Love Inspired November 2014 #2 Read Online Free PDF

scared—you’re supposed to be in my situation—but I can push through this. I’m choosing to feel more like I’m waiting for whatever God’s got around the corner than I’ve been broadsided by a job change.”
    Melba leaned in. “The best part is you get to wait here. I’ll be so happy to have you around.”
    â€œWell, part of the time. I expect I’ll need to take lots of trips back to Chicago for job-search stuff and interviews eventually. Only it’ll be great to have the cottage as a distraction. All the books say to take on inspiring new projects so it doesn’t become all about the job search. This is a great time to get a serious creative groove on. I need a place outside of my résumé to channel all this energy.”
    All that was true, but there was still a small corner of her chest that felt as if she had planted her flag at the top of a very high mountain with no idea how to climb back down. She nodded to the thick file of plans, the one she’d taken from her desk on her last day at Monarch. “I wonder if Mima had any idea the incredible gift this is going to be. To get to fix this place up exactly the way I want it? To have enough to do that after I bought it? Debt free? It’s a huge blessing.”
    Melba gave her a cautious smile. “I know you got it at a great price, but it needs so much work.” She thumbed through the file of clippings and swatches with her free hand while Maria gave a tiny sigh of baby contentment in her other arm. “Don’t you think it’s a big risk to take at a time like this?”
    Charlotte shrugged. “Yes, it is a big risk. But it’s a worthwhile risk. Just the thought of being able to do this up right gives me so much energy. I don’t care if I have to buy shelving instead of shoes. Or stop eating until October.”
    â€œYou’re not going to fix up the whole place and decorate it all at once, are you?” Melba turned to a magazine page showing chintz kitchen curtains. “Won’t that cost more than you have?”
    â€œI
have
to do some of the fixing up as soon as possible. The stove, the heating, the upstairs bathroom—they need renovation before they’ll be usable, and all that stuff has to be done if I’m going to be able to live there. Do I need the designer concrete sink right away? Well, I don’t know yet. It’s probably smarter to get exactly what I want now—once you start ripping stuff out, you might as well do it right the first time rather than rip stuff up again a year later.”
    â€œCharlotte...”
    â€œI know, I know. Stop worrying—I’m not going to take my aggressions out at the home decorating store. I should probably have the home improvement channels blocked off my cable service for now. But since I don’t have a job, I can’t even afford cable television, so that solves that anyway, doesn’t it?” She leaned back in her chair, as if the sheer weight of Melba’s doubts had pushed her there. “This is going to be fine. Really. I won’t let this get out of hand.”
    Melba pushed the file back across the table to Charlotte. “Easy to say now, but these things have a way of snowballing. Even the remodeling costs for the house I inherited from Dad sent Clark and me reeling.”
    When Melba’s father had died last year after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, it left Clark and Melba to remake her childhood home into the one that now housed her new family. The transition had been complicated and expensive—going beyond what it would have cost in both time and money to start fresh with a new house—but it just proved Charlotte’s point: the house gave off a palpable sense of history. She’d felt something like it from the cottage that first visit. The once-charming cottage seemed to beckon to her, begging to be restored. She knew it was a risky prospect,