Best of Me

Chapter 1

Cora's head fell heavily into her hands as her weariness finally caught up to her.  She had been trying to plug a sinking boat for too long.  If something didn't change soon...she didn't even want to finish that thought.  She would take on more commissions, or find another way to make more money, there were too many people depending on her for her to fail.

Margie sat a mug of coffee at her elbow and rested a hand on her shoulder. "Leon and I can go a few months without a salary if that would help," she said in her soft Scottish accent.

Cora felt the tears threaten again as she reached up and placed her hand over Margie's. "We're not that bad off yet," she lied. "I would just feel more comfortable if we had a little extra, that's all."

"Is everything ready for Miss Patty and Dr. Foley this morning?" Cora asked as she took a sip of the warm coffee, letting it sooth her scratchy throat. The only thing worse than crying was trying not to cry.

"Yes, Leon and I put a few extras in the baskets this week for the holiday. I wish we could have them here to celebrate it with us." Margie moved towards the tray she was preparing for Cora to take up to her aunt.

"Aunt Mable would never allow it." Cora had asked her aunt many times to include her brother's, Cora's father's friends in their celebrations, but the answer was always no, coupled with the question; did Cora think she was made of money?

Cora knew for a fact that Aunt Mable was sitting on a nice little nest egg even though she wasn't sure exactly how nice it was, but there was no way that she had withheld as much as she had from the household account and not have saved something over the last five years.

"The tray is ready Cora."

Sighing, Cora reached over for the large scarf she wore over her head. Her aunt claimed that her vibrant red hair was upsetting and demanded that she cover it whenever she was in her presence. Cora's hair wasn't a pretty shade of auburn or strawberry blond, it was red orange, and the color of a carrot in Cora's opinion.

After tucking the accounting books into the kitchen drawer where she stored them, she wrapped the scarf around her head as she thought of the long list of chores that awaited her that afternoon. The old house they lived in was built in the 1880s and hadn't been updated much since then. The only room that had been modernized was the kitchen and it looked like something out of a 1950s-magazine advertisement. There was a lot of pink in the room.

Cora picked up the tray and climbed the stairs from the basement, where the kitchen was, and pushed through the baize door that led into the main hall of the house. It came out just behind the majestic staircase that looked like something out of an old movie. The house had been built by her father's predecessors and had been in the family since the time of its construction.

The building was shaped like an H with a great two story hall in the center that held the elaborate staircase. The center hall had five rooms off of it and all of the rooms were very large and grand and impossible to heat. Upstairs consisted of six bedrooms, two of the bedrooms had been divided to include bathrooms. One of these rooms was her aunts, who had the bathroom was an en-suite. The room that Cora had was the other sub-divided room, but it was not an en-suite. The bathroom next to her room served as the main one for the house.

One of Cora's favorite places since she was a little girl was the attic, and it was there that Cora hid her drawing table and supplies. There was also an old atrium off the back of the main hall, but it had gone to seed a long time ago.  Cora managed to keep a small corner behind a screen green, but it was getting harder and harder to keep up and with the lack of income, it might be one of the things that she could no longer continue.