“It’s to the house.”
Bree’s thoughts came to a grinding halt. Her eyes shot from the key to her mother. Then to her stepfather. And back to her mother. “I have a key to Nana’s house already. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” her mother said slowly, her smile growing, “that we want to give you our portion of Nana’s house.” She paused. “With conditions.”
Bree’s heart started racing and, before she knew it, she was standing, the teeth of the key making dents in her palm. Her smile broadened. “You’re giving me Nana’s house?”
Bree swallowed the lump forming in her throat as she pulled the key to her chest.
“With conditions,” her mother repeated.
“Of course. Anything.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “I’m not going to get married to that guy from the post office. Don’t tell me it’s about the guy from the post office.”
Both of them laughed, but her stepfather laughed harder. “Of course not, Bree. Who cares about”—his eyes grazed the window—“Rick? You don’t need Rick.”
“Or him,” Bree replied, tossing her chin toward the window as well. “I take it back. I might consider Rick. Or a mail-order groom. But not him.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” her mother said. “Don’t be silly. Just . . . come here. Sit.”
Her mother guided her to the couch next to Dan. She seated herself on the other side. Quite suddenly, Bree realized she was cornered.
“We have a proposition for you, dear. We know how much the house means to you—”
That was the understatement of the year.
“And we know that of all the people she loves, she’d want you to have it.”
Bree swallowed at the words.
“But—if we are going to hand our share of this property off to you, we know what a responsibility it will be. For starters, you’ll need to work out terms with Evie for buying her share.”
“No problem.” She currently had $42.01 in the bank, but she could come up with more. Easily. No problem.
“And this house is old. It requires extra love and attention—”
Bree nodded, careful to avoid looking at the golden pothos she’d potted on top of the bookshelf that was very, very dead. “I can do that.”
“And a steady income to maintain—”
Her nods slowed. “I’ve got a job”—she coughed and lowered her voice—“currently.”
“And above all, stability.”
Bree kept nodding, but at her mother’s continued stare her nod petered out. “Stability. I can be stable.”
Her mother began pushing nonexistent crumbs off her knees. “Yes, well, that’s what we’d like to talk about.”
After a pause she took Bree’s hands. “You see, honey, you have this wonderful spirit within you. It’s . . . spontaneous.”
“Energetic,” Dan put in.
“Spirited,” her mother added.
Bree looked from her stepfather to her mother. “So it’s established then. I have a spirited spirit. But . . .”
“But sometimes our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.”
“And that’s not unusual at all,” Dan interjected. “For example, your mother’s greatest strength is how loving she is.”
Her mother gave a bashful smile.
“On the flip side, that means she can sometimes be a bit too invested. Clingy.”
Her mother’s smile withered. “Yes. Well. Just as one of Dan’s many terrific attributes is his ability to stay laser focused on his goals, which also explains why he’s gained twenty pounds by being glued to the couch every weekend over football season.”
Dan opened his mouth to protest, but she raised a hand. “But I digress. The point is, honey, that while you are fun, and capable, and always ready for the next adventure—”
“And you can do anything you put your mind to,” Dan added.
“The point is, you . . . just sometimes . . . have this tendency to run off toward the next thing. Like with your hobbies, and your sports, and the jobs . . . and the colleges . . . and all the boyfriends—”
Bree’s cheeks flushed. “Okay, Mom, I get it. So I have, in the past, moved on with new opportunities. But this is different. This is Nana’s house. There’s no moving on with this. This is my dream.”
“I know, honey.” Her mother patted her arm. “But being a florist was also your dream. And a baker. And the general manager of Dollywood. It’s just, there are a lot of things we can do with the money by selling the house. If you are going to take it, we need to know you really mean it over the long haul.”
“And to demonstrate that,” Dan interjected, “we have an idea.”
He paused for the magnanimous moment and held out his hands. “One year.”
He smiled triumphantly.
Bree looked from Dan to her mother. “One year, what?”
Her mother spoke. “One year that you stay in one place, doing one job, providing your own way, then you can have the house. Live in this fine home with Evie, keep up your terrific acting career at the Barter. One year.”
“And on this day next year, April 7,” Dan put in, “if you still want it, it’s yours. If you decide you don’t”—he cleared his throat—“or can’t, Evie has agreed to buy it out. It’s the perfect housing solution.”
Her mother and stepfather smiled at her as if this was the most brilliant idea they’d ever hatched.
Bree felt her blood grow cold. “One year,” she repeated.
The notches in the key dug deeper into her palm as she clenched her fist at her side. One year. One year of working at the Barter—where she was approximately two weeks from being out of a job. One year of living in this house with Evie—where she was about two weeks away from living without electricity and sewing clothes from barley bags.
Her mouth opened. Paused.
The words were on the tip of her tongue: Super, guys. No problem whatsoever. But before we start, I just gotta do one thing. It’s absolutely not a reflection on my stability. Or seriousness. I just need to change everything about my job and roommate and life real quick first.
She could hear how that sounded in her own ears.
