What the Heart Wants

by Cynthia Reese

  “What?” That one word spilled over with alarm and surprise, enough to tell Allison that she wasn’t far off the mark.

  “Well? They have, haven’t they?”

  “Not the whole committee, Allison. Just one or two...” He sighed. “Okay. Three. And with me, that’s four. But it’s not a foregone conclusion yet. I’m still trying to work out a compromise—”

  “A compromise? A compromise would be that I could put a coat of paint on this house before it rots into the ground. You know it’s overdue for painting—long overdue. I’d think you’d want to see it not peeling at least!”

  “Allison...it’s complicated, okay? The way the laws are written, it ties my hands—”

  “Well, the way the laws are written are wrong! And, Kyle...” Allison stepped back so that the pink-streaked pixie cut of the reporter was back in her line of sight. “Those laws? They may be written...but they’re not written in stone.”

  With that, she stabbed the disconnect button and marched back into the living room. “Why don’t we start with me, and I’ll talk to my grandmother about whether or not she’ll be willing to have her photo taken with the house?”

  Gwen took the last bite of her burger and wadded up the paper wrapper. “Sounds like a plan. Sounds like a plan, indeed.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  KYLE WAS SLIDING the last stack of papers to grade into his portfolio case when a knock came on the doorjamb. He looked up to see Lorenzo Adams standing there.

  “Councilman! Whatever’s on your mind, can we walk and talk? I need to go see someone—”

  “Would that someone be an...” the tall lanky man flipped a card out of his pocket and squinted “...Allison Bell?”

  Hearing Allison’s name come out of the city council member’s mouth jolted Kyle. “Why?”

  “Oh, my hide’s been turned into hamburger meat with the chewing out she’s just given me. You have one unhappy neighbor there, Kyle.”

  Kyle let the portfolio case’s flap close, and shook his head. “Why...what did she want with you?”

  “Well, turns out, I’m her city council representative. You know, that part of the downtown that got squashed into my district after the last census to make the numbers come out right.”

  “Yeah. I’d forgotten that the district line falls right behind her block.”

  “That reporter buddy of hers hadn’t. They showed up at my dry cleaners and ambushed me. I would have appreciated a heads-up from you—”

  “Reporter? What reporter?” Kyle froze in the midst of strapping his portfolio shut.

  Now it was Lorenzo shaking his head. “Man, Kyle, I came here to get answers from you, but it looks like I’m the one filling you in. That new girl, Gwen Chapman. You know? Pink hair—at least it was pink this week, but who knows what color it will be next week. Nose ring? Tattoos? Wilson hired her a few months ago, and she’s done nothing but file Freedom of Information requests in hopes of turning up a scandal. Looks like this time she’s got a story with some legs.”

  Kyle sagged against the table. Had he heard correctly? Allison had gone to the paper? Without even giving him a heads-up? Was that what her phone call had been about? The idea knifed through him.

  “So what—what exactly was Allison asking?” Kyle phrased the words as carefully as he could to keep from revealing the feeling of betrayal coursing through him.

  “Asking? She wasn’t asking. She was demanding. Demanding that we either repeal the historic section’s preservation ordinances or pass a hardship exemption.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen.” Kyle let the tension flow out of his body and started to pick up his case. Then he caught sight of the councilman’s face. “Right? Lorenzo, you aren’t seriously considering caving on this, are you?”

  The man shrugged. “She’s got a point, Kyle. An old lady? On a fixed income? And you historical guys won’t budge on paint colors? You know I’m the new kid in that part of my district—I barely squeaked by in the last election. I can’t afford to look insensitive to my constituents’ needs and problems in this economy.”

  “I’m working on it, Lorenzo. I am. But we struggled too hard to get those ordinances passed in the first place—and look what a powerhouse we’ve made of the downtown section. Thousands of visitors every year come to tour those homes, and they spend money here...in the restaurants, in the gas stations, in the bed-and-breakfasts, in the antique shops. Think about the needs and problems of those people if suddenly anybody could do what they want to their historic home.”

  “This is just one almost ninety-year-old woman...and the house is a shambles as it is. It would look better with a fresh coat of paint in any color, wouldn’t it? Surely you can make this problem go away for me.”

  Kyle grimaced. “Like I said, I’m working on it. But I’ll tell you what I’ve told her...the way the laws were written, we don’t have any wiggle room. I’m trying to get other committee members to, uh, more loosely interpret the timing of when a project has to be completed—that would let Allison start the job and finish it as she got the money.”

  “Well, now, that sounds like a good compromise.” Lorenzo beamed. “See? I knew I could count on you to work something out.”

  “It’s nowhere near a done deal. To be honest...” Kyle rubbed his eyes. “To be honest, I haven’t convinced even one committee member yet. They remember when I suggested the original language, and they keep reminding me that if we let one project slide, we’ll have to let others do the same.”

  “But with a variance request, isn’t that giving you the elbow room you need? On a case-by-case basis?”

  “No, it’s not what it was designed for. Usually the only time we would ever pass a variance request is for something structural that wouldn’t show.”

