Chapter 38
After breakfast with Gramps—he slept in and I woke up early, so our schedules lined up for once—I borrow his car and drive to Pebble Cottage.
Gramps had protested, saying there’s no need for me to go anywhere else, but I convinced him that we’re both too old for a permanent adult roommate.
This made him laugh. I also promised that I would see him every day, so often that he would get sick of me.
As I drive up to the house, I savor everything, from the way the car tires crunch over gravel pulling into the carport, to the heady fragrance drifting from the magnolia tree, to the bright morning sun pooling on the front doorstep.
It may not be a grand front porch, but the little stoop is just big enough to display a few pumpkins in the fall.
And a festive doormat. The thought of decorating for Halloween, of still being here in three months and watching the seasons change (or not, maybe, since this is Florida), thrills me.
I take a deep breath and unlock the door, the Obama key chain rattling. Home. That thought will take some getting used to.
My first impression as I step inside is that it smells like fresh paint.
My second is that the mess of floorboards that I left here, piled in the entryway and the living room, is gone.
Odd. I walk farther inside, my sandals slapping gently against the brand-new floors.
It’s finished. Every room has a new floor and freshly painted walls.
Even the planks that I messed up in the living room have been relaid correctly.
I spin around to take it all in, and then I notice something I missed when I walked in.
My mirror—the one Daniel carried home for me on his bike, the one I never got around to picking up before I left—is hanging near the front door, exactly where I had envisioned it.
I touch the gilded frame and smile at my reflection.
I like the way I look here, in the sunny entryway of my very own house.
I look sun-kissed and relaxed and happy.
I wonder when Daniel was going to tell me about all this.
My fingers itch to grab my phone and call him immediately to thank him.
I will, of course, but thanking him would mean telling him that I’m back in town.
As eager as I am to see him again, a part of me wants to wait. I want to make this perfect.
It’s amazing what one can accomplish in one day with a credit card, a rented U-Haul, and a cousin who is happy to have something to do “other than watching ferret trainers on TikTok.” I didn’t ask any ferret-related follow-up questions; large rodents are not really my thing.
Ellie is uncharacteristically excited to see me and proves extremely helpful in hauling things into the truck—like the rattan queen-size bed frame and the vintage, navy-blue velvet love seat that we found at Goodwill. “I deadlift,” she explains.
By that evening, the place is decently furnished.
The living room looks cheerfully minimalist, and so different from my cozy, neutral Seattle living room.
I paired the navy-blue sofa with a bold yellow-and-white rag rug and a kitschy lamp with oyster shells and sand dollars dangling from it—both from the flea market Daniel introduced me to.
The walls are empty, but I’m waiting until I find the perfect art piece.
I have plenty of time—and I happen to know someone who likes perusing art galleries.
There’s something very satisfying about filling my brand-new closet in my brand-new bedroom. Like the rest of the house, the closet also looks pretty sparse, because I left most of my cold-weather clothes at my parents’ house. But I like it this way. It’s calming.
In the kitchen, the built-in breakfast table is set with handwoven place mats and a cut-glass vase full of fresh flowers.
I shipped my trusty Nespresso machine and Vitamix blender; they should arrive next week.
I unwrap a new-to-me set of colorful Fiestaware and a full set of utensils that I got for pennies.
As I’m opening and closing cabinets and drawers, trying to decide where to put everything, a small sheet of paper flutters down onto the countertop.
It’s a letter—to me.
Dear Mallory,
So, my little house is yours now. I hope you know how much this place meant to me. It was a place of security, of love. Over the decades, it was full of friends in the kitchen, the laughter of little girls, and flowers from the garden.
Here’s what I hope for you, my dear granddaughter: I hope that this house can be a place to plant deep roots.
And I hope that those roots give you both the stability to reach out and grow, to flourish, and also a safe place to which to retreat.
I feel the need to care for you the way I cared for Leonard.
In you, I’ve always seen him. And in him is a tendency to retreat inward.
I know that there’s nothing wrong with this.
But I also want to remind you to look toward the sun.
We need other people, just like we need sunlight.
Take care of my house, dear one. Take care of my Leonard. And take care of you.
I know you will.
All my love,
Lottie
I’m sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, wiping away tears.
An overwhelming relief surges through me. Lottie did want me to live here. It took me a while to realize it, but I made the right choice in the end.
“I promise I will,” I whisper.
At dusk, I do a few laps in my little pool (my pool!) and then I swim to the edge and grab my phone. Legs kicking languidly in the warm, glowing water, I think about what I want to say to Daniel.
Finally, I type: Hi Daniel! Hope you’re doing well. I have a prospective tenant who wants to see the house. Can you meet them there tomorrow?
I put my phone down, suddenly nauseous with nerves. What if he’s not happy to see me? What if we’re totally not on the same page and he’s just confused? Before I can duck my head under the water, my phone lights up.
Happy to. How’s 6 P.M. tomorrow? Busy day. If that’s too late for them, I can do noon or 3 the following day.
For some reason, this response fills me with affection. He’s so professional. So prompt. So thoughtful.
I reply: Tomorrow at 6 is perfect. Thanks!
It’s slightly killing me not to thank him effusively for all the work he did on the house in secret.
But I don’t want to let him know I’m here, not yet.
I slip back under the water and swim until my anxious brain has quieted down, until my limbs feel like jelly, and then I take a long hot shower in my very own bathroom before falling instantly asleep on my very own couch.
