I walk with him to where his BMW is parked at the bank across the street and then watch as he climbs into the driver’s seat. My eyes are still on him as he lowers the top, puts on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, backs out and away, and until he’s only a dot on the road.
He gave me lease papers for the Bailey House; my excitement is as vast as the August sky. I smile up at the wispy clouds and at a stranger riding his bike down the road. The stranger smiles back.
“Thank you, God.” My voice sounds much too giddy to belong to me. “Thank you for Davis and for this gift.”
While Minnie drives Zane and me home, we excitedly talk about our plans for the bed and breakfast. Zane claps his hands and sings, “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”
That night, I drive to the Bailey House by myself, and when I step out of my truck, I feel like a celebrity as I give one of the front columns a kiss. “We are really going to do this!” I cry. Davis has entrusted this prime real estate owned by his grandparents to me—to me! The locked front door is the only thing stopping me from going inside today. I wish Davis had given me a key. I close my eyes, letting all the memories of being inside the house fill me. Davis said the furniture is covered in old sheets for protection. Who knew I could look forward to taking off dusty old sheets?
Beside the large Colonial-style home is a garage that Mr. and Mrs. Bailey used for not only their Lincoln but all the lawn tools and a riding mower. On the side of the garage is a set of stairs that leads up to a room above the garage, a room where the Baileys slept. I’ve always thought that either Minnie or I could have this room. Now, with Zane, Minnie will need more space. I decide to let the two of them use that room. There is a small office inside the main property on the first floor that could serve as a cozy bedroom for me.
When I get home, Zane is tucked in bed. Ron and Minnie are talking in low voices on the back deck. I greet them and then excuse myself to my bedroom.
Opening the manila envelope, I take out the pages. There it is in bold print: Rent with the Option to Purchase. I smile at myself in the dresser mirror. “Hello,” I say to my reflection. “I’m Jacqueline Cate Donovan. I’m twenty-nine; on Tuesday I’ll be thirty. I rent the Bailey House!”
I see that the agreement states I’ll pay $2,800 each month to rent the house located at 3 Red Pelican Court. Even though that is the exact sum I told Davis I could afford, now that it is in black and white I wonder how I’ll be able to come up with that. I shove the worry aside and read over the pages about five times. There are paragraphs about the closing, the rent payments, the landlord, and all kinds of legal things I only partially understand. I notice that Davis has reduced the price of the property. When we first spoke, he told me it was $1.5 million, but the contract lists the cost of the home as $1.2 million, should I desire to exercise my right to buy it. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to come up with that kind of money.
It strikes me funny to think that Davis will be my landlord. What kind of landlord will he be? Surely not like Mrs. Appleton, who always spies on us and is strangely particular about where we place our check. Flipping over the lease, I let my eyes blur. I place the papers on the bed and sigh. I’ll ask Davis to explain it all to me later.
There’s a knock on my door. Minnie asks if I want to join her and Ron.
I shake my head in a dreamy sort of way.
She smiles. “Oh, I know. You want to read over the contract a few hundred more times.”
Once she’s closed my door, I send a text message to Davis. Thank you. I miss you.
27
As I cook breakfast for Minnie, Ron, and me, I think of the first breakfast I want to serve at the Bailey House. I’ve often thought about this, but now that I have the legal papers in my hand, it’s as different as deciding which ice cream flavor you plan to eat as you sit at home compared to standing in front of all the varieties at Baskin-Robbins with a sales clerk ready to serve you.
Prying open an old cookbook, I flip through the breakfast section. Waffles with strawberries? Omelets? One photo has a fluffy yellow omelet with spinach spilling out over the edges, all presented on a Carolina-blue plate. I turn the pages to see recipes for banana bread and strudels. I know that a hash brown casserole would also fit in nicely on the breakfast menu. I wonder if I’ll need to hire a cook to help me on busy mornings. All I know is it can’t be one of my Hatteras relatives!
Once when Minnie and I were daydreaming about our plans for the Bailey House, she recommended we have a Korean night.
