Many years ago, my husband and I had friends who were living at Edisto Beach. They had another home near the mountains in Asheville, North Carolina. We all had become very close friends and really enjoyed each other’s company.
One day I was lamenting the fact that I really needed to take a short vacation; I was tired. They generously suggested that we go to their home in Asheville and stay a few days. They had decided to sell it, but it wasn’t being shown to potential buyers that week and we were free to use it if we wanted to.
Now, as they say, “my mama didn’t raise no fool!” so of course, we accepted their generous offer, packed our clothes, gathered medication, stop the mail and the newspaper, and off we went.
We were so excited!
Of course, I couldn’t leave until after work, so we got a rather late start but managed to roll into the outskirts of Asheville at dusk. According to our friends, their home was in a subdivision that literally sat on a golf course.
I have to stop here and say that I received directions from the wife of the couple, and I have to admit that she was a little dingy. You know, batty, scatterbrained, hair brained, but utterly delightful. I loved her but was really concerned about these directions.
However, I had followed her instructions to the letter and sure enough, we found ourselves in their beautiful subdivision on a pristine golf course. Next, we slowly drove through the houses looking for the one with the description she had given me. We were looking for a street number or number on the house, but the directions she had given me said that it was a brick house with columns in the front and a large patio next to the garage.
After going around a curve in the road, there it sat! The mansion was beautiful! This was not a house, this was a mansion! Sure enough, there were the columns, and there was the patio. It was the only house on the block without a posted house number. It figured.
I was giddy with joy! For several days I was going to live like a queen.
She had told us that the housekeeper would leave the door open for us, so we of course went to the front door and tried the handle, but the door was locked shut. Frowning, I wondered if the message had been mixed up and perhaps there was a key under the front door mat. We looked under the mat to no avail. No key.
“It must be another door that is open,” I said. So we proceeded to walk all the way around the house but found no other door. My husband then pointed to the garage.
“Do you suppose the open door is in the garage?” He asked.
Shrugging, I said I didn’t know but we ought to try. So my husband went to the garage and easily lifted up the garage door. There was another door inside the garage that led to the interior of the house, and as we tried the door handle, it immediately opened. Thankfully, we went on in.
It was absolutely beautiful. There was a sunken den with a huge giant screen TV, a small bar, recessed lighting, plush leather couches, and throw rugs over a marble floor. There was even a remote-control fireplace on the wall. Unfortunately, there was not one single scrap of food in the entire house.
Sighing in bliss, I walked into the bedrooms but noticed there were no sheets on the beds. I was pretty tired, and a little aggravated that I would have to make the beds, but I was still so grateful for the use of this house that I just blew out a sigh and got to work searching for sheets. But I could not find a single one.
By this time, my husband had brought in our luggage and was opening all the suitcases.
“Honey, would you please call our friends and ask them where the sheets are?” I asked.
He called, speaking for a few minutes on the phone. Suddenly, his eyes grew wide. He hung up the phone and stared at me appalled.
“She said the maid has already made the beds up, she left food in the refrigerator, and the front door is open for us. She also said that she was glad we got there before dark because most people couldn’t see the house since it sat at the bottom of a sharp slope,” he said.
I stared back at him in horror. Beds? Food? Bottom of a slope? Oh no!
I looked at my husband, he looked back at me, and at the same time we shouted, “Oh my gosh, WE’RE IN THE WRONG HOUSE!”
Like two tornadoes, we packed up our suitcases at supersonic speed, turned off the lights, flew out the garage door, and threw our suitcases haphazardly into the car. My husband yanked down the garage door while I cranked the car and slammed it into reverse. He had just cleared the car door when I was squealing tires backing out of the driveway. We’re expected to hear police sirens at any second. I could see it now, “Pastor And Wife Arrested For Breaking And Entering” all over the newspaper headlines.
As I flew down the street my husband and I were jabbering at each other partly in laughter and partly in terror. As we rounded a corner, there it was. The roof of a house sitting beyond a sharp slope. We couldn’t even see the house from the road.
We made our way inside and everything was just as she said it would be. It wasn’t a mansion, it was more like a cottage. And it was beautiful. Eventually, we had a lovely time. But for the first 24 hours we didn’t really enjoy ourselves. Scared to death, we kept peeking between the window blinds expecting to see the police.
