“There’ll always be another house, right? Didn’t you say that this is just the beginning?” she said as she rolled her eyes.
“From your lips,” I said with a smile, and she slumped her head on the bar.
CHAPTER 4
The day before the excavators were scheduled to come and raise the foundation of the house, I walked through the first floor, nodding at the original, wall-mounted porcelain sink with separate faucets for hot and cold water in the powder room. I again grimaced at the cheap, prefabricated kitchen cabinets that were made out of particleboard.
I admired the quarter-sawn oak built-in buffet with the leaded-glass doors, still just as impressive upon second viewing as the first time I saw them, as I again took inventory of the dining room. With all the debris cleared out of the house, I could see that while the floors were badly damaged due to water and unknown traumas, they could probably be saved with a good sanding, staining, and sealing.
The living room had an original, wood-burning fireplace that looked like it was still in working condition. The brick around the fireplace miraculously hadn’t been painted or tiled over, but the bottom of the hearth was damaged. It was decorated with small stones sunk into the mortar and several were missing.
Moving through the house, I could see that much of the plaster on the walls was cracked, but Eddie had definitely repaired much worse for me. If I was a different kind of flipper—like Jack Sullivan—I would rip all of it down and install drywall. With drywall there wouldn’t be any patching, sanding, skimming, or cursing. It was easy, clean, and accessible. And also completely inauthentic.
I didn’t dare try to flip a light switch, although a few of the original light fixtures were in place. I marveled over the pendant light in the kitchen, still fitted with a lightbulb from decades ago. Frank, my electrician, was due to come over after we lowered the house, and I knew he would be just as excited as me to see it. I guessed Frank might find a combination of old and new wiring, all far, far from up to code. There would definitely be some late nights together for the two of us. It could be kind of romantic, save for the fact that he was almost seventy and had been married for over fifty years.
I carefully sidestepped the splintered boards on the wood stairs as I walked upstairs. The four small bedrooms still had the faint odor of urine and garbage, even though they had been cleared out. Two of them didn’t have closets.
I had read that back at the turn of the century, closets were considered rooms in a home and taxed accordingly, and people usually didn’t have the clothing to necessitate a whole dedicated room. I smiled with appreciation. I barely needed a dresser for my things—my closet at home was stuffed with lamp bases, bookcases, and end tables, all things I had salvaged from my past projects to be used for staging in the future.
There were two bathrooms upstairs, an unusual feature for such an old home. One was the guest bathroom in the hallway, which held the crown jewel: an original cast-iron claw-foot tub. It was badly rusted and stained, but with some cleaning and patching it would look brand new. The other bathroom was off the master, a later addition that was complete with a 1970s powder-blue tub, sink, and particleboard vanity.
None of the bedrooms upstairs had the original doors, all replaced by fake wood hollow-core doors. “Why on earth would you take down a wood door and put this atrocity up?” I gave one door a light tap and it quickly shut, the flimsy material moving like leaves in the wind. I guessed it happened sometime during the eighties, when decorating seemed to move away from all natural materials and toward easy, manufactured, and convenient.
In the back corner of the smallest bedroom was a door. I gingerly stepped across the buckling wood floor, opened it, and went up the staircase leading to the attic.
“Please let there be nothing terrifying up here,” I muttered as I carefully made my way through the doorway, ducking in case any wild animal decided to engage. I peeked my head up over the threshold, still holding my breath and expecting a family of raccoons to take issue with my presence. Or, worse, a squatter. I had found a squatter in a house last year, and he wasn’t happy about leaving his cozy, illegal space.
Thankfully, I saw a nearly bare room. All that was left was a dresser that seemed to be missing all its drawers. No sign of any animals—or vagrants.
“Damn. It would have been great if the original doors were left up here,” I said, my voice echoing against the wood beams as I climbed up. I was about to turn and walk downstairs when something behind the old dresser caught my eye. I tiptoed through the attic and discovered a small, rotting cardboard box tucked behind the dresser, against one of the eaves. If I hadn’t looked at it just right, I would have missed it, as I guessed others had for years.
I carefully peeled back the old cardboard, the dust coming off in my fingers as it nearly crumbled after the weight of decades of immobility.
Inside was a stack of haphazardly stacked newspapers and some blank cards. The house had been abandoned for more than five years and, before that, had been bounced from owner to owner. Whoever left the boxes here was likely either dead or had stopped scrapbooking years before.
I was about to close the box up, when a glimpse of yellow caught my eye. I dug down and pulled out a small book. It had once been covered in what I guessed was a bright white material, but had faded into a dirty mustard color. As I carefully opened it, the binding cracking and groaning with age, I saw that it was a blank journal. As I turned the pages, two items slid out of the center and onto the floor: a photograph and a pressed flower.
I picked up the black-and-white photograph with two fingers. A handsome young man, in his twenties, I guessed, stood next to a vintage car. Although I supposed the car wasn’t vintage to him since the back of the picture was dated May 15, 1947. The man smiled at the camera, leaning one elbow on the hood. His body might have looked casual and relaxed, but I could tell that he was proud of the car, that he was showing it off for the camera. His chin was square, like he came from good, hearty, rugged stock, but his hair was smoothed to the side, an effect that made him look like he belonged on a movie set. The way his mouth turned up at the corners and the sparkle in his eye made me wonder just who was behind the camera.