I stopped massaging her shoulders. “What would we serve?”
“Pulgogi.”
“Who’s cooking?”
“Your mom could come over.”
Mom would love that. However, I’m surprised by Minnie’s suggestion. The last time Minnie came over to eat a Korean meal with us, she hardly tried any of the pickled vegetables, not even the tamer ones like cucumbers in soy sauce. She did have a small portion of the seasoned beef strips—called fire beef—from the large pan set in the middle of the dining table.
Questions buzz around my head, and I find a piece of paper to start a list. There must be lemon cookies and raspberry cream soda in stock at all times. Perhaps we should follow the practice of Doubletree Hotels and give out fresh cookies upon check-in. I feel sadness seep into my heart when I realize I don’t have Mrs. Bailey’s lemon cookie recipe.
Not wanting to give in to sorrow, I quickly resume the list. Should we play flute music in the sunroom? Maybe buy a piano or have a music night and let Sheerly and her group entertain? Unfortunately, Irvy’s piano was sold at auction shortly after she moved in to the Morning Glory Nursing Home. Flowers, I write at the bottom of the list. Lots of color will make the parlor bright and beautiful. My mind whirls with thoughts of special functions, dessert parties, and the possibility of having canoes and kayaks to rent by the back pier.
I hear Minnie’s laughter and then Ron say, “Well, everyone thought you were pretty.”
I call them to breakfast, then hear the ping of my phone. The text message from Davis reads, I miss you, too. I’ll see you soon.
“But I hardly saw you,” I protest after Minnie leaves for work and my brother says he needs to head back to Florida. “Can’t you stay another day?”
“Work calls. Not everyone has a flexible schedule.” I know he’s referring to me. I could tease that our dad doesn’t think Ron really works for a living, but I hold back. Instead I say, “You and Minnie were up late talking.”
His smile is large, content, too happy. Are they interested in each other?
I watch Ron get down on the floor and roll trucks across the carpet with Zane. The idea of my brother dating Minnie bothers me. I don’t want Minnie to compare Ron to the love of her life every morning at breakfast and every evening over freshly grilled salmon. Perhaps they are just friends, like I am with Buck.
The coffee maker gurgles, signaling that the beverage is ready. After pouring myself a cup of coffee, I let the steam rising from the mug wash over my face.
Zane giggles as Ron lines the Tonka trucks by the wall and then pretends two are racing against each other. When he gets up to leave, Zane begs him to stay longer.
With his duffle bag in his hand, Ron tells me he had fun. “Buck and I went kayaking yesterday after we left your party and then talking with Minnie was great.”
“So? Do you like her?” There are days when we never get beyond our middle school years.
“Jackie.” He gives me a hug. “She’s like a sister to me.”
I put my arms around him. Ron is a good guy. I want him to be happy. “So you aren’t interested in her romantically?”
He pulls from the embrace. “You really are the nosey journalist, aren’t you?”
The words sting like a nip from a dog.
After work, I buy a dozen pink roses for Minnie and put them in a silver vase on the kitchen table. I attach a note that reads, Our dream of owning the Bailey House has finally come true!
Zane runs around me,
banging his trucks together and shouting, “We are going to be owning the place!”
When Minnie comes home, she admires the roses and says, “It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but we’ll be living our dream. Do you think the mermaid still goes out with the same prince? What did we name him?”
“Sullivan.”
“Did we give him a last name?”
I don’t recall one and am about to say that when she confesses, “I want Zane to have a home to grow up in.” There’s a long pause and then, “A house.”
“If I had to grow up again,” I say, “I’d want to live in the Bailey House. You can’t do much better than that.” I imagine Zane cramming trucks down the laundry chute, racing around the lawn like a bulldozer, sliding down the banister, knocking over an ivy topiary.
I remember Minnie telling me about her ideal wedding gown while we sat next to the mermaid in the back garden. She wanted a white satin dress trimmed in dolphin sequins and pink rosebuds. Years later, when she married at age twenty-one, she opted for a satin dress trimmed in lace, laughing at her childish dream.
