Renovating old houses was often a game of playing catchup. Any changes meant bringing a house up to the innovations and improvements, not just from the past ten or twenty years, but the past century.
“You got it,” Thad said. “We can have it all done within three days.”
“I’d like to see two days,” Eddie said, craning his neck into the hole of the bathroom, following the piping up until it disappeared into the plaster.
Thad shook his head. “I don’t think I can have my guys here ’round the clock to get that done. Three days would—”
“Would be too long,” I finished. “We need to get this done immediately. Every day wastes more money.” And I was beginning to need all the help I could get, budget-wise. I had knocked on all the bathroom walls and they all sounded like they were filled with plumbing, which meant pulling out the plaster in the whole room. Then, everything would need to be replastered.
“Fine, fine. We’ll do our best,” he said.
“Better get started, then,” Eddie said, eyebrows raised.
Thad walked off, muttering to himself about how he was never working with us again. It was a speech we had heard many times before, with almost every worker we had hired. Too fast, not enough money, too demanding, we didn’t understand the scope of the work. What we definitely did understand was that there were many people out there looking for work, and that someone who could bring in quality work on a timeline within our budget was the most important component to my renovations.
As Thad left, he passed Frank, the electrician, in the driveway. They shared a look of warning as they swapped out. Frank had told me that most of the electrical system also needed to be replaced, which I had figured. Almost all of my houses required some kind of electrical work, but it was usually minor. But I knew that back when houses were built decades ago, knot-and-tube wiring was used. It ran on fuses instead of circuit breakers, with no grounding or high-capacity. The Maple house had it, and it all had to be ripped out or else insurance companies wouldn’t insure the house. Not to mention, it was a serious fire hazard.
Frank had said he was surprised the electrical system had survived as long as it had, since it was installed back in the days before modern appliances, computers, and electronics. As time marched on and the owners required more and more electricity, the fuses would have blown on a regular basis, nearly every time anyone turned on a hair dryer or started the microwave.
He, too, had walked off just as Thad had, muttering about unrealistic expectations after our conversation.
“Do you ever wonder if all these guys have a special bottle of bourbon at home just marked ‘Alex’?” Eddie said as we watched Thad pull out of the driveway.
“That’s pretty likely. Maybe I’ll buy them each a bottle when this is all finished,” I said. I clapped my hands and rubbed them together. “Anyway, I’m going to start on attacking those awful kitchen cabinets.” I shuddered. “I can’t wait to see those things cracked in half.” I lifted the sledgehammer that rested against the exterior wall.
“Right on. I’m going to take a look at some of those front picture windows to see what they need,” Eddie said. “Want me to save any glass shards for Matt?” I had told him about the Disney World trip and how Abby had talked of little else since the conversation.
“Don’t tempt me,” I said. I slung the sledgehammer over my shoulder. “But before I start in the kitchen, I want you to show me what you’re doing to those windows, too.”
I followed him up the porch to the four-over-one windows that lined the living room wall. They were huge by modern standards, both at least six feet tall and three feet wide. Four smaller panes of glass were on the top part of the window, and the bottom part was one single piece. Or, it should have been. Two of the four windows had broken or missing bottom panes, and most of the small top panes were missing, as well.
“So, what’s the plan here?” I said.
“Well, my guys are going to pry the whole thing out with this guy.” He lifted a five-in-one tool in the air. “Don’t worry, it was meant to be taken out,” he added when he saw my mouth open immediately. “Then we can take a look at the frame and see what might need to be repaired, or if the weights on the sash need to be replaced. We’ll clean it up, replace the glass, paint the exterior facings, make sure it’s all working right, then pop it back in.” He cleared his throat. “’Course they’re likely full of lead paint, so we’ll need to be careful when we sand them.”
