Page 1 of The Inn on Bluebell Lane
CHAPTER 1
ELLIE
It started raining as soon as they passed the sign for Wales.
“Cro-ee-so I Gym-ru,” eight-year-old Josh sounded out slowly, taking his time with the unfamiliar syllables, his dark hair sliding into his face, his eyes screwed up in concentration. “What does that mean, Mommy?”
“I don’t actually know,” Ellie admitted with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Daddy never taught me Welsh.”
“I never really knew much Welsh,” Matthew responded with a laugh. “Besides bore da pawb. That meant ‘good morning, everyone’ and you had to say it every day in assembly. I can’t remember much else, to be honest, although I suppose I should.” He glanced over his shoulder to smile at his younger son. “But I do know the one on that sign. It means ‘Welcome to Wales.’”
“So, we’re almost there?” This was an excited squeal from four-year-old Ava as she bounced up and down in the back seat, pigtails flying, blue eyes alight with anticipation as she craned her neck to get a better view of the scenery—vivid green hills, now awash with rain, a gloom of grayness hanging over the whole, admittedly perfectly pastoral, scene. It was the same thing they’d been seeing for some time, but it was certainly lovely. Ellie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen such lush grass, and such a vivid jewel tone of green. Probably, she realized, the last time she’d been to Wales.
“Cut it out, Ava,” Jessica snapped irritably as she shifted away from her younger sister and stared out the rain-streaked window from the other side, dark hair in a tangle around her face, which was determinedly averted from her siblings crammed together in the back seat. They’d been in the car for over three hours, all the way from Heathrow, and she’d refused to say a word the entire time, maintaining a stubborn silence that had infuriated and saddened Ellie in turns. At thirteen, Ellie feared her oldest daughter would have the hardest time adjusting to her new life in a tiny Welsh village.
Although, actually, Ellie acknowledged, she might be the one to have the hardest time. After fifteen years of marriage and a lifetime in the suburban US, Ellie wasn’t at all sure she was ready to embrace country life in all meanings of the word—living deep in rural Wales, and in a foreign country to boot, where they spoke another language. What did bore da pawb mean again?
After several years of toing and froing about whether they would ever make the move, how the children would cope, Ellie was now wondering how they would cope, or more to the point, how she would. After twenty years in the States, Matthew was as American as Ellie was—or almost. He liked a latte as much as she did, certainly, but he seemed to have embraced the idea of moving with more enthusiasm and alacrity than she had. But then, he was going back to where he’d grown up, the comforts of childhood, the familiarities of youth, whereas she was just going somewhere that felt strange.
Six months ago, they’d finally pulled the trigger—or perhaps the more apt analogy was the plug. Their life in Connecticut had been going down the drain, financially speaking anyway, thanks to Matthew’s unexpected redundancy, and so they’d decided to move to Wales and help Matthew’s mother with her struggling bed and breakfast. Ellie had done her best to be on board with the move, knowing how much Matthew wanted and even needed the change, but right now, as the car turned down a lane that seemed far too narrow, with high hedgerows on either side blocking the view of the gorgeous, green hills, Ellie found herself longing for all the conveniences of her old suburban life in Connecticut—wide roads, easy parking spaces, sunshine, and a Starbucks on almost every street corner. What she wouldn’t do for an iced caramel macchiato right now, while sitting out on the terrace with her friend Joanna, comparing their Labor Day plans…
“We’ve got about another forty-five minutes left of the drive, Ava,” Matthew called from the driver’s seat, his tone as upbeat as ever. “Until we get to Granny’s house, that is. But at least we’re in Wales.”
Yes, at least they were in Wales, Ellie told herself, trying to summon the kind of cheerfulness that seemed to come so easily to her husband. It really was ridiculously beautiful—the gently rolling hills, the little stone cottages nestled in valleys, and when the sun came out from behind a cloud for a brief moment, the whole world glinted. It made her spirits, if not quite lift, then at least flicker a bit. She knew it was going to be hard to adjust to this new life, but she really was going to do her best to try.
Still, she could admit, at least in the privacy of her own mind, that she’d never been all that thrilled about the prospect of moving. Upending her whole life, leaving her friends, her family, and as paltry and shallow as it might have seemed, the convenience… When Matthew had told her that the nearest grocery store was thirty minutes away, she’d thought he’d been joking. How had she never realized that, when they’d visited his mother before? She supposed because it hadn’t been relevant to her real life, back in Connecticut… the life that was now gone.