We all gave her glass dolphins and pink roses anyway.
28
He’s late, and the fear rises in me like a hurricane wind. He isn’t going to show. I think of his eyes. His lips. The way they caress mine. Yet his kisses always leave me with a feeling of uncertainty. Like he could take me or leave me.
I realize I’m no Vanessa. I’ve never owned a Vera Bradley purse or worn an Ann Taylor dress, and it’s only thanks to a catalog that came in the mail that I know what a Coach bag is. I wonder if I’m normal—if Davis and I have a normal relationship. When I dated Louis in college, I always knew where I stood in his world because he showed his feelings with these incredible love letters that always ended in bold lines: You are my world and I love you! XOXOXOXO!!!
I count the windows as I pace the property.
At seven twenty-six, I’m sure I misread the text message he sent me earlier today. Flipping open my phone, I search for it in my inbox and read his words for the tenth time. Meet me at the Bailey House tonight at 7.
I sit on the front steps, leaning against one of the columns. I’m grateful for an easterly breeze and a cloudy sky. I again think of the plans I have for this place. The kitchen will probably need to be remodeled. It needed a major makeover nineteen years ago. The industrial dishwasher leaked and the faucet wobbled each time it was used. There were a few cracks in the linoleum.
When a familiar BMW finally pulls into the driveway, my heart feels like it’s been freed from worry. The convertible’s top is up, yet I can clearly see Davis inside, though his sunglasses shield his eyes.
Davis steps out of his car, and although I approach him to give him a hug, he moves away and raises one finger, asking me to wait a minute.
So I just stand there.
“No,” he says to the caller. “I fixed that wall for you last week. Look at your rental agreement. No, no. Listen, the wall was repaired. That’s all I can do for you.”
When he finishes the conversation, his frown is immediately replaced by a wide smile. He embraces me and gives me a kiss. “How are you?”
“Ready to get inside the house.”
He dangles a key in front of me.
Letting out a whoop, I grab the key and fit it into the lock on the front door. When the door swings open, I pull in a deep breath and reach for Davis’s hand. “A lot of prayers are coming true for me right now,” I say, my words barely audible. Excitement has been in my veins all day, and right now, I’m close to feeling overwhelmed.
We walk into the dark house together. Davis lets go of my hand and turns on the lights in the hallway and then the two brass lamps in the parlor.
And there it is in front of me, all around me—just as I remembered it, along with the musty ancient scents of a house that’s sat empty for too long. I join Davis in the parlor where the furniture is covered by white sheets. I look at the walls with their familiar paintings of wild horses at Shackleford and the large canvas of painted violets in earthen pots above the sofa.
Minnie once told me the violets looked good enough to eat, didn’t I agree? But that made me think back to a dandelion I ate once. It, too, had looked good enough to eat. I’d expected it to taste like parsley, and when it didn’t, I drank a whole pitcher of Kool-Aid to rid my mouth of the bitterness. To Minnie, I’d said, “Those violets look like they’d taste like grape Kool-Aid.”
I follow Davis through the dining room with the long farmhouse table where breakfast was served. Even the Royal Dalton tea set, now covered by a large white towel, is on the sideboard, as it always used to be.
In the sunroom, I touch the green wallpaper, and when I make contact, I’m a little girl visiting Mr. and Mrs. Bailey once again.
Then, as though choreographed to my favorite flute piece, Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz” from Sleeping Beauty, I’m prancing around the house, upstairs, in the bedrooms, downstairs, and entering the patio from the sunroom, I walk outside and breathe in the garden—a little damp from an earlier rain—until Davis calls me back inside.
We sit at the butcher-block table in the sunroom with the front and patio doors open to let air circulate through the stuffy home. I peer under the white sheet used to cover the worn table. I can feel how it was sitting at this very table in this teak chair, waiting for Ogden to refill my glass tumbler with raspberry cream soda and giving Minnie a few kicks to remind her of her manners.
