A Faded Cottage
"Inspired by real stories"
A Christmas love story. A story of true love that lasted a lifetime. A Story blending fact and fiction.
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A Faded Cottage, a Christmas love story
Quaid had everything money could buy, except two things he loved most, his love of painting great masterpieces, and the only woman he had ever loved. A journal of a famous artist not of his life, but of only two weeks. The story begins when Essential Tremors take over a famous artist’s body, a simple feat of holding a paintbrush turns Quaid Witherspoon’s life upside down, becoming a bitter man. Quaid had everything money could buy, except the two things he loved the most, his love of painting great masterpieces, and the only woman he had ever loved. The calming waters off the coast of South Carolina calls Quaid back to Hathaway Cove, to a small, faded cottage, one with a leaning front porch, worn paint so similar to him, flawed. The same beach where he began painting as a young boy, the place he met his one true love, and the place he let her go. This is his journal of only two weeks, a story of endless love, his tale of living with ET, and the strength and power of love Sandy, Quaid’s love from his past, learns he is wondering about her, just as she is wondering about him. Their love is alive, meeting for the first time in thirty years, letting the years fade away, but fate has another twist. Sandy keeps a secret, letting them have their two weeks. |
Inspiration for A FADED COTTAGE
A Faded Cottage tells a tale of love that you only find once in your life, blending fact and nonfiction about an artist life.
Why I wrote A Faded Cottage
It was the night of December 18, 2010, my birthday, a very calm and uneventful night. I couldn’t sleep, which isn’t unusual for me, so I made my way downstairs to my cubby office. I decided, since I was wide-awake that I’d work on one of my novels.
I sat down in front of the computer and began to type, but it seemed my fingers and hands had another idea as they shook uncontrollably. If you’ve tried to text as you are riding in a car or train when it’s bumpy, then you might understand how difficult it is to type when you have trouble hitting the correct keys with tremoring fingers. You see, I have had Essential Tremor from my early twenties and I’d learn to deal with my tremors, but this night it became overpowering.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the computer screen, my anger grew watching my hands quiver over the keyboard, and for once in my life I felt sorry for myself. The question of why me, a question without an answer, played repeatedly in my mind.
I took in a deep breath, closed my eyes and I let my tremoring hands type and the words, “Happy birthday dumb-ass” were written across the screen. I laughed and let the words flow and Quaid Witherspoon, a famous artist, was born. A man who had everything or so he thought, but now his hands had abandoned him and his life of painting had ceased, becoming a bitter man. I didn’t have the story of Quaid planned that night, but his character emerged from my mind and as the story grew my hands calmed, while I released the stress of the evening, telling Quaid’s story, a journal of only two weeks of his life.
The story of Quaid Witherspoon, the novel 'A Faded Cottage', became an incredible love story, one about strength of mind to fight fate and never accept what life throws at you. ‘A Faded Cottage’ is journal of a famous artist not of his life, but of only two weeks, a love story about aging and two people being reunited after thirty years finding love can conquer all.
Through this process of bringing ‘A Faded Cottage’ to life, I have learned so much.
Now, A Faded Cottage has become a vehicle to explain about Essential Tremor and how so many, over 100 million people (all ages) worldwide, live each day with tremoring hands, head, voice, and entire body.
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A Faded Cottage‘A Faded Cottage’ fuses fact with fiction to depict a compelling love story, based around an artist suffering from Essential Tremor. The love story imparts a powerful message, while acting as a real-life vehicle for vital Essential Tremor awareness. While the protagonist in ‘A Faded Cottage’ may appear to have a unique story, his battle with Essential Tremor (causing rhythmic trembling of the hands, head, voice, legs, or trunk) is shared with over 42 million people worldwide. The book is a stark reminder of the prevalence of this often ignored disorder.
