The Stroke of Winter(2)

Tess walked through the main floor lighting candles, first around the living room, with its high ceilings, dark woodwork, and original hardwood floors. An overstuffed sofa and love seat sat positioned in front of the fireplace, a giant ottoman between them. Books were strewn here and there on end tables.

She wandered into the drawing room, which her parents had turned into a library and study years before, then on to the music room, where a Steinway grand piano was the focal point. She loved the grand dining room with its table that sat ten and a built-in buffet where Tess’s grandparents’ crystal glassware would sparkle in the afternoon sun, sending out prisms of light all over the room.

But the heart of the home was the kitchen, which still had its massive AGA stove, a fireplace with two well-used armchairs on either side of it, a scrubbed wooden table by the wall of windows, generations of beloved cookbooks, and copper pots hanging from wrought-iron hooks. There were modern updates, too, like the dishwasher, the enormous stainless-steel fridge, and a second oven and stovetop that came in handy when feeding a crowd.

Soon, the main floor was aglow. This isn’t so bad, Tess thought. It’s pretty.

What to do now? Tess grabbed an afghan and snuggled on the bench by the bay window in the living room that looked out onto the front porch and the yard beyond. She curled her legs underneath her and gazed out into the whiteness. It was snowing so hard and sideways that it was even accumulating on the porch. She’d have a long day of shoveling tomorrow, that was for sure.

The ringing of the phone startled her out of her thoughts. The old-school phone—a heavy base with a rotary dial and a handset—sat in a little alcove built into the hallway between the living room and kitchen for just that purpose. She unfolded herself from her perch on the bench to cross the room and answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Tess. Jim here.”

Jim Evans lived next door and owned the small grocery store a few blocks down the hill, one of a handful of businesses open in Wharton during the off-season. He and his wife, Jane, were well into their sixties, maybe even beyond that, but they both had a delightfully artsy bohemian style mixed with a lifetime of cross-country skiing that made them seem much closer to Tess’s midforties. She hoped she would be as fit when she reached their age.

“Jim! How d’you like this snow?”

He chuckled. “Wish I had my skis instead of the car,” he said. “I’d probably get home faster. I’m closing up the store and wondering if you need anything.”

This warmed Tess from the inside out.

“Thanks so much, but I think I’m set,” she said, remembering the leftovers in the fridge.

“Your power out?” he asked. “Jane said ours went out at the house about an hour ago. It seems like our whole side of town is all dark.”

“Yep, mine is out, too,” she said, nodding. “But I’ve got a fire going and a bunch of candles, so I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be over in the morning to help you dig out. If you need anything in the meantime, just holler.”

Tess thanked him and said goodbye. She put the handset back on the base of the phone and smiled down at it. This kind of neighborly concern was one of the nicest benefits of relocating to Wharton permanently. It made her think back to her family’s history here. Her deep Wharton roots.

Tess had been coming to Wharton to visit her grandmother ever since she could remember, but her ancestors had built the home generations ago, when Wharton itself was new. Tess’s father and uncle had grown up there, as had their father and grandfather.

After her grandmother’s passing more than a decade prior, Tess and her parents had used the house as a vacation home. But Tess’s parents had moved to Florida permanently a few years ago, after having been snowbirds there for years before retirement, so Tess and her son, Eli, who would turn twenty-two this year, were the only ones who used the house these days.

Built a century earlier, the house was a regal Queen Anne, with dusty-green siding, a wraparound front porch, a turret, and a deeply pitched roof. Tess had spent her childhood exploring its endless nooks and crannies.

The main part of the home had five bedrooms, seven fireplaces, and six baths. The house, known as La Belle Vie, or “beautiful life” in French, and a play on their last name, sat on the hill in Wharton, overlooking the harbor below.

Turning the place into a bed-and-breakfast seemed like a perfect fit. Tess had always loved her time in Wharton. She had also loved her career in hospitality, first as a server and then as a chef. And she loved hosting people for dinner or a weekend. Being an innkeeper in this home in Wharton would allow her to combine all those loves. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

With her parents’ enthusiastic blessing, Tess had packed up and moved to La Belle Vie as summer faded into fall. A new chapter. A new life.

The first order of business had been getting herself unpacked and deciding how to configure the house for guests. A large room had been shuttered generations ago—the door permanently bolted. The windows to the outside were shuttered in black. From the backyard, Tess could tell it was either one massive room or a cluster of rooms, but she had never seen the inside.

Tess wasn’t sure why it had been closed off. It was just the way things were. Her grandmother had said something about the whole place being too expensive to heat in the winter, so that was why she shut up the back of the house. But that had never really made sense to Tess.