Chapter 14
Jett
“Have you seen this house before?” My bewildered wife asks Harper.
“Just in my head!” she says, pointing to her head. “I imagine it!”
“Wow. Well you were pretty spot on. It’s even the same color.”
Okay technically, her drawing was just a basic two story house that she used a blue crayon to draw, and I’m sure hundreds of houses in town look the same as a toddler’s drawing of a house.
It’s not like me to believe in some kind of magic where my kid manifested the perfect house on a piece of paper, but coincidences are cool, too.
And I just can’t shake the idea that this house is something special.
We’ve been sitting at this stop sign for a long time, but no other cars are around. This part of town is cozy and quiet--wouldn’t it be perfect to raise a family here?
I look both ways at the intersection and then drive forward, turning left and pulling into the driveway.
“What are you doing?” Keanna asks. She grabs my arm as if squeezing hard will somehow make the truck stop.
“There’s no cars here,” I say, parking at the end of the driveway. “Let’s take a look around.”
“I don’t know…” She chews on her bottom lip. “That feels like trespassing.”
I shrug. “There’s a for sale sign.”
Her hand grips the door handle--not like she’s about to get out but like she desperately wants to stay inside. “But it’s a for sale by owner sign, not like a legit real estate company sign. And it looks like it’s a million years old. The owner might be some crazy lunatic who calls the cops on us.”
I grin at her overactive imagination. She’s gotten less likely to take any risks since she became a mom. It’s one of the things I adore about her, always putting our family’s safety first. “I’m pretty sure no one’s home. But you girls can stay in the truck just in case. I’m gonna look around.”
“I want to come!” Harper says.
“No, stay here,” Keanna says. “Daddy is being crazy but we are going to be smart and stay here.”
“It’s okay,” Harper says. “I want it to be our new house!”
“It says for sale, not rent,” Keanna says. “And that sign is so old, it’s probably not legit anymore.”
“I’m gonna go look.” I give her a sheepish grin, hoping she doesn’t stop me. If she really objects, then I won’t do it. She doesn’t. In fact, there’s a little sparkle in her eyes that tells me she’s just a curious as I am about this house.
I pop open my door and step onto the gravel driveway, my wife nervously watching me from the truck.
This isn’t something I’d normally do, but I just have a good feeling about this place.
It looks exactly like Harper’s drawings, like she imagined it into existing for real. Isn’t that work checking out?
My hopes lessen as I walk up the long driveway.
The front yard is gorgeous, and I can see a wooden fence in the back, so hopefully it’s in good condition and goes around the back yard fully.
It looks good from here, but it stretches out far down the left side of the house.
It must be a huge property. I wonder how many acres are included?
To the left, a small white house sits about two acres away.
To the right, the next house is triple the distance away. Everything is nice and spread out here.
But the house needs work.
A lot of work.
The paint is peeling and faded. Up close, I realize the wooden shutters and porch used to be white, but now it’s peeled so much it’s taken on the color of the wood beneath it.
The two steps up to the porch are sagging and rotten, which means the whole house could be rotten, too.
Maybe this place isn’t livable, and is only for sale for the land value.
I risk a step onto the wobbly porch step.
The actual porch is solid beneath my feet but those steps could use some work.
A forgotten porch swing gently creaks as a cool October breeze rolls by.
The swing would need replacing, but come on?
It’s a porch swing! On a porch that was just made for this kind of thing.
Arko could relax on the porch beside us.
I can picture Harper growing up on that swing, and one day, Keanna and me retired, grandparents, sitting on that swing and enjoying our life together.
I walk up to the front door. Doors. There’s two of them, a giant double-door entryway that is just begging for Keanna’s holiday decorating touches.
I peer inside the nearest window. The house is empty.
This must be a dining room, judging by the chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
The flowery wallpaper would need to go, but the wooden floors look great.
I walk down the porch and peer into the other window.
This is a large open living room that goes all the way back to the kitchen, with some wooden columns for support.
This house is elegant, Victorian-ish but somehow more modern.
I don’t know much about architecture, but it’s stunning in here.
Not the same boring contractor grade homes that we’re used to in our neighborhood.
A sliver of excitement rises in my chest. In fact, I’m downright giddy. I’m a grown ass man who is so giddy I could do a little dance on the porch right now.
I don’t.
But I could.
I leap off the porch, avoiding those two questionable stairs and jog back to the truck.
“Well?” Keanna says when I climb into the driver seat.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
Her brows lift.
“It’s a fixer-upper for sure. But it’s so beautiful inside. It’s empty in there, so the place has to be for sale. There’s wooden floors and an awesome huge staircase. Like twice the width of normal stairs. It’s gorgeous.”
“Prom stairs,” Keanna says.
“Huh?”
“You know, like when the girl does her grand entrance down the stairs for prom and her date is waiting there for her. They could be Harper’s prom stairs.”
“Ew!” Harper squeals from the backseat. She does the same thing when she sees us kiss.
“You’ll feel differently one day,” Keanna tells her.
In the evening, my parents offer to take Harper and Brooke to the movies to give us a night off.
They say it’s to give us a night off, but I think they secretly love doing grandparent stuff even though they’re very young grandparents.
Plus we could use the night off. Sharing a room with our kid has meant we don’t get nearly as much alone time as we’d like.
We take full advantage of that alone time. We plan to go to a late dinner after, but now that I’m snuggling with my wife in bed, I don’t want to get up and go anywhere.
“I can’t stop thinking about that house,” Keanna says. Her hand traces circles on my chest. “Is that crazy?”
“I can’t stop thinking about it, either.”
“But it’s not a rental.”
“And it needs a ton of work.”
“Say we did try to buy it…” She lifts up on her elbow, which puts her breasts on display and makes it impossible to focus. Whatever she says next, I don’t hear.
I pull the blanket up to her shoulder. “Baby you gotta cover up if you expect me to pay attention.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Can’t help that my wife is hot as hell.”
“Let’s get dressed and go to dinner because I want to discuss this situation for real.”
So that’s what we do. We lay out our thoughts about this random empty house that needs a lot of work, while eating at a back corner booth at the Main Street Diner.
“You said the floors looked good?”
“Yeah, it was all hardwood flooring. Seems like it had been maintained well or refurbished recently or something. They were nice. And the trim around the floor was that thick wood slab, not the crappy little molding in our house. Well…our burned down house.”
“I know what you mean,” she says. “It’s like a Craftsman house.” She pulls up photos on her phone to show me and I nod.
“Exactly like that.” I point to one of the pictures in her Google image search. “And it looked like the living room had built in shelves like this, too.”
“Oh my gosh… built in bookshelves?” She puts a hand to her chest. “It’s totally a Craftsman house! Those houses are gorgeous inside. A lot of TV shows have houses like that. I’ve always loved that style.”
“But it’s not a rental,” I say, stealing one of her cheese fries. “If we bought it, he’d own it…and the other house that’s getting rebuilt. We don’t need two houses. What if we sold the other house?”
She nods. “Can we do that?”
“I don’t see why not. We’ll probably have to wait until it’s fully rebuilt, then we get rid of it.”
“Can we afford two mortgages?”
“For now, yes.”
“Are we really thinking of buying an old house that has to be renovated?”
“I’m thinking about it,” I say. “The yard is perfect for Arko, and the house would be such a great place for Harper to grow up. It feels safer than our old neighborhood that had cars whizzing by constantly.”
“It’s going to be a lot of work.”
I shrug. “Since when are we afraid of hard work?”
She grins. “Should we call them?”
I steal another fry. “Absolutely.”