Trying not to feel as dispirited as her eldest daughter, Ellie turned to look out the window at the impossibly green countryside. The sun had slipped behind a bank of violet-tinged clouds once more and a few raindrops spattered the windshield. She’d agreed to this move, Ellie told herself, because, well, it had seemed fair. Matthew had spent twenty years in her home country; she could spend a little while—length still to be determined, as she kept reminding herself—in his.
But right now, she was fighting a deep-seated terror at the prospect of this new life of theirs, never mind the beautiful, misted hills that rolled on to the horizon, dotted with sheep; the woolly creatures looked almost as if they’d been strategically placed, as props. You could take a photo of the scenery, put it on a postcard along with the—what was it again? Croeso y Cymru. But it didn’t necessarily mean you wanted to live there.
Eleven-year-old Ben let out a bored sigh as he ran a hand through his sandy hair—he really needed a haircut, Ellie realized—and kicked the seat in front of him, which happened to be hers. She managed to suppress a grunt as his foot connected, through the seat, with her tailbone. “Why is this car so small?” he demanded. He’d had a growth spurt this summer and was now to Ellie’s chin, and a good foot taller than Josh, who let out a yelp of complaint as Ben elbowed him in an attempt to get more comfortable—or perhaps just to annoy his younger brother.
The rental car was decidedly smaller than the eight-seater minivan—people carrier, they called them in Wales, didn’t they?—that they’d had back in the US, and had recently sold, much to Ellie’s reluctance. “We could keep it,” she had suggested wistfully to Matthew at the time. “It’s only got forty thousand miles on it…”
“Keep it?” Matthew had looked puzzled. “What for?”
Ellie hadn’t quite been able to look him in the eye. “You know,” she’d half-mumbled. “Just in case…”
“In case of what, Ellie?” Matthew had challenged with a good-natured smile, but a rather steely look in his blue eyes. They’d already gone through all the pros and cons of this move, and the pros had outweighed the cons, if only by one or two—one by Matthew’s standards, but two by Ellie’s, since no Targets or Walmarts had been an acceptable con in her mind.
“I think we could benefit from a life with a little less superstore in it,” he’d said to her, to which Ellie had not been able to think of a suitable response, or at least one that wasn’t rude.
“This is a new start, Ellie,” he’d told her. “We need to embrace it.” His tone had suggested that since they’d already had that discussion, there didn’t need to be another one.
Embracing, Ellie had come to realize, was different than accepting. She’d just about got on board with the latter—which had meant selling their house, their car, and most of their belongings. Okay, fine, Ellie had told herself, trying to be bracing. She wasn’t attached to possessions. She didn’t want her children to be attached to them, either. She’d always said as much, believed it, and yet right now, in the admittedly small confines of the rental car, she realized she wanted to hold onto something familiar, and it felt as if there was nothing left.
But she needed to have a good attitude about all this, especially if she wanted her kids to have one, as well. Jessica was already decidedly dragging her heels about leaving her friends, and the words “ruin my life” had crossed her lips more than once. Ben wasn’t that far behind her in the reluctance stakes, and Josh, at eight years old, her most thoughtful child, was innately cautious and therefore a little nervous about every aspect of this move—from whether Granny would have the kind of crackers he liked for a snack to whether anyone in his new school would like Lego. At four, Ava didn’t really understand what it was all about, but Ellie was bracing herself for the moment when her youngest daughter suddenly realized this move was permanent, and that her pink canopied bed hadn’t accompanied them across the ocean.
All her children, Ellie knew, needed shepherding, bolstering, protecting—none of which she could do if she was busy sulking about a move she and Matthew had decided on together. She’d been telling herself that all along, but she certainly needed the reminder now, as they drew closer and closer to their destination, with all its unknowns.
“How about we play the alphabet game?” Ellie suggested in her brightest voice, turning around to face the children. They’d played it three times already on the motorway from Heathrow, but a fourth round surely wouldn’t go amiss.
Jessica let out a long-suffering sigh—she hadn’t participated in any of the earlier rounds—and Ben didn’t even bother to reply. Josh and Ava agreed to at least give it a try, and so, with rather beady determination, Ellie scoured the very few road signs visible along the rural roads.
“I see an A in Abergavenny!” she called out as cheerfully as she could.
“B in Brecon!” Josh exclaimed excitedly, a few minutes later.