“One year,” Bree said, forcing a smile. “No problem.”
Six hours and approximately three thousand calories of birthday cake later, Bree pushed her parents’ passenger door shut and waved them off. The dog sat at the front of his owner’s mailbox, looking like a forlorn dad watching his children head off to college as they angled out of the cul-de-sac. Russell was so compelling that her parents parked in the middle of the road and got out to give the dog several friendly rubs. Chip, meanwhile, stood at a distance on his porch, pretending to move around some empty five-gallon paint buckets.
Right. Like they really needed moving twelve inches.
Like he ever actually moved anything twelve inches.
“Lovely, again, to meet you,” Bree’s mother called, waving once more to Chip before getting back in the car.
“And if we have some trouble getting our dog to do that roll-over trick—” Dan called.
“You feel free to call anytime,” Chip supplied. He turned a broad smile on Bree. “I’m sure Bree’d be happy to walk her phone over so we can chat.”
Bree nearly collapsed then and there. Great. Just great. She could already see her parents’ wheels turning. This conversation was going to carry them the whole drive home. She’d start getting calls “for Chip” by tomorrow.
“We just might!” Dan called, then settled into the driver’s seat.
And here’s your daughter, the one you are leaving, back here! Bree wanted to yell, but she refrained as they honked once more for the dog.
Bree lowered her hand as the car rolled down the hill and out of sight.
One year.
“Nice parents,” Chip called from the porch, but she ignored him.
Her hand slid into her pocket as she felt for the key. It gave her instant comfort, instant res
olve, instant—she slipped her hand out again, realizing just how much she sounded like Bilbo Baggins before the One Ring mental breakdown.
She dropped that key back into her pocket and fished for another.
A car key.
“And happy birthday,” Chip said.
“It was two weeks ago,” Bree replied, unmoved by kind words. Oh no. She wouldn’t be falling for any of that again. Especially now when she was on a mission. A specific, critical mission.
She slipped into her car and five minutes later was pulling into the Barter Inn dorms, then banging on Birdie’s door.
The door opened. Everything from the damp tendrils escaping Birdie’s braid to the nude tights beneath athletic shorts said she had come to the right place.
“I need you to teach me to tap-dance,” Bree blurted. “And maybe sing.”
Birdie’s eyes widened. “I thought you were out. I thought you didn’t even want to try.”
“I’m back in.”
Birdie hesitated, clearly counting the days in her head. “But you’ve only got—”
“Eighteen days until the audition. I’m aware. And awareness is the first step toward success, right?”
“And you have a . . . skill level of a . . . what, would you say . . . ?”
“Level zero, Birdie. I’m at a solid level zero.”
There was a short pause.
Then a longer one.
Bree’s face softened. “Please.”
“Perfect,” Birdie said, swinging the door the rest of the way open, her tap shoes clicking as she stepped back to make room for Bree’s entrance. “Absolutely perfect. You’ll have nowhere to go but up.”
Bree stepped inside, squeezing Birdie’s hand as she entered. “Thank you.”
* * *
Four and a half hours later, with “Good Morning” playing on repeat through her head, Bree pulled back into her driveway. Her aching foot complained as she pushed the brake pedal and turned off the engine. She put her head on the wheel for a moment. Breathed. Finally, she pushed the door open with protesting muscles, and the door creaked at the pathetic attempt and shut again.
“Oh, come on.” The words tumbled out of her hoarse throat and she pushed again. No wonder Cam and Nate—Birdie’s downstairs neighbors and their District One tap-dancing competitors—banged on the ceiling so much. She couldn’t even stand her own voice.
She stood and used her body weight to shut the door. Locking it, she considered how she would have to do this again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next.
Birdie was a good friend. She had spent a considerable amount of time showing her the basic moves of tap and song. She kept saying it was good accountability to be doing it together, that Bree’s presence strengthened her, but even Bree knew Birdie’s time would be better spent singing her own songs and practicing her own steps. Still, Birdie insisted. And frankly, Bree didn’t have the option to turn her down—
“Russ!” She heard Chip’s hiss from his porch the millisecond before the dog collapsed into the back of her knees and threw her forward. She fell to her hands and knees on the gravel, then, in a blind moment of fight-or-flight, ignored the screaming muscles in her body as she scrambled up and over her side of the line.
Panting, hands on knees, she turned.
There stood Russell, wagging his tail, well over the soil line her neighbor had claimed was the new Invisible Fence. Where he had obediently stayed behind when her parents were in view. But now, the second they were gone . . .
From the porch, she heard the chuckle. He put up his hands in surrender. “I really tried that time, Bree. I promise—”
Her head jerked in his direction. “You.”
Her voice was surprising in her own ears. She sounded like a teacher whose students put a tack on her chair. She sounded like Saruman calling up the orc army to war. She sounded like a woman who’d had enough.
She stared at her neighbor and made a mental declaration then and there. Her fingers slipped into her pocket for support, and she gripped the key.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the residential bands which have connected them and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Well, she had declared her injustices, and he had done nothing but mock.