  “Gwen, the pain-in-the-neck reporter, reminded me that a lot of towns don’t have ordinances that govern paint colors...and that a state law prevents towns from passing laws to do that now. So is it even legal for us to tell people what color they can paint their houses?”

  Kyle resisted the urge to glance at his watch. He wanted to find Allison, not stay here explaining—once again—the rationale and legitimacy of the city’s historic ordinances. “Uh, yeah. The law grandfathers in towns like ours. Lombard started their historic preservation committee up the year before the law went into effect. The committee just didn’t press the issue, not until...”

  “Not until you came to town.” Lorenzo finished Kyle’s sentence. “Listen, I get what you’re saying. Tourism is a big deal here, one of our main industries, especially now that we’ve lost a couple of factories.”

  Kyle jumped in eagerly to push home that thought. “Yeah. A lot of those displaced factory workers started businesses to do with the historic section—sandwich shops or tearooms or antiques shops or souvenir stores. It may not be profitable all year long, but come the high season, they make money.”

  “I get that, Kyle. I do. And I’ll help you all I can. But you’ve got to understand...I can only do so much, and I can’t control the rest of the council. If it comes before them—like she’s wanting it to—you never can tell what they’ll do. So my advice? Give her what she wants. Compromise. Because once those ordinances are repealed, you may never get them back.”

  With that, Lorenzo clapped Kyle on the shoulder and headed down the hall for the door.

  * * *

  KYLE SWUNG OPEN the side gate of Belle Paix’s wrought-iron fence and spotted Allison kneeling over a paint tray at the outside faucet.

  She looked over her shoulder at the clang of the gate. “Well, well. Look who finally has the nerve to show his face.”

  “Allison, you don’t understand—”

  She scrambled to her feet and switched off the faucet. “Me? I think I understand perfectly. You never had any intention of turning in that variance reque
st, did you? You thought you could sweet-talk me into borrowing big money, and I’d swallow your complicated paint scheme just like I swallowed Jerry’s song and dance about the plaster.”

  Her choice of words irritated Kyle. “Now, that was not a song and dance, and you were free to do whatever you liked—”

  “Yeah, and you know Jerry would have walked out on the project. And you knew I couldn’t get anyone else to do it. What? Did you blackball me or something? Warn contractors off? Tell them, ‘Let her get desperate and she’ll agree to anything you want’?”

  Did Allison for one minute think he was that low-down and dirty? That corrupt? “That’s not true and you know it!”

  “I don’t know anything. Because you’ve kept me in the dark!”

  Their raised voices must have attracted the attention of a passerby, because someone called out from the sidewalk, “Hey, everything all right there?”

  Allison craned her neck around Kyle and called back, “Oh, yeah, I’m just giving him a piece of my mind.”

  But she beckoned him into the house, leaving the half-washed paint tray where it was. For a moment, Kyle wondered at the wisdom of prolonging the conversation. She was too angry right now to even to listen to his side.

  Lorenzo’s warning about losing the ordinances forever echoed in his head, though. If he could just explain to her that he’d tried everything, maybe then she’d back off?

  Kyle followed her up the side porch steps and into the kitchen. He stared at the yellow walls and crisp white metal cabinets.

  “This looks great—”

  “Don’t try to soft-soap me, Kyle Mitchell!” Allison snapped. “Don’t you try to get on my good side.”

  “I don’t have a clue where you’ve hidden away your good side,” he muttered. Louder, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone, he replied, “If you’ll just hear me out without jumping down my throat, we might actually accomplish something besides both of us losing our voices.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Fair enough.”

  He swallowed. “I warned you that your request was pretty much pie-in-the-sky when you first started on it. I told you about the city ordinances. But you insisted on doing it and I promised you I’d help. So...I tried. I sent it to a few of the more influential committee members—”

  “Oh, yeah. The ever-so-open-minded Herbert. He’d like nothing more than to make choosing the wrong paint color a federal offense.”

  “You said you’d listen,” Kyle pointed out.

  She had the grace to blush. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “What I was trying to do was to, er, work out an extension. A timeline for you to paint the house in stages. Or...maybe even get you something like a hardship waiver.”

  “Now why didn’t you mention the possibility of a hardship waiver to begin with?” she demanded.

  He frowned. “Because it doesn’t exist. There’s nothing in our ordinances that would give us the flexibility to do that—”

  “Well, gee, that was forward-thinking of you, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re not listening,” he growled.

  “Because I’m not hearing anything I haven’t already heard from you at least a dozen times.”

  “Because it can’t be changed, okay? There’s nothing that I can do to change it.”

  Allison stared at him, then sank into a kitchen chair. “You mean to tell me that nobody ever foresaw this possibility when you and your fan club were busily writing up these laws?”

  “You have to understand, Allison...the downtown section here was in a mess. We couldn’t require people to put things back to rights at the drop of a hat—they didn’t have the money. So what we did was take a long view. If we changed the restoration ordinances, then when they did renovate, they’d have to keep things historically accurate. Voila, things improve, bit by bit. And nobody has to do it overnight. The town gets a tourism engine, people’s home values increase, historic structures are properly preserved and renovated...everybody’s a winner.”

