The Faraway Inn

Chapter One

There were a lot of trees.

Calisa stood by the mailbox with her backpack and her suitcase and told herself very firmly that this was exactly what she needed.

Ahead of her was a forest, hemming in a one-­lane road. Pine trees clustered together, the expanse of evergreens only broken by the occasional white-­barked tree that stood out like a candle against the dark green. Overhead, the sky was a matte white, clouds blotting out the sun, which matched her mood—­cloudy with a chance of rain.

“This is going to be an amazing summer,” she said, as if saying the words out loud would act as some kind of spell to make them come true.

She just hadn’t pictured what it would feel like to actually be here, by herself, in the middle of a truly excessive number of trees, away from everyone she knew and everything familiar. She’d been too focused on not being there.

A few weeks ago, she’d never have considered coming to Vermont by herself for two entire months, but after her world fell apart, she’d pounced on the invitation. She’d wanted to spend her summer anywhere but Brooklyn—­anywhere but where Ethan, the boy who’d yanked her heart out of her chest and then stomped on it with the enthusiasm of a four-­year-­old in tap shoes, was going to be. It was essential self-­care.

In retrospect, Calisa supposed she should have had the Uber driver take her all the way to her great-­aunt’s doorstep instead of just the mailbox, but after the hours on the train and then in the car, she’d wanted to walk.

Also, the driver wouldn’t stop talking about fly-­fishing. So, here she was.

It will be fine. She could tell from the clouds it wasn’t going to rain until later. And if it did, she’d packed an umbrella, though she wasn’t sure exactly where.

Everything is going to be fine.

Shouldering her backpack, Calisa hauled her suitcase down the road. On either side, the trees loomed over her. It smelled like pine and wet earth and not at all like the mix of hot gyro meat, bus fumes, coffee, and overripe trash that she associated with the street outside her family’s apartment in Park Slope. Above, birds cawed to one another with sharp, biting cries that made her feel like an intruder. Listening, she thought she heard one softer trill, a cascading chirp that was more friendly. Squirrels leaped from branch to branch, causing the forest to rustle. She wondered if Vermont had wolves. Or bears. Probably not. Or maybe yes? This wasn’t the city or even suburbia. Bears weren’t impossible. On the plus side, being attacked by a bear would make a unique party story. Or an excellent college application essay. She hadn’t started writing hers yet. On the minus side, it would not be great to be mauled.

Close beside her, the trees rustled again, and Calisa jumped. She spotted a squirrel racing up the trunk of a pine tree. Just a squirrel. Not a bear. Only my overactive imagination.

In Google Maps, it hadn’t looked that far from the main road to the bed-­and-­breakfast. She pulled out her phone. No signal. She shoved it back into her pocket and kept walking. Ahead, the sky was darkening as gray clouds seeped into the white.

The road twisted, and in front of her, on the left side, was a wooden sign, half devoured by ivy, with letters gouged into it that read:

THE FARAWAY INN

She exhaled and smiled.

“See,” she said to the trees. “Almost there.” She’d thought it was a melodramatic name—Vermont wasn’t that far from Brooklyn—­but now that she was here in a random, possibly bear—infested forest, she decided it fit. She felt extremely far away from everything, which was exactly what she wanted.

Cheered, Calisa walked faster—­and it began to rain.

At first it was just a few drops, one on her cheek, one on her head, and a few spattering on the road around her, and then it increased to a drizzle. She shivered as she walked, wishing she had worn something warmer than her favorite Brooklyn Beans T-shirt (teal with a picture of a coffee cup and the words “Brew can do it!”) and a pair of jean shorts. Mom-­Kate had insisted she pack a jacket, even though it was summer, but it was shoved deep somewhere, probably with the umbrella. She didn’t want to stop to dig either of them out and risk drenching everything else in her suitcase in the process. Better to just keep walking.

A few minutes and many raindrops later, the road rose up a hill and then, as it crested, widened to reveal a hollow between slopes thick with pine trees. Behind it was a panorama of the mountains, crowned in gray clouds.

And in the center of the hollow was her great-­aunt’s inn.

“Huh,” she said out loud.

Calisa hadn’t been here in years, not since she was five or six, and it did not match her memory. She thought she’d remembered a storybook inn, framed in roses and lilacs, with a burbling brook next to or behind it. Had she imagined all of that? She’d been young enough that it was one of those fuzzy kinds of memories that felt jumbled. But she’d still been expecting cute.

This . . .

It was not cute.

Well, she supposed it could have been charming once, but if so, it had been many, many years ago. Blinking through the droplets on her eyelashes, Calisa looked at the run-­down inn and wondered what had happened. Auntie Zee’s B&B was gray, drab, and . . . the kindest description she could think of was “vintage distressed.” It reminded her of a squashed wedding cake. Three stories tall, it had faded and peeling paint that could have been white with ivory trim at one time but was now gray with dirtier gray. The roof was tilted, lopsided, and the shutters hung crooked on either side of the windows. One window on the second floor was boarded up with plywood. And the wraparound porch was so overrun with vines that half of it was buried beneath greenery.

It was all tremendously overgrown. The flower gardens, which Mom-­Kate and Mom-­Elise had gushed about while Calisa was packing—­“Daffodils and lilacs and roses and lilies everywhere!” they’d said—­were a mess. Okay, that was putting it mildly. Brambles and ivy from the forest sprawled across the flower beds as if they were trying to devour them. She couldn’t even see the supposed burbling brook, if there still was one.

It looked as if the forest was on the verge of swallowing the inn whole.

To be fair, her moms had said Auntie Zee was having trouble keeping up the place. It was, in fact, the reason that Mom-­Kate had the idea to send Calisa here. She could help Auntie Zee and recover from her heartbreak at the same time. “Two birds with one stone,” Mom-­Kate had chirped cheerfully. But Calisa didn’t think her mother had any idea how run-­down it really was. If it wasn’t for a few lights inside, she’d have thought it was abandoned.

Calisa stood, staring into the hollow at the shabby bed-­and-­breakfast while rain slithered down her shirt and seeped into her sneakers. Her socks were already soaked, and her hair dripped on her shoulders. It wasn’t the arrival moment she’d pictured.

At least Auntie Zee will be happy I’m here. There was clearly a lot of work to do. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. Just afraid of being pathetic. Far better to be the unpaid, overworked help than the heartbroken girl everyone felt sorry for. She’d cheerfully be Cinderella so long as it meant she didn’t have to dance with any kind of prince.

Her original plan for the summer hadn’t involved any of this. Before Ethan upended everything, she’d had it all nicely mapped out: she’d secured a job at a vintage boutique called Buttons and Bell-­Bottoms, which would have been fantastic. She’d work there for a few hours every afternoon, primarily playing on her phone and trying on the most random outfits she could assemble. After work, she’d meet up with her friends. She, Maddy, and Crystal had set themselves a challenge to visit every single coffee shop in Brooklyn before the end of August. Every evening, she was going to meet Ethan at the bodega where he’d be working, downstairs from her apartment. They’d have dinner (sometimes with his family, sometimes with hers, sometimes just the two of them), watch movies, and cuddle, or go out and drop in on one of Ethan’s friends’ parties. It would have been a very, very different summer than this.

Now . . . even if she spent the entire summer on nonstop yardwork and housework and whatever else until she had blisters and calluses on both hands, it was still a better option than having to see Ethan every day when she walked past the bodega and feeling as if she were being ripped to shreds from the inside out all over again.