"I have a three bedroom vacant now, and there will be a two-bedroom at the end of the month."
I couldn’t wait that long, so I asked for more details on the three, and then nearly fell off my chair when he named the dollar amount I’d need to move in. First, last, and security deposit would eat half my nest egg, and then he dashed my hopes entirely.
“We do require a background check and income verification.” The background check was a no-brainer, but I didn’t even have a job, so the income verification put me out of the running. “Would you like to fill out an application?”
“Okay, thanks.” My shoulders slumped. “I’m still looking for work, so I’ll have to wait unless you’d be willing to waive the income requirements.”
He had the grace to look uncomfortable when he politely explained he’d turned over the day-to-day operations to a mortgage broker who also ran a management company, and that some guy named Spencer was now calling the shots.
“You might want to visit his office anyway. I understand he’s looking to hire an assistant.” Leo gave me Spencer’s number, and I turned to leave him to his coffee and mooning, but he called after me. “You know, you could stop in at the town office. There’s a bulletin board where property owners post rental listings. I used to find a lot of my renters that way.”
“Thanks, Leo, I’ll do that.”
CHAPTER 5
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what I can do for you, Everly.”
I smoothed down the lapel of my lucky suit while I listened to the woman behind the desk of the job agency list off the reasons she considered me fundamentally unsuitable for anything she had to offer.
"You have no real job history and no degree." She tapped a few keys, stared at the computer screen, then pinned me with a look. "Volunteer work is nice and all, but much like being the head cheerleader in high school, it doesn't carry much weight around here."
My head came up. “How do you know I was a cheerleader? I didn’t put it on my application.” I might have been new to the job-seeking world, but I’d like to think I wasn’t that big of an idiot. I searched her face for signs of familiarity and came up empty. She had one of those desktop signs that said her name was Carlene Nicholson. Didn’t ring a bell.
“You don’t remember me, but then, why should you? I wasn’t part of the popular crowd.”
Clearly, she remembered me, and not in a good light, either.
"Look, Carlene, if I did or said something that offended you when we were kids, I'm truly sorry."
Her eyes bored into mine like truth-seeking lasers.
"Thank you for that, but it doesn't change anything." I couldn't tell by the look on her face if she'd accepted my apology or not, but Carlene's eyes raked over me, and I wondered if I was overdressed.
“Have you considered going back to school to finish your degree?”
Taking a breath, I steeled myself and said, “School isn’t an option because I can’t afford to go. I’m in the process of getting a divorce, and I need a job now. Anything to cover living expenses, so can you please check again? There must be something.”
A hint of a smirk slid over Carlene’s sly face and, knowing she wasn’t going to help me, I mentally retracted my apology.
Hers rang hollow. “I’m sorry, Everly. There’s nothing I can do for you. Come back when you’ve got more job experience, and we’ll see.”
My face pinked as I slid my purse strap over my shoulder. “How am I supposed to get job experience if no one will hire me?”
Carlene shrugged but declined to answer, and I walked out of her office feeling lower than an ant’s undercarriage.
And that was the high point of my morning. By noon, I’d burned my way through town racking up rejections left and right. I couldn’t even score an interview since no one was hiring.
By the time I dialed his number, the mortgage broker was my only hope.
Spencer Charles sounded impatient when he answered the phone, and also somewhat surprised when I asked about the position.
"I hadn't even written up an ad for the job yet. How did you hear I was looking for help?" I told him. Maybe it boded well for me to be on the ball, or perhaps I came off as pushy. Either way, I needed a job and asked if we could meet that afternoon.
He paused and then sighed. “There’s a little wiggle room in my schedule. Be in my office at twelve-thirty and bring a resume.”
A beat passed while I stifled my eagerness. “Of course, Mr. Charles. That will be fine.”
“Call me Spencer, and what did you say your name was again?” I supplied it. “Well, Everly,” he said, “be here at two, and be prepared to wait if my one o’clock runs long.”
It sounded like the delay would be inevitable, and I also got the impression I shouldn’t pin my hopes on landing the job if I didn’t stick around until whenever he was ready to talk to me. Good enough. Tenacity was one of my strong suits even if my mother preferred the word stubborn. Sometimes it’s all about the words you use.
“See you then, Spencer.”
Tenacious though I might be, the idea of putting myself out there and being found wanting again sent a nervous chill over my skin. A woman can take only so many rejections in a day.
For a moment, the enormity of change threatened to overwhelm me. Two days before, I’d been on a stable, solid path in my life. Marriage, work that might not pay but was certainly fulfilling, and the promise of a family. A future I’d wanted, and had never expected would evaporate faster than a drop of water on hot pavement.
Suck it up. Sometimes my inner voice sounds like my grandmother talking to me. You're a Dupree, and that means something.
Tartly, I answered back, well it didn’t mean enough to keep me from landing in this mess, now did it?
But the mental conversation distracted me from following the dark thoughts down a winding path, so I did my best to suck it up and move on with what needed doing. A job, a place to live, and a car being the biggest priorities.