  Kyle pulled out a chair to sit beside her. “Don’t you see? It was a good, common sense approach.”

  “Not for people like Gran.” Allison’s chin jutted out stubbornly.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. We never thought about people who were cash-strapped and had a house as big as Belle Paix. But your grandmother could have been part of that discussion. She chose not to be. If she’d weighed in back then, if she’d participated in the process, maybe we would have seen the need to write in some flexibility.”

  “Well, you see the need now, so hop to it.”

  Kyle closed his eyes. “It’s not that simple and you know it. If we give you that variance request, then we’re setting a legal precedent of favoritism, and we could open ourselves up to a lawsuit. I’ve asked our attorney about it, and he said that we have to go by the letter of the law. I’m sorry. I wish there was a way around it, but if we say yes to you, we have to say yes to everybody else, and before you know it, Lombard will look exactly like the mess it was before.”

  “I grew up in this town, and it wasn’t a mess, Kyle. Maybe it wasn’t postcard ready, maybe it didn’t meet your high standards, but it wasn’t a mess.”

  “Oh, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You of the ‘let’s just fix it the quickest, easiest way we can, and hang the right way’ school of thought,” he retorted.

  “There’s something to be said for pragmatism. I don’t have the money to fund your fantasy of what Belle Paix should look like, okay? And maybe, just maybe, I think it’s a really bad idea to sink that much money into appearances, anyway. Maybe that money could be put to a better use than paint!”

  “Belle Paix is a treasure—don’t you realize that? Don’t you understand what you have here? Your great-great-great-grandparents built this house! Your family has always owned this home,” he retorted. “You say so many things that make me think you don’t understand what a jewel this house is.”

  “It’s Gran’s home, that’s what it is. It isn’t a museum or a...a national park, Kyle! We have to live here—don’t you get it? And to do that, we actually have to have money left over to live on! Of course I want to take care of the house—what do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been busting my backside trying to get it into shape for Gran to come home, spending loads of money, every cent I’ve saved. But it’s never going to be good enough for you until it matches the little picture you have in your head, is it?”

  “That ‘little picture,’ Allison?” Kyle was on his feet now, too angry to sit still. He paced back and forth, taking in all the touches that made the kitchen authentic: the Chambers stove, the metal cabinets, the marble countertops, the subway tiles. These things were the threads in the tapestry that all Allison’s ancestors who’d lived in this house had woven.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the awful travesty his own family’s home place was now. Allison would regret letting Belle Paix slip away. Maybe not immediately, but when she saw the end result, she would. And so would Gran.

  Kyle opened his eyes to find Allison staring at him, waiting for him to go on. “That little picture is just as important to your grandmother...and you know that, don’t you? Because you painted the kitchen yellow, just like she remembered from being a little girl. And I notice you didn’t really balk about saving the upstairs bathroom fixtures—because you knew how important that was to Gran.”

  Allison stared down at her clenched hands, so he continued. “If you really acknowledged how important this house is to Gran, you’d want to do it right—for her sake. Wouldn’t it be something to have it just as she remembered from her childhood? Wouldn’t that make her homecoming that much more special?”

  Allison flew at him. “What don’t you get? This house is a home! Not a scrapbook! It’s a living, breathing and, oh
, yeah, dying thing, this place. I know what I have on my hands, believe you me—a hundred twenty-six years of someone else’s problems, someone else kicking the can down the road and not making any of the necessary repairs. You couldn’t have done a thing about it if Gran had had the money to replace those windows five years ago, could you? But she didn’t—and you know why? Because she used her money to put me through school. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, Kyle, and I had to borrow tons more to pay the bills. No, what you don’t see is all the junk I have to work around—a century of somebody’s leftovers stuffed in the attic and the basement, things nobody ever got around to throwing away.”

  “If it’s that much of a problem, then why not sell the house? Sell it and move to a brand-new house where the floors creak because they use strand board for the subflooring, and the walls are thin but by God they have easy-to-patch drywall, and the windows might have all the charm of a fake Christmas tree, but, hey, they’re double-paned. Because at least then somebody who really appreciated Belle Paix would own her!”

  With that, Kyle slammed out of the kitchen, not bothering to wait for her reply.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ALLISON COVERED A yawn with one hand as she used the thumb of the other to scroll through a website on her tablet detailing various city ordinances for historic districts. She glanced around, just to make sure that no one needed her, feeling guilty for using the tablet even though she was on her supper break.

  The ER had been strangely deserted, save for a kid with a tummy ache in bay three. After an impossibly busy late afternoon and early evening, the department had turned as quiet as a graveyard. That was good; it had meant she could do research and actually sit down to eat her sandwich during her break, even if it meant enduring the staff room’s smell of burned popcorn.

  Allison yawned again.

  “Don’t do that!” Laurel Wells, one of the ER physicians on staff that night, told her. “You’ll tempt me into sneaking off and taking a nap, and then I’ll just feel worse than I do now. It’s too quiet. Gives me the creeps. Something is bound to cut loose any minute now. So if I were you, I’d go ahead and get that sandwich in while you’ve got the chance.”