So, she, therefore, Bree Leake, resident of 425 Stonewall Heights, of Abingdon, Virginia, appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of her intentions to, in the Name, and by Authority of Her Sanity, solemnly publish and declare, that she ought to be free from pestilential neighbors, absolved from neighbors’ crude mockery, and that all connections between herself and Iniquitous Neighbor and Loathsome Dog will, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
In other words . . .
This.
Was.
War.
Chapter 10
Chip
Chip slipped past a slow-moving couple as he dragged the bulky easel along the Creeper Trail. Haste had not been a merry accomplice in his mission, given that there were approximately zero stores within a fifty-mile radius prepared to sell him a modern, portable easel at a reasonable price. And he opted not to steal the blue Fisher Price one from the toddler across the street.
As a last resort, and at great personal risk, he cashed in a favor from a family friend and hopped by the elderly woman’s estate that morning to borrow her sturdy midcentury wooden easel. He was going for the authentic artist look, and a six-foot-high antique accessory would do the trick. He hoped the old lady wouldn’t tell his mother about their little exchange at the next garden party.
Juggling the easel in one arm and a gallon of turpentine, palette, half a dozen oil paints, and ten brushes in a newspaper in the other, Chip struggled to slide his phone into his breast pocket and move on. A few art enthusiasts were already wandering the trail—men and women walking arm in arm, pointing whenever they spotted an artist as though they’d spotted a deer in the wild.
It was the day of the William King Museum’s Plein Air event, and artists already dotted the dirt path every thirty meters or so. They had set up their easels to capture the picturesque farms and tree line along the thirty-four-mile route that trains once took from the elevated peak of Whitetop Mountain to the little town of Abingdon below. Every year thousands of people trekked their way to Abingdon as tourists, spent the evening at a Barter play, stayed the night at the Martha or one of the dozen Colonial-style bed-and-breakfasts, then set out for that scenic bike ride along the Creeper Trail the following morning. Even the locals strolled or biked along the trail as part of their daily schedule. Abingdon was the gold standard for tucked-away vacations.
Chip stopped and squinted down the path, searching for the perfect location to set up. Accomplishing both of his goals at once would be a challenge: first, locating a prime spot for being seen by Mr. Richardson, and second, making himself invisible to his mother or any other person who might know him. So, basically, being visible to one person while being invisible to everyone else. Right. Totally doable.
He spotted a bench somewhat obscured by two trees. Struggling, he dropped his easel down on the grass just off the path. With plastic bags of paint and brushes dangling from his wrists, he fought with the easel to pry it open. It creaked with the obstinance of a buried treasure chest. But there, at last, it stood beside the path, the creek waters rippling behind him with the rose-petal freshness of the 1648 Pastoral Landscape by Claude Lorrain.
Google made research too easy.
He put his hands on his hips and looked up with a smile. Five feet away a man in a maroon beret frowned, brush in his hand, yellow paint threatening to drip onto the mossy ground.
“Ah,” Chip said and picked up his easel. “I’ll just—give you a bit more breathi
ng room.”
The man’s eyes remained trained on him until he was safely seven yards down.
Five minutes later, with easel up, brush in hand, and the colors of the rainbow spread across his palette, he was ready for action.
“Right.” He looked down at the colors and up again.
A gust of wind bowed budding tulips.
He looked over his shoulder to the other painter.
The man dipped his paintbrush in—for lack of a more cultured term—purple.
Purple? That couldn’t be right.
Chip looked to what the man was looking at, the stream and cow farm stretching out across the horizon.
Cows: black. Stream: blue. Barn: a dead-looking yellow and green. There was no space for purple—
He glanced over to the man’s easel again.
Oh. Oh yes. Well, if you did it like that.
Chip took a few steps, angling for a better view of the man who had somehow used purple in the shadows of the hill and made it look utterly normal. As though, of course, all hills are somehow purple. How had Chip not seen that?
The man jerked up his head. His frown deepened when he caught Chip’s gaze, and he tilted his easel away.
Chip tugged on his cuffs. Honestly. This was the Plein Air event. All sorts of people were about to walk by at any moment. If the man had expected to be alone, he should’ve painted in a closet.
Chip returned to his easel and dipped his brush into the purple.
Yes. Purple was a fine choice.
Suddenly his breast pocket vibrated, the wail of rings breaking the song of the babbling brook. He put the brush between his teeth and pulled out his phone.
“Hey, Tim. What’s up?” Chip said through his teeth, then cradled the phone to his ear to remove the brush from his mouth.
“I’m over here at Haymaker Street,” replied Tim, the nineteen-year-old Lowe’s delivery rep and longtime family friend. “Nobody’s here to sign off on these appliances.”
Chip forced himself not to growl like a caveman. This was the third time in a month his sub wasn’t where he needed to be. And worse, right now Chip couldn’t afford to let him go. “Okay, let me make a call. Hold on a sec.”
The Cul-de-Sac War Page 12