I shook my head slightly. Matt used to look at me like that, like he wasn’t sure if I was real, but didn’t want to look away long enough to find out. A deep, familiar sadness began to form in my stomach as I thought of the way he would always seem to study my face for a minute before he pulled me in for a hug. The way my body fit perfectly against his as he squeezed me tight. The way that he never was the first to let go.
“I hope your ending was happier than mine,” I said to the photo before I carefully tucked it back into the book. I leaned over and gingerly picked up the pressed flower. It looked to be a pink rose, cut many years ago. Just the act of moving it through the air made some of the petals scatter onto the attic floor.
I placed the flower back with the photo and closed the book, setting it back in the box. A truck rumbling outside brought me back to the present. I glanced out the window and saw that Eddie had arrived with a crew to start prepping the basement.
I tried to brush off the invisible spiderweb of shared experience that had grown around me and the keepsakes. Yet, before I was halfway out of the room, I turned and picked up the box, carrying it downstairs and setting it in a safe place on the front porch.
CHAPTER 5
I took a long, deep breath as I drove my car through the Geneva National subdivision and onto Palmer Drive. The manicured lawns of the gated golf course community boasted perfectly striped lawns and brilliantly colored tulips, and Palmer Drive was the most spectacular street of them all. It had the biggest homes, with the best landscaping and the brightest flowers. Each bud was carefully tended to weekly by a landscaper to ensure that nothing was out of place. Except for me, as I drove to pick up Abby from her dad’s house.
Matt had moved from a rented town house by the lake to the house in Geneva National a few week
s prior, but it was my first time there. As I drove up to the entrance gate, the guard made me endure the humiliation of calling the house to ask for permission to let me in, and he gave my rusted Ford truck a suspicious look as I pulled through the iron gates. I had a feeling he would also glance in the bed of the truck before he let me leave, to ensure I didn’t take anything that didn’t belong to me.
I fidgeted as I rang the doorbell, trying not to stare up at the giant tan craftsman-style house that was built last year, but made to look like it had been around for decades. It irritated me that my heart beat faster while I waited for Matt to answer. After four years of this, I had hoped that I could handle the situation. To see his house, and his new life—without me—was another painful step among millions of others.
I relaxed when I saw a short, round figure open the door.
“Alex! Come on in!” My former mother-in-law, Susan, stepped aside and held her arms out to give me a quick hug as I entered the foyer. She wore a sleeveless, collared shirt and Bermuda shorts, her feet bare. She smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, a favorite perfume that she had been wearing since the dawn of time. “It’s so good to see you,” she said as she released me.
“Thanks. I didn’t realize you would be here,” I said. I glanced up in awe at the two-story foyer adorned with a crystal chandelier that likely cost more than my house.
Susan followed my gaze. “Atrocious, isn’t it?” She waved an arm around in exasperation. “The previous owners were very flashy.”
I smiled, pressing my mouth together to suppress a laugh. “I’ve never seen the house.”
She made a motion for me to follow her. “C’mon. I can show it to you.” She pointed to the living room, with its leather couch, chair, and the television hung on the mantle of the fireplace. The throw pillows were shades of brown, decorated in a geometric pattern, and I could tell that they were the ones provided by the furniture store. As though Matt had walked in, pointed at one of the first displays he saw, and bought the whole thing.
I noticed that the throw pillows on the couch were stacked on top of each other, like pancakes. He used to do the same thing when we were together and it drove me crazy. Throw pillows were supposed to be stood up, not stacked, I told him over and over again. After a while, it became one of those Things in our marriage that added to the resentment, like how he always forgot to put his dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink. A silent war, albeit mostly being fought on my side.
“I’m sorry. What’s the big deal?” he used to say, bewildered, when I would call him out on it.
It wasn’t a big deal, something that only infuriated me more when I tried to explain it was a part of a bigger picture. It was what the dishes and the pillows represented. And there was no way to do that without sounding like a lunatic.
Yet, as I looked at the pillows in that moment, it both irritated me (hadn’t he learned?) and made me wonder why it was such a battle line in the first place. If it had been reversed, would I have listened to him yell on about pillows? Probably not. When we were together, why did everything have to represent something?
I started to step forward, but stopped. “No, thanks. I probably should just grab Abby.” The thought of walking around Matt’s house when he wasn’t there made me feel like I was snooping, which, of course, I would have been, albeit sanctioned by his mother.
She nodded sympathetically before she craned her head upward and called for Abby to come downstairs.
“Coming,” Abby called from somewhere upstairs. “I’m just hanging up my swimsuit.”
“Swimsuit?” I asked with my eyebrows raised.
Susan nodded. “There’s a pool and a hot tub in the backyard.”
Of course there was. Everything that a little girl could dream of. Abby had a pool at my house, too: an inflatable pink one that half-sagged when it was filled with too much freezing water from the hose.
“I told him he’ll have to hire someone to take care of it. To take care of this whole house. Why does one person need such a big house?” she grumbled. “If it wasn’t just him and—” She stopped when she saw my face. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” She shook her head in embarrassment.