“Lead paint. The bane of my existence.” I rolled my eyes. Nearly every house built before 1980 had lead paint in it, a fact that made most people freak out. But it could all be contained in the right way, if someone knew what they were doing. “And you can really do it for all these guys?” I said as I leaned forward and stared critically at the badly painted, dirty, splintering window frames. I knew sash windows were built to last, but the picture windows looked like they needed to have their last rites read to them.
“Do I have a choice?” he said.
“Good point.” As I went inside to begin demo on the kitchen, I glanced back at the picture windows. I smiled as I thought of the sunlight streaming into the living room on a warm spring day, the breeze lightly brushing against the curtains before sweeping through the whole house, touching every surface. The breeze would bring the scent of the roses and lilacs that lined the front porch into the living room.
I lifted my sledgehammer, and with a satisfying swing, drove it straight into a wood veneer cabinet. It immediately collapsed onto the floor with a thud, like it was happy to be put out of its misery. I lifted the hammer again, ready to take down the next cabinet.
“Alex? My crew found something you might want to see.” Eddie’s voice called from outside.
I walked down the cracked front steps, following Eddie’s voice into the backyard strangled by long, prickly vines. Piles of them sat to the side, as though pouting from being stopped in their rampage to overtake the property.
“For one, we found that.” He pointed to an arched wooden structure on the ground. A crew member held it upright, and I realized it was one side of a garden arbor. The white paint had bubbled and peeled away from most of the wood. “They know not to throw anything away for scrap, so we’ll set it aside if you want to restore it.”
I nodded as I took in what looked to be hand-carved arches on the top and the crisscross of the wood on the sides. “It’s beautiful. Well, it once was.”
“And then I just saw this.” He pointed to one of the maple trees in the backyard. He walked around to the side of it, the side that pointed toward Elsie’s house. He brushed back more ivy that had grown up the tree like fingers inching toward the sky, and showed me a carved circle.
I leaned in and squinted, pulling more vines off the tree trunk. It was only about six inches tall, and had faded so much into the wood that it was almost undetectable. Inside the circle read: D.M. + E.S.
“David Moore plus . . . someone. Elsie? I wonder if her maiden name starts with S.” I glanced toward her house.
“The old lady next door? Could be. We wouldn’t have found it at all, except one of my guys was back here, trying to trace the old sewer line and came across it,” he said as he wiped his forehead on his arm.
I traced my finger on the grooves of the letters and around the circle. “How sweet.”
“Sweet? Yeah, right. He was probably just trying to get into her pants,” Eddie said with a laugh.
I thought of the photograph, and David’s expression as he looked at the camera. “No. He loved her.”
CHAPTER 11
I collapsed on my couch after a long day at the house. Thad had begun cutting all of the asbestos plumbing out of the walls, ripping out the old metal, and tenting off the area so none of the dangerous material would be inhaled.
I had finished the kitchen cabinets and moved on to the upstairs master bathroom, pulling out the rotted, builder-grade vanity, mirror, and light fixture. There hadn’t been anything worth salvaging in that room. If there had be
en any period pieces—a pedestal sink with legs or a claw-foot tub—I would have restored and saved them, but the pieces I pulled out were circa 1995 and already deteriorating.
I rubbed the back of my sore neck. I had strained it while lifting up the vanity. Even with the help of one of Eddie’s guys, it still didn’t want to let go of the wall. Usually those pieces would crumble like dust, as though they were the ones who had been around for centuries, but that bugger clung on like an insect to an oak tree branch during a storm.
I picked up the pile of mail on the couch next to me. I swiped through coupon books, junk mail fliers, and the water bill—after last month’s running toilet, I would save opening that for after I’d had a beer—before I pushed the whole thing on the floor. I checked my voice mail, and listened to a message from Traci.
“Look, I know you said you didn’t want to meet anyone, but it’s been forever since you’ve dated someone. That new history teacher at school—hello, history, he likes old things—wants to meet you. You guys are going out to dinner next weekend. His name is Gavin Magnesen. I’ll text you his number. He’s expecting your call. Don’t kill me.”
