Breene, K F - Jessica Brodie Diaries 01 Read Online Free PDF Page A

lack, there were art and tiny
decorative items that made a person feel more at home. As we walked, we passed
a billiards room, which would have made me gasp in wonder if we hadn’t shortly
thereafter passed a personal movie theater!
    She turned into one of the rooms on
the left, which turned out to be the biggest bedroom I had ever entered. Ever.
With the biggest, most extreme four-poster piece of furniture that she
apparently called a bed. And what was a giant, over-the-top bed without
matching night stands? Or a huge dresser for that matter? Forget celebrity, she
probably had royalty staying over. Who else but an excessively rich person
could afford the wardrobe needed for so much space.
    Gladis stopped near the window.
“Have a look.
    She must have missed my bug-eyed
entrance, because I’d been doing nothing but looking. And fawning. And
drooling. And feeling more than a little out of place.
    Still, she stood with hands loosely
clasped in front of her, eyebrows raised, expectant. Like a mime, I elaborately
scanned everything a second time. I was an actor once, after all, I could get a
point across.
    Her continued silence meant an
answer was expectant.
    “Uh...I mean, it is very nice. Big.
I thought, um--” I winced with that last um and lost my focus as heat rose to
my cheeks. How did one bring up false advertisement to their landlady?
    Gladis’s eyes twinkled. “No, honey,
not this room.”
    She beckoned me closer to the
window.
    I went thither, as one does when
they are awkwardly standing in a giant room, in which they don’t belong,
looking for some answers but too afraid to ask, and followed her gaze to the
ground below.
    A surge of excited adrenaline
coursed through my chest.
    There it was. My cottage. I fell in
love immediately. It was actually more of a pool house than a cottage, and I
was happier for it. From the window, it looked like a decent size, pushed back
from the pool a respectable distance, with its own little cropping of trees and
landscaped backyard behind it. It was perfect.
    “I like to show the cottage from
this vantage point," Gladis said in a hush, which strangely fit the
situation perfectly. “It is a little more dramatic this way. Either you love it
or you hate it, and this view brings out that emotion best. All the kids in my
family hate it, which is why they aren’t invited over more than once a year.”
She scrutinized my face. “But I can see that you love it.”
    I had been staring at it like a fat
kid stares in a bakery shop window. In other words, like I was a kid again. All
I could do was nod quickly.
    “I love it, too," she said with
a smile, turning back to the window. “Every time me and the mister got in a
tiff, I would hike up my skirts and head out to the cottage for a few days of
peace and quiet. Now that the mister has passed on,” she crossed herself, “I
just don’t go out there much anymore. I thought it might be time to have a
starving student make her way in the world, starting from my favorite place!”
    I finally turned toward her. She
was clasping her hands in front of her, looking at me as if through a time
machine.
    “Do you believe in fate, Jessica?”
    I blinked uncertainly. “I’ve never
really thought about it, actually.”
    “Yes, young people not looking for
Prince Charming seldom do, do they? Let me tell you, Jessica. When I put that
ad in the paper, I was praying to God the person that answered my ad would be
starting a journey, like I once did. She, or he, would be taking her first
independent steps in life, with nothing but hope and a dream on her shoulders.
    “Well, Jessica, I received a lot of
responses, many of which could have fit that description to some degree, but
only one piqued my interest. A girl from California ,
just out of college, making a giant leap of faith. I knew right then God
must’ve heard me, and intertwined our paths for a reason. Now, was I right?”
    Not exactly, no. But I wasn’t
planning on revealing that little