“No, it’s all right. I know what you meant.” I shifted on the marble floor, shoving my hands in my pockets. Although I had known Susan for years, there was now this divide between us, this silence. Before the divorce, we were close. She stayed with us after Abby was born, taking turns with my mom to help during the first few weeks. Abby was her only grandchild, and she would often bring over small presents that she said she had simply stumbled across, but I knew it was just an excuse to come over and hold the baby. I didn’t mind, because it meant that I could sneak in a nap or take a shower while she rocked Abby. She always patted me on the back and told me I was doing a great job, even though I often felt just the opposite.
When the divorce happened, people had to choose sides, even though neither of us ever asked anyone to do so. It just came naturally, and friends and family were split. Choose a team, a divorce demands. Root for someone, even though no one ever wins. By virtue of blood relations, Susan was on Matt’s team and neither of us could ever seem to get over it.
We were saved from more uncomfortable conversation by the thump of Abby running downstairs.
“Mommy!” Abby threw her arms around me. As she always did, she seemed bigger than when I’d dropped her off just two days before.
Susan bent down on one knee and held her arms out. “I’ll miss you, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Okay. Love you, too,” Abby said.
I smiled, grateful for their closeness. My parents had retired to Fort Lauderdale a year earlier, so Matt’s parents were Abby’s only local grandparents. I said good-bye to Susan as I grabbed Abby’s hand to leave. I felt her watch me as we walked to the car and I started it up.
“Did you have fun?” I asked Abby as we pulled down the driveway.
She nodded. “Yes! Daddy and I went swimming in the backyard and then watched a movie together.” She sighed. “His new house is so fun. Julia showed me how to do a handstand underwater.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. “That’s great.” Julia and Matt had been dating for six months, from what I understood. She was a pretty, petite blonde in her early thirties who worked as a dental hygienist in a nearby town. I imagined her to be the human version of a Jack Sullivan flip house: convenient, pretty, shiny, and uncomplicated. Matt had asked a month ago if she could meet Abby, and it wasn’t as though I could say no. I hadn’t realized, though, that meeting her had evolved into spending time together. I exhaled slowly before I continued. “Do you want to go get some ice cream?”
She nodded quickly as we left the gated subdivision, drove away from the perfectly cloistered life that seemed so easy for her to fall into, and pulled onto Highway 50 to drive back toward our house, past the horse farms and cornfields that separated their gated community from my street. Back to where I belonged.
At one point, Matt belonged there, too. He grew up in town, just as I did. He was three years older, so it was more that we knew of each other than anything. I knew that when he was home from college, he worked summers on the docks at Gordy’s Boats in Fontana, helping people with their rented Cobalt speedboats by tying endless inner tubes and lines off the back well and reminding them to observe the No Wake Zone buoys. When the boaters were finished and heading back in, he would politely shout an offer to drive the dinghy out to the boat and drive it back into the marina instead of watching the driver struggle and sweat through all the channel traffic.
I watched him as I doled out hot dogs and ice cream from the snack shop at the beginning of the docks, admiring the way his skin tanned after all those long afternoons in the sun while I remained pasty white in the shop. I watched him as he returned home from college, worked that last summer, and then got a job at Gordy’s in boat sales. And I watched the way his eyes lit up when we ran into each other a few summers later at a party after too many
keg beers.
Five years later, we were married. I worked in marketing for the Grand Geneva Resort, and he worked his way through law school. Then came the surprise of Abby, a few years too early, and we bought a fixer-upper near town, several blocks from the lake. We planned to slowly bring it back to life and create a beautiful home for our little family. I believed that things were just beginning, that our lives had reached a wonderful new place.
The opposite all happened so fast after that. The divorce, selling the fixer-upper that would never be fixed, the monetary settlement that eventually allowed me to buy my first renovation property.
The money came from when his law firm brokered a deal for a lakefront condo developer. The grand opening ceremony of the development was in the spring that Abby turned one, and by the end of that summer, the divorce papers were signed.
And in the four years since, there hadn’t been one summer that didn’t remind me of him.
CHAPTER 6
Two small, mustached men were waiting for me the next day as I pulled into the cracked driveway of the Maple house after I dropped Abby off at school. Despite the fact that it was only 9 a.m., they shot me impatient looks as I climbed out of my truck.
“Are you the metal scrappers?” I asked as I noticed the pile of copper pipes in the bed of their truck. They nodded. “Great. Follow me.” I led them around back of the house and opened the door to the cellar. At some point in time, the house had been renovated to enclose the cellar so that the occupants could walk into the basement without having to walk inside, but the stairs were steep, and the enclosure was far from insect- or rodent-proof.
“Have at it,” I said as I pointed to the copper pipes that ran the length of the dirt-covered basement.
Their eyes widened as they took in the long, thin metal that crisscrossed underneath the floors. I had told Eddie to call anyone who would be willing to come into the house to remove all the pipes, something the excavators told me would need to be done before we could jack up the house. Eddie said the scrappers would cut all the pipes out, including the water heater, for free and then sell it for the value at a scrapyard.
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