‘A Faded Cottage’ is a South Carolina love story about an artist with Essential Tremor. When a love letter written by a teenage boy becomes lost after a summer filled with passion, it brings about an incredible love story of two people being reunited, after thirty years. When Essential Tremors take over a famous artist’s body, a simple feat of holding a paintbrush turns Quaid Witherspoon’s life upside down, becoming a bitter man. This is his journal of how he battles fate, not of his entire life, but of two weeks. Quaid had everything money could buy, except the two things he loved the most, his love of painting great masterpieces, and the only woman he had ever loved. The calming waters off the coast of South Carolina calls Quaid back to Hathaway Cove, to a small, faded cottage, one with a leaning front porch, worn paint so similar to him, flawed. The same beach where he began painting as a young boy, the place he met his one true love, and the place he let her go. Sandy, Quaid’s love from his past, learns he is wondering about her, just as she is wondering about him. Their love is alive, meeting for the first time in thirty years, letting the years fade away, but fate has another twist. Sandy keeps a secret, letting them have their two weeks. 
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A Faded Cottage
Ghosts from the Past
“Happy Birthday, dumb-ass!” Brenton Quaid Witherspoon’s words echoed into the roar of the waves. His heart pounded in his chest as the cold mist circled and engulfed him. The wetness he mopped from his face with the sleeve of his jacket revealed the eyes of a world-renowned artist, known for his superb paintings of the sea.
Quaid watched the dark, cumulus clouds as they grew in the threatening sky, showing colors of grey, black, dark blue and a hint of orange bleeding through from the morning sun. His trembling hands reached out in front of him tightening into fists. His throat constricted, anger grew, with the realization he would never bring the beautiful scene to life on canvas ever again, merely in his dreams.
He reached in his pocket. A folded newspaper clipping slid out. Brenton Quaid Witherspoon is a prolific artist, producing over 3,000 original works in his lifetime. The paper crinkled in his fist flying out into the waves. “I was,” he screamed, “a prolific artist!”
On this chilly Saturday morning, December 18th, 1982 Quaid, a man of medium height with gray sprinkled in his thick, dark hair not showing his age, continued his daily walk along the fresh white sand next to the Atlantic Ocean. He rounded the curve and stopped. He stared down the long seashore. He was alone, just him and the one seagull he’d fed so many times. He’d hoped ole Amos would be down past the curve fishing, his morning routine since Amos had retired, but even he hadn’t ventured out on the damp morning.
Quaid’s hands tucked in his jean pockets and he twirled around in a half circle. The blustery sea breeze hit him straight in his face kissing his lips as he tasted the salt. Quickly, he ducked his head trying to hide from the gust of the cold wind.
A deep breath of salty air sucked into his lungs. A wave of pain came over him, thinking about last year, when his life had screeched to a sudden stop.
Now, at the age of fifty, this was Quaid’s new life, living in an old framed cottage at 11 Gull Lane, a cottage with a sagging porch, tattered shutters, and worn paint sitting on the beach in the small town of Hathaway Cove. Hathaway Cove, a tiny fishing town of only five hundred including dogs, sat secluded, nestled among the small barrier islands along the coast of South Carolina away from civilization. A quaint, southern town known for its tales of shipwrecks had brought many tourists trying to discover pirate’s treasure that they believe was still hiding in the deep blue waters surround this picturesque island.
Quaid slowed his pace and his eyes stared up at the old cottage securely tucked in behind the sand dunes. The quaint cottage, it’s once beautiful boards now weathered and timeworn, had sat on the South Carolina coast withstanding hurricanes and storms for over eighty years. Two porches dressed in hand-carved wooden trim spread across the back of the small cottage facing the Atlantic. It was a perfect place to sit and watch the sunrise and a wonderful place to enjoy peaceful evenings listening to the waves serenade the beach.
At the young age of five, Quaid’s love of painting had been born on the quiet beach of Hathaway Cove. Time moved on and his passion for painting grew, as did his ability to bring brilliant colors of the Atlantic Ocean to life. He could turn a lonely wave into a superb painting showing the strength of the wave, its fury, its beauty, bringing nature alive. His yearning to paint never failed him, but his hands had now deserted him.