I collapsed against the back of the couch, my pulse quickening at the thought of a first date. I hadn’t been on a proper date in over a year, since a minor flirtation with a guy I’d met at Home Depot. And even that couldn’t really have been considered a date. The idea of having to present some alternate, perfect version of myself and make funny, light conversation made me want to sleep through the summer.
I lay back and closed my eyes, allowing my thoughts to drift to the past, to the time when David had carved his initials in the tree.
I could see the pink rosebushes exploding with blooms along the side of the house, and the white arched arbor off to the side, ivy growing across it. David’s new convertible was parked in the driveway, and he and Elsie sat in the backyard by the maple tree. They kissed behind it, just out of view of the neighbors, but not hidden enough to make it seem as though they were doing anything wrong.
He showed her the initials carved in the tree, and even though she thought it was a little corny, she smiled and kissed him again. She asked him to pose by his new car for a photo, one that she kept in a journal, along with a pink rose from the garden.
I slowly opened my eyes and stared at a ticking clock on the wall, thinking about how when people moved out of a house, it began to die. The foundation seemed to crumble faster, the paint peeled quicker, and the wood floors warped in just a couple of seasons. People kept a house alive, not the other way around. And when the Moores moved out after David died, they took a piece of the house’s soul with them.
The familiar feeling of loneliness began to settle down on my head as I wondered if my life would hold any more of those kind of romantic moments or if that part was over. I wondered if I had already used up all my credit in the love department and now would spend the rest of my life paying off the balance. Was I like the Maple house after everyone moved out?
I felt the sadness begin to move down my body, to my shoulders and down my arms like a shadow. One more minute and it would have me. It was as though I was standing on the edge of a cliff, peering over, and a thorny vine was slowly encircling my ankle, threatening to bring me over the edge.
Instead of letting it pull me over the edge, like I had so many times before, I stepped back.
I stood up, and walked out the door.
* * *
I made my way through the crowd in Harpoon Willie’s, a dark-paneled watering hole in Williams Bay decorated with various sports memorabilia. Despite it being a Wednesday night, the place was packed shoulder to shoulder with the after-work crowd. I lifted a hand to a couple of Eddie’s crew members clustered together in the corner before I reached the bar.
I surveyed the crowd of half-drunk men who glanced my way through a haze of cheap draft beer. Most of them I recognized as locals, but there were a few tourist types. They would increase in number as the summer marched on, especially the bikers who stopped in for a drink while they cruised around the lake.
I signaled to the bartender for a beer and relaxed against the bar. I was almost in a good mood when a petite, pretty blonde perched on a bar stool against the window made my stomach drop. Julia, Matt’s girlfriend. She was with two other women dressed in scrubs, out after a day at the dental office, with glasses of white wine on the table. She didn’t see me, but that was due to the fact that I quickly hid behind a large, sweaty man near the bar.
“Have a seat,” a voice next to me said.
I shook my head even before I saw who spoke. When the voice’s owner registered, I shook my head even harder.
“Sullivan. What are you doing here? Following me now?” I frowned, and grabbed my beer, and took a sip.
“Nope. I live just around the corner. I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. He was relaxed, his forearms on the bar in front of him. He cracked a wide smile, flashing the hole in the back of his mouth where he was missing a tooth. He glanced at the stool next to him. “Sit. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”
I opened my mouth to protest again, but I glanced over at Julia and her friends, one of whom started walking toward the bar. Suddenly, sitting next to Jack seemed like the safer option.
“So,” I said as I settled into the stool, “find any beautiful houses to destroy lately?”
He smirked. “None as beautiful as the one I lost to you at the auction. That house doesn’t even have a garage, Alex. Think about that for a minute. We live in Wisconsin. Where it snows.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware.” I shook my head slightly, frowning. The lack of a garage was something I hadn’t considered much. If there wasn’t anything structurally wrong with the house, I probably could have chosen to build one. But as it was, there wasn’t any money left in the contingency fund for extras.
