All Roads Lead to Swatragh - Chapter 1

A new year and a new story. Hope you like it. :)

Grace stood at the front of the cottage shaking her head. What am I going to do with this? This is not what I had planned. The place looked a shambles. Things had not been taken care of for quite a while. Grace had not visited here for a few years as she had been busy with university studies and getting her career off the ground. Besides who would want to live way out here in the countryside when they could be living somewhere like Dublin where everything was so alive and vibrant?
................
Three months earlier

The solicitor walked up beside Grace at the funeral, "When you have some time, please stop by my office. There is a matter of your grandmother's estate. She left me explicit instructions for when she left this earth."

Grace had always been close to her grandmother and her death hurt her deeply. While they had not seen each other much over the last couple of years, she and Grace wrote to each other regularly and often talked on the phone. When Grace needed someone to talk to, she called her grandmother. She listened quietly as Grace went on and on about her troubles and mostly allowed Grace the time to work them out through the conversation.

Aine was Grace's paternal grandmother. Since the time Grace's father had passed away, she and Aine had became closer. Grace and her mother had a tentative relationship, to say the least. After her father's death Grace's mother retreated from most of her friends and shut down. She moved through her daily routines, but closed herself off from relationships where she might get hurt again. Grace understood this and while she loved her mother, she needed someone to relate to through her university years and since. This person was her grandmother, and the loss of Aine was devastating to Grace. After many calls from the solicitor she finally gave in and went to his office.

Aine did not have a lot. Until she got ill, she ran a B&B in the small village of Swatragh in Northern Ireland. The clients dwindled and it was closed down when Aine could no longer manage the daily routines of a business. It was this property that Aine left to Grace along with all it's contents. Grace had no idea how this gift of generosity from her grandmother was going to affect the rest of her life.