Quaid had lived all over the world, but now he wanted to hide away from the world and moving to a small cottage on Gull Lane, leaving his comfortable life, his family, and his friends back in New York, seemed the perfect solution.
The calmness of Hathaway Cove wasn’t the only reason Quaid returned. The faded cottage pulled him in the first moment he laid his eyes on it. Not only was the cottage so like him, its spirit broken, but the mystery it held stirred old feelings in Quaid, bringing back memories of one summer thirty years ago, the summer he was a boy of eighteen. The summer he found his one and only love, his best friend. The same summer he let her go. It was a memory that had haunted him for three decades.
His lone steps in the damp sand left a trail guiding him home along with the rotting seaweed snaking along the shore of the churning waters of the stormy Atlantic.
Thoughts of his life flowed in his mind. Quaid married when he was a young man of twenty-one, a marriage of convenience. Or duty. Either way it wasn’t for love, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying to make it work that the marriage didn’t last long. He made his life and his young bride’s life miserable. She was such a beautiful young woman in every way a man would desire, but they both understood a ghost lived in his heart and his new wife wasn’t willing to share him. They went their separate ways and Quaid found many other women willing to overlook the ghost, understanding he would never love them.
The tall sea oats swished against his pant legs as he stepped upon the wooden boardwalk and the crunching of the sand on the worn path showed the way to the steps of the porch.
His hands slip from his pockets. His fingers wrapped around the smooth railing as he stepped up the scuffed steps as they moaned with the weight of his body. He stopped at the top of the steps taking in all that was around him. An old-fashion, slatted wooden swing hung on the other side of the porch, worn from many years of use. Two tattered, wicker rockers sat at the edge of the porch, swaying back and forth in a steady rhythm, as if someone was gently pushing them. A smile finally came over his face as he stared at the empty rockers. Maybe ghosts from the past were enjoying the quietness of the morning. Oddly enough, that gave him a comforting feeling.
Quaid pulled in a deep breath of salty, sweet air and his fingers combed his thick, wild hair from his face. A gust of wind hit his back. The sea breeze was somehow whispering to him, as if it were talking, telling tales from the past.
His fingers turned the doorknob of the weathered-faded door, the one he’d been meaning to paint. His head shook back and forth as the irony hit, him being an artist.
His fingers flicked the light switch and the old ceiling light turned on in the small kitchen. The smell of fried bacon lingered in the air, a treat for his birthday.
His jacket shook sending sprays of water droplets from the morning mist floating to the floor. He hung the wet jacket on the hook next to the backdoor to dry. His shoes slipped off scooting them to the side. Toes wiggled sticking out the holes of the navy socks reminding him of the satire of his life. Quaid’s friends back in New York would think he had gone mad if they could see him now in his weathered clothes, not designer suits.
He shivered, hurrying into the living room to the fireplace with its red brick hearth blackened from many fires. He knelt down in front of the fireplace pulling the mesh screen open showing the perfectly laid logs on the metal grate. The lighter clicked and flames shot out, letting the kindling under the logs catch fire, hissing and popping as dry wood took flame.
Quaid pulled himself from the floor, laying the lighter next to the clock on the mantel. His body didn’t move, but his eyes peered up. The fire’s amber glow in the dark room brought the incredible painting hanging above the brick fireplace to life, a painting he hadn’t seen in over thirty years, the mystery the cottage held.
His eyes took in every inch of the painting. The waves were so realistic he could taste the salt on his lips, just as he had earlier. The sand in the painting had footprints and the sea grass fluttered in a soft breeze. The sky was baby blue and the water had an emerald touch, along with the dark, bluish-green hue telling of its depth. Feeling the warmth from the sun’s rays, a smile emerged on his face. He stared deep into the painting seeing the anonymity it held, knowing only one other person knew the painting’s secret hidden deep inside. The mystery of the painting swirled in his mind and he hoped he’d soon find his answer, of why the painting had been left in this old cottage.