“And tell me, how much did you have to spend to fix that crumbling foundation? Twenty, thirty thousand?”
I avoided his gaze and slowly closed my eyes. “Don’t worry about it. It was worth it. And I’d do it all over again.”
“I’m sure you would. Do you know how much I spend to build a whole new foundation on my houses? It’s—” He stopped and laughed. “Never mind. You look depressed enough already.” He signaled to the bartender, who refilled his drink without a word.
“Easy, Jack. Maybe try to make it to dinnertime before you fall flat on your face,” I said. “Although, on second thought, keep going. You, facedown in the dirt, is something that would brighten my day.”
Ignoring me, he continued, “That house should have been stripped for parts and then torn down. Sure, you could save some of those things you people like, like the tub or the fixtures, or whatever, but that whole house isn’t worth saving. It’s well past its prime, and it’s time to move on.” He took a slug of his drink. “I could put up two houses for the amount you’re going to spend in throwing some Band-Aids over that money pit.”
“Quantity over quality, Jack. You give flippers a bad name,” I muttered.
“Why? Because I treat it like a business? Because I go after what makes the most profit?” he said.
I cleared my throat. “No. Because you treat it only like a business—fast and cheap. Flippers like you come into a house and rip out damaged hardwoods to put down laminate flooring, demo brick fireplaces in favor of marble surrounds, knock down plaster walls to put up drywall, and take a sledgehammer to claw-foot tubs.” I paused and adjusted my legs on the stool. “You don’t have any respect for the fact that almost everything in an old house was meant to be there—made to be there, made for the house—and not mass-produced in a factory somewhere. The type of work that makes people run away when they hear a house was a flip because they figure the work was half-assed.”
A bemused look crossed his face. “I think my sales record would disagree with you.”
“Well, let me ask you something: What do you have against old houses? What do you have against restoring homes f
or the people who actually live here, year-round?” I said as the bartender slid me another drink. My shoulders relaxed even more, and a light, airy feeling of a cheap beer buzz filled my head.
“Don’t have anything against them. Just can’t make money off of them. And you won’t, either.” He turned toward me. “Let me ask you something—you’ve heard of the Waterview Group, haven’t you?”
I narrowed my eyes. They were one of the biggest real estate developers in the area, and also the deep-pockets client that Matt had represented right before our divorce. The hefty fee they paid him trickled down to me in our settlement, giving me enough to buy my first renovation property. “Of course,” I said slowly.
He leaned forward. “Did you know that they’re looking to build another resort? One closer to town? One close to . . .” He trailed off, leaning back for effect.
I frowned and shook my head. “The rumor of a resort near downtown has been around forever. Try again.”
He laughed. “Only this time, it’s true. They’ve quietly bought some properties in the area, trying to carve out space. To bulldoze.” He made a clearing motion with his hand.
I shrugged. “Okay. That doesn’t matter, because I’ll never sell to them.”
He leaned forward on the bar and slumped his shoulders. He lifted a finger to the bartender, who shook his head. Studying him, I didn’t realize just how intoxicated he was when I’d first sat down. He slowly stood up, hanging on to the bar for support, and leaned toward me.
“Everyone has a price, Alex. Just wait—you’ll get some tax lien or permit issue and you’ll sell. Mark my words,” he slurred. “And when that happens, call me first. I might let you save a few things before I rip it down. Can’t say the same for Waterview.”
“Go home and wait out the hangover,” I said as I waved away his liquor-soaked breath.
He turned and slowly made his way to the door. When he was outside, I exhaled and put my forehead against my arms on the bar. Waterview was a notoriously high-pressure developer, with a lot of cash and little ethics. If they put their crosshairs on my house, I wouldn’t even qualify as the mouse in the Goliath story. And Matt might be the one to sign off on their purchase strong arm.
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