Chapter 37
Exhausted, Annelise sat down in the middle of the empty living room. She sat on the bare and rough subflooring, wishing there was new carpet. Not yet.
Looking around, she could see through the walls into the other rooms. Though she could see further with no drywall stopping her from peering beyond the open studs, somehow the house felt smaller. There was still so much to do.
They couldn’t put the carpet in until the drywall was up. They wouldn’t put the baseboards in until the carpet was down. They couldn’t paint until all of that was done first.
Though the kitchen tile had survived, the bathroom tile had not.
She had no idea why they were different, but from the way the bathroom flooring had buckled and the grout had cracked out, it was clear that they were.
Mindy would be laying new tile in there when she was first able.
Annelise had picked out something plain white and let Mindy talk her into a slightly colored grout that would be easier to clean.
Mindy had also talked her into an upgrade to a mold-resistant version.
Like in hiking, where minding the ounces meant the pounds minded themselves, Annelise had to mind the pennies so the dollars would exist later.
But she let Mindy talk her up because Mindy understood where they were coming from, and Mindy believed the solution would work.
There was also every possibility that Mindy had looked into whatever grout futures she could and divined something. Annelise trusted her.
In the bathroom, she’d shimmied out of her work skirt and into jeans, sneakers, and an old top.
No one could peer in the front window unless they were on the porch and she’d been too tired to care if anyone saw her bra or underwear.
She’d come here thinking she could do her laundry, and put the mattress that had been delivered onto her bed, and get some work in.
The outside walls were repaired now, the house sturdy against inclement weather again.
Her bank account much less so, but she could save money if she started sleeping here.
Jenna had left barely yesterday afternoon, and yet it felt like a lifetime. She had checked in at eleven the night before, saying she found a safe hotel. Still, Annelise had worked a quick protection spell for her long-missing cousin and new friend.
She’d seen clients this morning. When they left, she’d called her other clients, asking them where they’d gotten that woman figurine she was hesitant to touch.
As of yet, there was no reply. She didn’t like having it in the office, and she hadn’t touched it again, though she had taken her white cotton ribbon and wrapped the figurine, paper and all, as she commanded a binding spell upon it.
At the end of a normal day that had already felt long, she gave in and drove through for a fast-food burger.
As she ate it, she thought again about minding the pennies in favor of the dollars.
Now, sitting on the floor and looking out the front window into the moonlight that was shining down, she was ready to collapse.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t checked out of her hotel room.
It was paid for. She should go back to a real bed, and she would, as soon as she found the energy to get up off this damn floor.
Pulling her feet up, she wrapped her arms around her knees and tilted her head, resting it. She would just sit here for a moment. It wasn’t that late. She could go back in a little bit.
If she stood up, she would be able to see the river running by.
For years she dealt with mixed feelings about the water.
Of course she did, it had given her mixed results.
It kept the land where the homes were fertile, their gardens produced like no one else’s, though that might be a little witchcraft, too.
The road she lived on was one of the first populated in Belle Hollow.
When the very first settlers to the area established the place as the tiniest of communities.
Rumor had it there were witches in Belle Hollow even then, and they had come here to escape persecution in other towns.
This place was almost as old as the country itself.
The spot she lived in had been homesteaded hundreds of years ago, and probably not for the first time. Likely it had been stolen from people who lived here first, people who understood that the river gave and the river took away.
She did not stand up to look at the water. Though Story had already nurtured the flooded garden back to health, Annelise hadn’t yet been able to find a harbor of good feelings for the water.
She’d paid extra to have all the drywall pulled down, the insulation removed. She’d have it all replaced. Last time, when they’d found the black mold, it was too late. At least she wouldn’t make the same mistake this time.
Finding Jenna had been a surprise. Losing Jenna hurt more than she expected.
She really did like her new cousin, and she was grateful. Jenna’s face looked so much like Monica’s, and maybe there was an element of it that was seeing her aunt again in this way, when she knew Monica had passed years ago and she thought she never would. But she loved Jenna like family already.
With a few deep breaths, she tried to absorb all the things that had happened and then let them go. As she breathed slowly in and out, Story’s voice rose to the surface: The waters are bringing change to the Hollow.
Even just sitting there by herself, she rolled her eyes. It needed to be good change. The last time had almost broken her. Too many things had happened, one after the other.
The water had come. They had been homeless. Her mother had gotten sick. They found the black mold and had to tear the newly rebuilt house apart piece by piece with money they didn’t have. Melissa had lost her job, and the money got even more scarce.
Annelise left Rowan. She had tried—damn, she had tried—to make him see reason. She couldn’t share her proof, but he hadn’t believed her. In the end, even at seventeen, she knew she couldn’t choose the lie he wanted to believe.
Then her mother died.
And it all happened in the span of eighteen months.