Since I had a lead on the first, it was time to see what I could do about the second, so I fired up the van and headed to the other end of town to find out if Leo’s advice held any water.
Housed in what had once been the elementary school, the town office was only open three days a week, and I counted my lucky stars I’d shown up on one of them. I stepped into a vestibule with shelves and a line of coat hooks running at child height down either side. From there I went through a steel door with a horizontal lever for a handle and chicken wire between the panes of safety glass.
Inside, marks and patched-in spaces on the floor showed where classroom walls had been removed to make space for a waiting area on the one side of the long counter. Behind the currently empty reception area, some of the classrooms had been converted into office space, some into storage for old records according to ceiling-mounted signs.
The place smelled as if chalk dust had settled into long forgotten corners and lingered to rise up and tickle the nose with its dry, powdery scent. I held back a sneeze and checked each wall for the bulletin board. Leo hadn’t lied, exactly, but he hadn’t prepared me for the sheer volume of papers tacked one over the other and littered with a rainbow of sticky notes.
My heart sank as I scanned for the newest addition to the board: a two-year-old poster for a Halloween party. Leo probably hadn’t been in here since he turned over his property management to Spencer Charles. Or worse, there just wasn’t anything to rent.
Even with the generous discount I was getting at the Bide-A-Way, staying there wasn’t a permanent solution. If things kept up this way, I’d end up living in a yurt in my parents’ back yard. Shudder.
I scanned the message board again in the vain hope I'd missed something the first time around and had just about decided I was totally out of luck when a door snicked shut in the back of the building and footsteps clicked my way.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. I have the bidding form right here.” Before I could dredge up the woman’s na
me because I recognized her as another friend of my mother’s, she’d slapped two sheets of paper down on the countertop and was looking at me warily. “Deadline’s one pm.” It was twelve thirty when she handed me the pen.
“For what?” I asked, confused. “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. My name’s Everly Ha—Dupree.” I’d have to get in the habit of using my maiden name again. “And you’re Mrs. Tipton.” My memory finally supplied a name to go with the kindly face.
"Oh, my lands. Of course! You're Kitty's girl."
Martha Tipton plucked a pair of glasses, held by a cord around her neck, from where they lay on her ample bosom. She put them on and gave me an up and down look.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were that vulture who—” She drummed her fingers on the laminated surface, and from the way her tone lowered, I got the impression she was about to drop some private information on me. “Imagine wanting to tear down the old Willowby place. It’s a town landmark, it is.”
I knew the house she meant.
“I’d like to know how she found out we were ready to put it up for bids. We like to give our own folk the first chance at a tax foreclosure before we resort to a public sale. Especially when it's a place that has some history. The title wasn't supposed to transfer until Thursday, and then we'd have had most of a month to arrange a private sale before putting it up for public auction. There was a snafu at the title office, and we lost our window."
She’d thrown me a lot of information to process all at once, but I seized on the most pertinent. “Someone wants to tear down Spooky Manor?” Using the term didn’t earn me any points with Mrs. Tipton, but when I was growing up, every kid in town knew the place was haunted.
“Now you listen to me, Everly Dupree,” she said, drawing her painted-on eyebrows down and wagging a finger at me. “There’s nothing wrong with that house. It belonged to Mrs. Willowby, and she lived there alone until she had to go to a nursing home just a week shy of her ninety-third birthday. Died a month later, must be a little over a year ago. Now, I ask you, would an elderly woman really choose to live alone for fifty years if her house was haunted?"
Suitably chastised, I allowed she probably wouldn’t, and Mrs. Tipton let out a triumphant harrumph sound. “We stalled on the foreclosure in hopes someone from her family would come forward and claim her property, but no one ever did.”
Because it’s spooky and haunted. I kept the thought to myself because saying it out loud would invite wrath.
“Just between you and me, a person from town could have the place and everything in it for next to nothing, but I made out like we were in the middle of a bidding war and it would cost a pretty penny when that woman called about putting in a bid. Said she was from some investment corporation.” Looking at the grim set to her features, I figured Mrs. Tipton for one of those women who’d bash a mouse to death and smile while she did it.
She’d worked herself into quite a state. “What’s an investment corporation doing sniffing around here, I ask you. I think someone in the title office has a case of loose lip-itis. We don't need no outta staters coming in here and trying to take over the town.”
I’d heard variations of that refrain before, and it was a popular sentiment based on plenty of past experience. City and suburban people were drawn to small towns like ours for an extended visit, and who could blame them? Despite the brutal winters, Maine is known as Vacationland.
Tourism provides good revenue, so while visitors are welcome, the trouble comes when some decide they like the slow and easy pace of small-town living so much they just have to relocate. At first, they’re eager to settle in and enjoy the lifestyle, but it never lasts.
Before long, the transplants begin with the condescending digs about the town’s political structure being backward, and how it’s up to them to get involved so they can show the simple folks how it should be done. You’d think they were on a divine mission to bring the town up to date. Left unchecked, they’d take away all the charm that had drawn them there, to begin with.
Curious, I had to ask. “How much is next to nothing, and what do you mean by everything in it?”