“Do you know what happened to the birdbath?”
“It broke. I told you that when you asked the last time.”
I don’t remember him ever saying that, but I don’t dwell on his vagueness.
He reaches across the table, lacing our fingers together. I like the way his eyes look into mine.
“The bathrooms upstairs are different,” I say. In addition to new paint, they are updated, more modern and functional.
“Yeah, my grandparents had them remodeled.”
“Even new toilets, not those archaic ones that often got stopped up. The new sinks and round mirrors are nice, too. Are the bathtubs and Jacuzzis the same?”
“My grandma had all new ones put in,” he says. “She kept this place in great shape.”
I stand. “I need to check it all out again.” I head upstairs once more, entering the Earl Grey Room at the top of the landing. Just as I remembered—a dresser, mirror, and next to it, an antique coatrack. From the windows framed in heavy floral silk curtains, I view the garden below. Fingering the curtains, I know that they need to be washed or dry-cleaned or whatever you do with curtains. Turning, I look at the king-sized bed with the iron legs. To the left, in a dusty frame, is a picture of the queen. Elizabeth is actually in every room. The Baileys loved their royal family.
Forty minutes later, I’ve entered each of the six bedrooms—two downstairs and the rest on the second floor, as well as all the adjoining bathrooms, smiling at myself in the mirror of each one. I’ve checked closets to make sure that there are still linens and towels in their metal storage bins. Their odors are distinctly musty, but after a cycle in the washing machine, the items should as smell fresh as they always did years ago. I’ve spent time opening and closing cabinets and the pantry in the kitchen, sat at the table in the dining room and the sofa in the parlor. Then I went into the laundry room with the Maytag washer and dryer and from there, into the small reading room with shelves of books and a fireplace.
I remove a few clingy cobwebs with my hands and watch spiders scale the walls. There’s definitely a lot of work to do around here, but none of it should be too costly. This surveying of the Bailey House has been a perfect way to spend an evening, I think, and I make my way again to the sunroom, where Davis is talking on his phone by the opened door leading to the patio.
“I can meet you when I get back into Nags Head tomorrow. Yes, I’m out of town now,” he says to whomever he’s talking to, and then he ends the call to smile at me.
“All this place needs is a
good cleaning, a touch of paint, and a porch,” I say.
“I don’t want any porch added on.”
“Just a porch on the front,” I explain. Mrs. Bailey had actually told me one would be nice so that guests could sit in rocking chairs and watch the sun set. “The kitchen floor needs to be repaired, too.”
Davis’s face is hard; gone is the smoothness it held just a moment ago. “No, nothing added or taken away. This house has to be kept just like it was when my grandparents owned it.” His voice is determined, the words clipped. I think he’d make a good army captain.
“Sure,” I say. There is nothing like a man who knows what he wants.
“I want you to open it up again just as it is. No changes.”
I take a step and note a busy spider in the corner by the wainscoting in the dining room. “Not even dusting away the cobwebs?”
His face shines with light once more. “That can be done.”
“Good. I think I’m going to hire a cleaning crew to help.”
He wraps his arms around my waist and draws me close. “I’m so glad I met you,” he whispers. “And I love that my grandparents’ place is going to be run by you.”
“Really?” I ask dreamily.
“You are going to put it back on the map again, Jackie. I believe in you.”
The evening air is thick with humidity, but my heart is thick with the excitement that I am blessed beyond belief. The two things I have asked God for ever since I can remember—a good man and the Bailey House—have finally come true.
Davis begins shutting doors and turning off lights. “Time to go,” he tells me as he walks toward the hallway.
“Already?”
He has his key out, ready to lock the house. “I’ve got some work to do. Besides, it’s almost ten o’clock.”
I recall our night on the dock together when he didn’t want to leave. Tonight he seems eager to go.
Outside, my worry evaporates as he draws me to his chest. His arms are warm around my shoulders. Whispering into my hair, he asks, “Are you free tomorrow night?”
Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) Page 15