CHAPTER 2 #2
It was a good decision in the long term, but it meant that she had to be careful about how she spent her money until she found work.
So, for now, she spent her days looking for jobs while she painted walls that still needed to be touched up and called contractors to take a look at the damage from a hurricane that had hit the house five years prior.
The house had been a steal when she’d gotten it, and she had known about the damage then, but she’d needed to focus on getting the kids everything she could to set up their rooms and to make them feel like this place could be a home before she did any new work.
Now, though, as they were about to leave the nest and had what they needed, even if it wasn’t what they wanted, she needed to address the other issues or risk having to spend more money later.
So, she had made the call to the contractor Gwen had recommended and sat at the table alone after AJ had gotten up and dropped his dishes from lunch into the sink.
“Um… I think you might be my next-door neighbor,” the woman on the other end of the call said.
“Sorry?” she replied.
“I live right next to you. I’m forty-eight-twenty-one. The white house with the red mailbox.”
“Really?” she asked.
Elisa walked to her front window and pulled back the cheap ivory-colored curtains she’d found online.
They didn’t exactly fit the windows and were thin, so they didn’t block much of anything, but they were something, and they made the house feel more lived in.
Looking through the window now, she saw the red mailbox the woman was referring to.
“What are the odds?” she said mostly to herself. “You work for the company I happened to call today.”
“Something like that,” the woman said. “So, I can swing by when I get done here to check it out.”
“You don’t have to come by when you’re done with work,” Elisa replied.
“I’m never done with work,” the woman told her and laughed a husky laugh that seemed to go with her relatively deep voice.
“But I don’t mind, and I can at least take a look around.
I’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow before I can get you an estimate on the work, though.
Maybe the day after, at most, because I’m on a job tomorrow, but I should be able to squeeze it in if everything is straightforward. Are you available tonight?”
Elisa walked to her front door and said, “Um… Sure.”
“It can be another time if you want. I don’t–”
“No, that’s fine,” Elisa replied as she walked outside and turned toward the house next to her own. “You have a nice house.”
The woman laughed again and said, “Thank you? Are you just noticing it for the first time?”
“Kind of, yeah,” she replied and laughed in return. “I mean, I’ve seen it, obviously, but I’ve never paid any attention to it. It’s nice.”
“Thanks. I did the front porch myself, if you want to check my work before I stop by tonight.”
“I don’t think I know your name,” Elisa realized.
“Oh, sorry. Myra. Myra Davies.”
“Davies?” Elisa said. “As in the name of the company?”
“It’s mine, yeah.”
“That’s what you meant about never being off work,” she said with a smile and took a few steps into Myra’s yard to inspect the white-painted front porch, complete with a swing. “I want a swing on my porch.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing. I was just looking at your swing, and I think I want one of my own,” she said.
“Oh,” Myra replied. “I have a supplier; local guy who makes them. If you want, I can show you more of his stuff to choose from. I have a catalog he gave me. He does custom stuff but has some standard things he sells as well.”
“Maybe another time. I need to get the house repaired before I go buying new stuff for it.”
“No problem. I can be there around five-thirty, if that’s okay with you. If not, later is fine since I can walk over whenever,” Myra said.
“That should be fine. I’ll get my kids to behave. ”
“Oh, okay,” Myra said.
“That was a joke. It was a bad joke, but it was a joke.” Elisa laughed a little at how ridiculous she sounded because this woman didn’t need to know that she had kids. “They’ll behave,” she added.
“I can bring candy if that helps.”
“They’re eighteen, so it will,” she said, laughing at her second lame joke.
Then, Myra laughed, and Elisa stopped laughing to listen to it.
“Well, this is probably the strangest call you’ve ever gotten from a prospective client, huh?” she asked.
“Pretty close, yeah,” Myra replied. “I did once get a call from someone who insisted I was the woman he’d gone on a date with one night, and when I told him that he’d called a contractor, he said I was lying and didn’t want to go out with him again, so I should just be an adult and tell him that.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I didn’t want to go out with him.”
Elisa laughed and asked, “What did he say then?”
“He asked me to reconsider because he really liked me.”
“Wow,” Elisa said, shaking her head now. “A real winner, that one.”
“I know. Right?” Myra laughed.
“I should let you get back to work,” Elisa said as she sat on her sofa.
“Oh, yeah,” Myra replied, and it sounded as if she had forgotten that they’d been arranging for her to come to the house. “Five-thirty?”
“I’ll be here,” Elisa said.