Whispering, she named a figure right around half of what Leo had wanted for first, last, and security deposit. “Place could use a little cosmetic work, but the bones are good, and the mechanics were all updated in the last ten years. As far as the contents, whatever is on the property goes with it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a take one, take all type thing.”
“So I’d own the house outright?” I heard a voice in the back of my head muttering about things that looked too good to be true, and told it to shut up and leave me alone.
"The taxes would go up some because you'd lose the elderly exemption and the one for residents who have lived in the home more than a year, but that one would be reapplied on the next cycle." She tapped some numbers into a calculator, checked them against a book she pulled from under the counter, then keyed in a few more before showing me the total. "That's a ballpark, and I figured it a little high. You'd need to pay the amount in arrears and the estimated taxes for the first year up front."
The total would be less than Leo’s quote on an apartment and still leave more than half the money in my account. She hit me with an estimate for insurance and utilities, but even then, I could swing it with a minimum-wage job. Talk about taking off some pressure.
I didn’t even think twice, though I probably should have. I picked up the pen, filled out the bidding sheet, and added a couple of hundred to the number she’d named just because I couldn’t live with myself if I paid so little for an actual house. Her eyes danced when I handed in my bid with twenty minutes left on the clock, and she clapped her wrinkled hands in delight.
“I need a certified check for the funds. Hurry now, you have just time enough to get to the bank and back before the deadline.”
It took almost the entire twenty even though the bank was close by. Breathless, I gave a little smile of triumph and handed Mrs. Tipton the check with a minute to spare.
“Be a day, maybe a couple before we can put the paperwork through to transfer the deed, which takes another day to file, but it looks like you’ve just bought yourself a house.”
Dazed, I listened to her explain what would happen next, accepted the card she pressed into my hand with the office number, and walked out the door. I’d just bought a spooky old house, and I couldn’t stop smiling. There had to be something wrong with me.
Ten minutes to two, I pulled into a space in front of the mortgage broker’s office and sucked in a breath to calm the sudden flutter of nerves in my belly. If this went well, I could cross another major thing off my list. One week to get my life back on track? Try one day. Piece of cake.
Wrapping that attitude around me, I sailed through the door.
"Everly Dupree." I gave the woman manning the small reception area my most charming smile, and for once I didn't stumble over the name. "I have an appointment with Spencer Charles."
I expected her to give me a job application, but instead, she jerked her head toward the closed door on my right. “Go on in.”
Even sitting down, I could tell Spencer was a tall man. And that he had lousy manners because he didn't bother with either greeting or pleasantries. Instead, he scanned me from head to toe and reached out, his hand palm up.
Lost for what he might want, I stood still for a beat, and he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Resume. I need to see your job history. Don’t tell me you forgot. That doesn’t bode well for you, does it, Ms. Dupree?”
He hadn't invited me to sit, but I did so anyway. The interview was not going well, and it hadn't even really begun.
“I probably should have mentioned this, but I don’t have a formal resume. This would be my first paying job.”
He looked at me like I was a specimen in a bottle. “Look, I need someone with organizational skills and administrative experience. I don’t have time to train a bored housewife.”
Cross all
manner of social skills off his repertoire, too.
CHAPTER 6
My chin went up. “I’m not bored, and I’m not a housewife. You need someone with administrative experience? I spent the last few years heading up a not-for-profit foundation where I coordinated a series of projects that raised several million dollars for various charities. It was an unpaid position.”
“Then why didn’t you put that on a resume?” He asked in a dry tone, and a heated blush prickled over my face.
I already knew I’d blown the interview, so just to make sure I burned the bridge right down to the cement piers, I stood and didn’t bother to censor myself while I over-shared.
“Because until now, I’ve never needed a resume, and there hasn’t been time to research what to put on one since I’m in the middle of the worst week in my life. And Carlene told me my history wasn’t valid because she hates me for something I don’t even remember doing. But anyway, thank you for your time. I’ll be sure to rectify the oversight.”
Whirling, I marched out the door before the stinging in the back of my throat gave way to a scream of frustration or a bout of tears. Either was possible. Spencer Charles might be a jerk, but I’d been completely unprepared and then turned into a raving lunatic.
One of those things I could fix before my next job interview. The other was not my problem.
I’ve always considered myself a glass-half-full kind of a person, but my ego was still smarting when I pulled into the parking lot of the local library. Built from brick with the low-slung roof, clean lines, and metal columns common in the 1950s, the place had always been like a second home to me.
Inside the door, I stopped to inhale the familiar scent of musty old leather, paper, and ink. When I also caught a whiff of adhesive, I detoured to the office and leaned against the door frame to watch the fascinating process of repairing a book. With flying fingers, the head librarian stitched together the set of signatures stacked in the sewing frame.
"Nice job, Mom." I strolled over and gently flipped over the cover she would soon attach to the assembled pages. She'd replicated the original, which lay nearby for reference, right down to the texture on the leather. "You do such beautiful work." My compliment was an honest one, for my folks had instilled a love of books in me at an early age. To see the painstaking attention to detail in her restorations filled me with pride. The work was a labor of love and artistry.
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