The squashy, overstuffed chair moaned as he sat down. His feet lay on the frayed ottoman and his toes wiggled peeking from the dress socks. The rain continued to fall steadily hitting the metal on the roof of the fireplace, pinging and drenching the cottage. The fire’s flames flickered dancing across the walls, giving off peacefulness in the darkened room.
This old cottage wasn’t very big, tiny compared to his large four-bedroom condo in New York, with two small bedrooms, one up, one down. It only had one full bath, but it was what he’d been looking for with large windows letting in the bright sunshine into each room. The cottage needed some work. Its wooden floors were scuffed from years of use with paths to and from each room and its flowery faded wallpaper showed where pictures had once hung. Quaid could deal with the faded and timeworn look that gave the cottage its character, making it home.
The only story Quaid knew about the cottage was of its beginning. Mr. and Mrs. Carlton Brookshire of the distinguished Brookshires from New Canaan, Connecticut, built the cottage at the turn of the century. Mrs. Brookshire was a frail young woman in bad health and had been told by her doctor she needed to leave the harsh winters of Connecticut. Mr. Brookshire, who doted on his wife, was happy to oblige. Harold Todd, a man who constructed most of the newer homes in Hathaway Cove, was hired to build the small cottage and by Mrs. Brookshire’s instructions, large windows were added across the back of the home so she could sit in her bedroom and stare out at the Atlantic Ocean. The two porches on the back of the home had to be large by comparison to the size of the home, so she could entertain her friends on beautiful sunny South Carolina days.
The Brookshire family moved into the cottage when Carlton, Jr. was a young boy of eight. After the death of Carlton Brookshire Sr., Mrs. Eula Brookshire stayed, never leaving the small cottage for even a day, until she died in the summer of 1955. Carlton Jr. didn’t have the heart to sell the cottage after his mother’s death. Carlton Jr. kept the cottage as his vacation home, until his death at the age of seventy-five in 1967. It seemed no one in the small town knew the answer to the mystery, of who bought Mrs. Eula’s cottage from the Brookshire estate.
A black and white portrait of the newly built cottage had been left in the bedroom hanging next to the window. The cottage sat with its freshly painted white boards and its porches level, not leaning as they were now. The squatted oak to the side of the cottage was young in the photo, just beginning its life.
Quaid moved the portrait of the cottage into the living room so he could sit and stare at it just as Miss Eula had done so many years ago, believing the spirit of Miss Eula was still in this cottage.
Quaid’s eyes moved from the portrait to the clock on the mantel and he watched as it ticked meticulously slow. His life of deadlines was gone and now he had an overabundance of time to think, to question his life. This was now his life, living alone in a small faded cottage in a small town hiding away from people. Gone was the bustling city of New York, Broadway plays and eating at the finest restaurants, wearing the best clothes, staff waiting to see to his every need. That was the reason he’d left his massive condo that overlooked Central Park in the first place. Quaid had become a prisoner in his own home. He couldn’t leave his condo and face people out in public and he didn’t want anyone staring at him, whispering, snickering when he would spill or drop something.
A paintbrush lifted in his hand. The quivering grew in his fingers, which twitched uncontrollably. The wooden stick snapped in half. His convulsing hands reached out in front of him, clutching them together. His knuckles turned white with the force of his anger. The weightiness of his chest squeezed tight, taking air from his lungs as his throat tightened. His life was slowly slipping away. Each minute he was becoming a shell of the man he once was, but it wasn’t age draining his life. He was living without passion, the drive for life. His soul was dying along with his quivering body.
He placed his elbows onto the wide arms of the old chair. His hands laced together and his right fingers wiggled against his left hand, missing any form of a ring. Quaid’s moist eyes pulled to the empty overstuff chair next to him. His life flowed like an old movie in his mind thinking of his biggest mistake, his one what if. So crisp in full color reliving the year he found his one and only love.
A piece of wood crackled loudly, pulling his eyes back to the fireplace where they stopped only for a second before traveling to the painting hanging above. The unique painting pulled him in deep into its memory, the mystery it held, bringing back his ghost so clearly from his past…
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