(I’m ordering a new mattress for the bed frame—one thing I didn’t feel like buying secondhand.)
The next day, I meet Gramps for lunch and then swim in the Gulf.
I savor the sensation of feeling like I’ve actually used my muscles over the past few days.
Amazing how I never felt this way back home in my old solitary routine, and yet I’ve felt this way frequently during my time here.
I may not be a backpacking type, but I see a future full of swimming, kayaking, and biking in the hot sun.
In the afternoon, I visit an antiques mall in St. Pete for more furniture and odds and ends.
A few minutes before six, I do a final walkthrough of the house. The bedroom still looks unfinished with no mattress, but the living room and kitchen are warm and inviting.
I really didn’t want to have Daniel over with no furniture in the house yet again.
I slip outside to wait on the front stoop. Daniel will recognize Gramps’s car in the carport, so I might as well be out here to see his reaction. Like the professional property manager he is, he shows up at two minutes to six, tooling slowly up the driveway on his red bike.
“Mallory?” he shouts, his face slack with disbelief. “What—?”
I give a little wave, unable to contain a smile.
He hops off his bike, still rolling, and then stops a few feet away from me, clutching the handlebars suspiciously.
“What are you doing here? What about the tenants I’m supposed to meet?”
I stand and dust off the back of my denim shorts. I kind of like the way this feels, standing in front of my own front door, having a man look at me like… that.
“It’s me. I’m the tenant.”
He still looks suspicious, so I explain. “I went back home to Seattle, but it didn’t feel right. I quit my job and sold all my stuff and… Here we are.”
“Okay…”
My heart plunges. This is it; this is what I was afraid would happen. I try to surprise him and I make a fool of myself, because he actually didn’t want this, and he’s not happy I’m here.
I take a deep breath. “Daniel. Before we talk about anything else, I have to ask. Did you finish the floors and walls yourself?”
He grins guiltily. The lopsided smile and the flush coloring his freckled cheeks make it nearly impossible for me not to run over to him immediately.
“I did,” he admits.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to get the place rented.” He says it stoutly, defending himself, but he can’t quite hide the laugh in his eyes.
“I would have paid Alan for that, though.” I step through the open front door and point at the gilded mirror inside. “And what about this?”
He takes a few steps closer. “That—well, you left it at my place. It doesn’t exactly match my decor.”
“I see.” I appraise him, still not entirely sure if we feel the same way. Not sure how he’ll feel about the fact that I may or may not have moved across the country for him. I mean, it was obviously for Gramps, but…
“Want to see what I’ve done with the place?” I say.
He climbs the steps with his helmet under one arm. “How long have you been in town?”
“Just two days.”
“Two days, huh?” He gives me a once-over as he passes over the threshold, as if he’s wondering why I waited two days to see him. But I’m probably imagining it.
“Wow.” He stops in the living room. “You’ve done a lot. So you’re really…?”
“Living here? Yep.” He doesn’t immediately squeal for joy—I’m really wishing we had discussed our intentions before now—so I beckon for him to follow me.
“I found this at the antiques mall today.”
He gazes around the kitchen, taking in the new dishes, the dish towel on the hook, the soap bottle beside the kitchen sink—all signs of someone living here. And then he looks at the kitchen table, where I’m pointing.
“Is that tabletop shuffleboard?”
“It is!” I’m a little too proud of myself. I didn’t even know tabletop shuffleboard existed, so when I saw it, I had to have it.
“I kind of thought there’d be a home-cooked meal when you brought me in here.” Daniel picks up one of the little blue pucks.
“My cooking is still a work in progress. I wouldn’t subject you to that. Not yet.”
“Yet?” Daniel looks around, his hand closing around the puck.
“Yeah.” I lean against the kitchen table, the memory of what happened on this very bench suddenly flooding my mind. “Not when I’m—”
“Not when you’re what, Rosen?” He does that unwavering-eye-contact thing again, like he might be able to read the words in my mind before I say them out loud.
“Not when I’m trying to make you like me.” I let out a slightly hysterical laugh.
He sets the puck down on the board and sighs, like he’s disappointed. But I’ve said it, and I can’t take it back now. All my cards are on the table—or my pucks are. Or something.
“I’m sorry to say,” Daniel says slowly. Oh God—I would like to disappear now. “I think that ship has sailed.”
“It… has?”
He looks at me, and there’s a disbelieving twinkle in his expression as he points to the breakfast nook bench. “I believe I showed you, just a few weeks ago, right here on this very bench, exactly how I feel about you.”
“Oh.” Right. All the blood has rushed to the lower half of my body. But I don’t move. Because I want to be very sure that we’re on the same page about what my being here means—what it means about us.
“You’re here for good?” he asks.
I nod.
“Guess you won’t need a property manager anymore.”
I shake my head. He closes the distance between us. I put both hands in his hair, sticking up at all angles, and I wonder if this sensation, and the salty smell of him, will become something I get to experience day in and day out.
“Ma’am.” His hands find my waist. I can feel the warmth of his palms through my tank top. “You’ve just put me out of a job.”
“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about the other thing, too.”
He tilts his head. “What other thing?”
I lean in and whisper, my lips grazing his ear, “How badly I’m about to beat you at shuffleboard.”
He hoots with laughter and proceeds to roundly kick my butt in the first match. I demand that we play best two out of three, but we get distracted.
And that’s how I discover that my new blue couch is good for more than just sleeping on.