I was not reflecting on my metaphorical lostness, however, but my literal situation. The GPS told me I was in front of a Denny’s on I-90 as it cut through upstate New York. Looking around at the gloomy walls of evergreen and granite, I reflected that a Denny’s breakfast would be welcome right about then, but no shiny, happy hostess came melting out of the woods with a coffeepot and a smile.

My odyssey began in a car rental lot in Jersey City before midnight August 31, also known as the night before, and just now the rosy beginnings of dawn were glimmering through the piney treetops. September first, a good date for a fresh start, if I could ever find my way out of the woods.

Some of my worldly belongings were piled in the backseat and trunk of the Chevy rental and the rest were stacked in a locker at a Manhattan Mini Storage near SoHo. Merry Wynter, adventuress, I thought, my mouth twisting in a grimace. But I wasn’t just wandering, I was looking for my inheritance. I leaned back into the car and grabbed the plastic tub of carrot muffins, prying off the lid and inhaling the cinnamony aroma. I took out the last one, peeled off the paper liner, and munched away, the melting goodness of my homemade muffins sweet on my tongue.

While I ate, I considered my options.

After a long night of driving all the way from Jersey City to upstate New York, I was exhausted. With a GPS in the rental I thought it would be easy going, but the trouble was, the probate lawyer who gave me instructions on how to get there had assumed I was familiar with Wynter Castle and its environs, and that I have a reasonably good sense of direction. I wasn’t, and I don’t. I’d only been there once, as a child. I’d like to say my navigational skills have come a long way since then, but my grandmother told me lying is wrong. I may be thirty-nine, and Grandma may be long gone, but I still hear her voice in my head. When the GPS started screwing up, I wasn’t aware of it until I was hopelessly lost.

I learned I inherited Wynter Castle many months before and put it up for sale, sight unseen, with a local Autumn Vale real estate agent named Jack McGill. Why would I do something so stupid? It’s complicated, and in retrospect not the brightest move I’ve ever made. Here’s the thing . . . that visit as a kid is not a happy memory, and my own life has been in turmoil the last several years.

Long story short: once upon a time (briefly), I was a plus-size model. I quit work when I married a photographer, but then my beloved husband died. I was still young, and I needed something to do, but I didn’t want to be a model again, and I was getting too old for that line of work, anyway. So even as I fought my overwhelming grief, I began styling a few model friends, plus-and regular-size, choosing their clothes, helping each define her look. It’s like an advanced game of playing dress-up, the same game I played with Barbie dolls when I was a kid, much to my hippie mother’s chagrin. In the meantime, though, my darling Miguel left me reasonably well settled; I thought I could do better and began to play the stock market with my savings.

You guessed it; the economy tanked, my investments disappeared into the pockets of the wealthiest investors while those of us foolishly toying with our life savings suffered, and I was left with very little. But it was okay; my career as a stylist was beginning to take off. As I started doing all right, making enough to live on without touching what was left of my savings, an opportunity came up that I could not ignore. When someone offers you a six-figure salary, what do you do? You grab it and hope no one notices you don’t deserve it, right?

So this is what happened. A few years back, Leatrice Pugeot, the internationally famous supermodel (born plain old Lynn Pugmire more years ago than she admits), happened to be at New York Fashion Week, and so was I. I came across her in a corner of a show venue weeping her eyes out. Concerned, I asked if I could help, and she asked me to get her some Xanax. Where was her purse, I asked. She said “No, dummy, just score some from a dealer.” I refused, gave her a cup of herbal tea instead, and talked to her for an hour.

At the end of that hour she asked me to come work for her as a personal assistant. I demurred, but she was persistent. Over the period of a few days, she steadily sweetened the pot until it was up to six figures. Here’s where it gets tricky; I heard, through the grapevine, that Leatrice was difficult to work with—like, Naomi Campbell difficult, but she seemed like a sweet, if troubled, soul, to me.

So I took the job, which seemed like it was going to be a lot less effort than the constant push to find clients and stay on top of the industry. The hole that Miguel left in my life was not being filled with work, no matter how hard I tried to stay busy, and I was beginning to worry that I wasn’t strong enough to build a whole new career while still struggling with grief. Looking back, I think that my state of mind had a lot to do with why I took the job, despite warnings to the contrary. I needed to be needed, and Leatrice needed me terribly. The next couple of years were interesting, to say the least. Ultimately, everyone was right about Leatrice and it didn’t go well. I left (was fired/quit . . . depends on who you talk to, me or her) after she accused me of stealing from her.

About that time I learned about my inheritance, a cash-poor family “estate” in the boonies of upstate New York. Wynter Castle; at first I thought that was one of those bougy names developers throw around, like McSnobbin Estates or Uppercrust Acres, which are really just suburban ticky-tacky boxes thrown up on seven feet of land. I let it slide for a long time while I dealt with the fallout from my problems with Leatrice, hiring a local real estate agent to sell the place. He wanted me to come look at it, but I just couldn’t handle it. I did begin to remember Wynter Castle at that point, and my one visit to it when I was a child of about five. My memory of that visit did nothing to make me want to go back there.

It wouldn’t be an easy sell, I was told by both the real estate agent and my uncle’s attorney and executor, and that prediction was on the money. The castle had languished on the real estate list for months without even a hint of interest. Since I had been scrambling to make ends meet for some time—it’s the old story, just when I think I’ve made ends meet, someone moves the ends—I finally took the advice of a dear friend and did something about it. I gave up the sublet on my tiny slice of Manhattan, and set out without telling anyone where I was going. Correcting the mistake I made several months before in not going to evaluate my inheritance seemed a challenge, but doable. Maybe I was finally getting my act together after a long run of personal tragedy compounded by stupid decisions.

So here I stood, in the gloom of predawn, out in the middle of nowhere, lied to by a freakin’ computer. It was quiet at my crossroads; too quiet, I thought, looking around. A big bird circled overhead, like a vulture waiting for me to collapse into a heap. It was quite the view: nothing but a long, dirt slope downward in one direction, a rocky face upward in another, and a paved side road slicing through the rock face across it. Wind tossed the tops of the trees, and a scent like a pine tree–shaped car freshener drifted down to me, with the rustling sound of movement nearby. I should have felt alone, but I didn’t, having the uneasy sensation I was being watched from the shadowy depths of the forested slope. Turning quickly, I caught a movement in the bushes, and jumped back in the car, my heart pounding.

I was just tired and edgy, I reassured myself. I’d return to the last place that the GPS system made any sense and go from there. This wilderness was not how I pictured upstate New York. Where were the quaint, artsy towns and elegant, country houses? Where were the Martha Stewart clones? Shouldn’t they be out picking dew-flecked roses from their perfectly trimmed gardens wearing twinsets, pearls, and flowered gardening gloves?