Every one of those days revisited her now, each one slightly worse than the one before. Even though now wasn’t mirroring the constant loss, and there was good news that Rowan should be able to get the insurance companies to pay out, she was skeptical.
Without a check in her hand already, she wasn’t set to believe. Their own insurance company paid out last time, but it hadn’t been enough. Most of the families on the road suffered from that same fate, and they all did what they could.
Annelise had survived. Story had survived. But she learned then that while people claimed survival as this massive accomplishment, sometimes it was just what was. Sometimes being proud of surviving was accompanied by being broken for those who had not, because not everyone had.
Her only consolation had been Rowan’s family moving away because, by that point, seeing him hurt worse than anything else.
“Annelise.” Something nudged her shoulder, and she blinked. “Annelise.”
“What?” she asked, trying to orient herself, to figure out where he had come from. Her imagination?
No. He was really here. By the time she realized she must have fallen asleep, even though she could have sworn she was awake, he was sitting next to her. Shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, he was as close as he could be, though there was plenty of space for him to sit elsewhere in the room.
She closed her eyes against the warring feelings of the safety his touch brought and irritation that every moment she spent leaning into him would be five, ten, or one hundred more moments digging herself out from those same feelings.
“Did you mean to fall asleep?” he asked, leaning slightly into her with the words.
“I didn’t think so.” Unable to protest further, and trying to get the conversation on the track it should be on, she asked next, “Have you heard from the insurance company?”
“That is why I came over. They responded that they want to negotiate.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means I’m going to give them a number, and then they’ll say they won’t pay that number. They’ll offer less.”
“Lovely.”
“Exactly. That’s why I need you to tell me what your best number is. What would it cost to redo everything in the house?”
She was starting to tell him, but he held up his hand.
“I need the cost to do all of it at high quality. Absolutely no cutting corners.”
Her arms were still laced across her knees, her head still wanted to drop, and falling back to sleep seemed like a good idea. “I already cut some corners.”
“Doesn’t matter. I need the cost without it.”
“Can I get an estimate for razing the place and building a whole new house?”
“Unfortunately, no. But once you get me your best number, I’m going to raise it by twenty-five percent.”
Her eyebrows went up, wondering how that was legal if she couldn’t ask for the cost of building a whole new house.
“I’m covering the cost of errors and giving us room for them to barter us down a little bit. I want it to look like I’m actually negotiating.”
“And they don’t know this trick?” she asked. It sounded reasonable, but surely the insurance companies knew the game. Surely, they were better at it than Rowan Velasco, practicing his family and domestic law in his old Victorian house in Richmond, Virginia.
“They know,” he said, “but they’ll play. I also need a rock-bottom number from you.”
Again, she fought not to roll her eyes. She was already at her rock-bottom number.
He shook his head. “If you did everything here as needed—maybe not the highest quality tile, maybe not replacing the washer and dryer—”
“They’re already fixed,” she corrected him.
He grinned and reached out, placing a finger across her lips, adding, “I didn’t hear that.”
Did he not feel the jolt to his system that she felt at his touch? Maybe not. He kept going like his finger on her mouth was nothing. “Anyway, to replace the washer and dryer and such—what’s the low end of what would make this bearable?”
“Can I get back to you tomorrow?”
“Absolutely. I have to get these numbers from everybody down the row. I’m negotiating all of you as a unit.”
“Like a class action?” she asked.
“No, no—we do not say the C A words.”
She found herself laughing. If someone told her three weeks ago, when the weather report changed, when the rain started falling, that she would be sitting here now in her damaged house laughing with Rowan Velasco, she would have turned them into a toad.
It would have cost her dearly to exercise that kind of magic, and she would have done it anyway.
She waited then for him to get up, tell her he had what he needed, and walk away. But he didn’t. Instead, his voice pitched low, he said, “Will you talk to me?”
“I am talking to you.” It was stupid, she thought, a bad response. She knew what he meant.
If he’d called her out on it, she could have fought back, because she didn’t want to talk about any of their painful past. Instead, his voice grew even softer, his shoulder leaned into hers, forcing her to lean into him for stability or fall over, and he only said, “Please.”
She lost the battle then. Maybe this was why she’d cast that first barrier spell on him so he couldn’t even walk up her front yard. Because she knew if he knocked and he asked sincerely, she would say yes.
She’d held him at bay for fifteen years. Maybe she had to count that as a success. Because the fight was over now.
The flood had come, and in the span of twenty-four hours, it knocked down the wards she’d placed and reinforced around the house. It overpowered her active spell work, as she’d fought to keep the water back. Now Rowan knocked down the last of the barrier she had directed against him.
Some witch she was.
With a deep breath, she attempted to center herself before asking, “What do you want to know?”
There were many things that she expected, but not the words that came out of his mouth.