then she remembered. The book. She groaned. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me.”

“Don’t tell you what?”

“You read the book I gave you.”

“Isn’t that why you gave it to me? And yes, I did, and it made perfect sense.”

“That was to help you prioritize your life, learn how to be less busy.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jen said. “I’m shedding all the things that have been complicating my life and holding me down.”

“I didn’t give you that book so you could go off half-cocked, sell your place and move to the mountains.” She’d only wanted her little sister to learn to say no, to manage her time better. She should’ve known this would happen. This was such a Jen thing to do.

“I don’t know if I’m going to move to the mountains yet. I’m taking this slowly, checking it out.”

“Slowly? You read a book and two weeks later your place is up for sale!”

“Okay, fine. If you don’t want to go...”