Chapter 17
Keanna
Three Weeks Later
The room smells like some kind of fruity air freshener. Mango, possibly. It’s small, and cozy here at the title company. Jett, Harper, Arko and I sit at the long table that fills the entire small room.
Our closing agent didn’t mind if Arko came along, especially after she heard he was a retired police dog who is very well behaved. He’s even better out in public, we have learned. He just lays on the floor at my feet, not making a peep.
Harper colors in a free coloring book the receptionist gave her, snacking on a small bag of Oreos. This place knows how to entertain children while their parents do the boring stuff.
Boring, but super exciting.
Jett and I take turns signing and initialing dozens of papers that seem to go on forever, but eventually, we sign the very last one.
”Congratulations!” Jenny, our closing agent says. Her bright red lipstick reminds me of Taylor Swift as she smiles at us. “You just bought a house!”
I turn to Jett and can’t stop the huge smile on my face. This isn’t the first time we’ve purchased a house, but it feels bigger this time. More exciting. More scary.
Jenny walks over to our side of the table and holds out a silver key ring with the title company’s keychain on it. But most importantly, two shiny keys dangle from the ring. “Here are your keys!”
”Harper, do you want to hold our new keys first?” Jett says.
Harper dives across the room and takes them. No one is more excited about this new house than her. It was her dream home first, after all.
I don’t know what Jett did to make the owner agree to sell his home to us, and he’s not telling.
He just gets a sly little smirk and says he “did what needed to be done” any time I ask him.
These last three weeks have been a whirlwind.
Usually buying a house takes a lot longer, but luck was on our side and this happened extremely quickly.
We did get the house inspected, and while there’s a ton of work to be done, there was nothing structurally bad about it, and the electrical wiring had been replaced just five years ago.
Our inspector said it was done by a top company and it was extremely safe.
That’s the most important thing to me. All the other little surface imperfections can be fixed.
In fact, we plan to do most of the work ourselves.
Warm sunshine hits our face. I pull on my sunglasses and tie my hair into a bun on top of my head. It’s a beautiful day outside. A perfect day for buying our dream home.
“I’m hungry,” Jett says as we walk out of the title company. “Should we grab lunch first?”
“What do you say?” I ask Harper, who holds my hand. In my other hand is Arko’s leash. “Do you want to get some lunch before we go see our new house?”
She nods. “I’m hungry too!”
”Where to?” Jett asks.
”The diner!” Harper says. She’s young enough to still need a booster seat in the car, but old enough to buckle her own seatbelt.
“I think someone just wants some stickers,” I say, tickling her as I check her seatbelt to make sure it’s secure.
”I need them for my new room!” she says.
”The kid has a point,” Jett says, winking at her.
We spend three days cleaning up our new home.
Dusting, polishing the wooden floors, cleaning up the kitchen counters and cabinets, removing wallpaper in the dining room (luckily it was only in the dining room) and adding a fresh coat of paint to every bedroom.
Our parents help out with the cleaning and painting, and I can’t believe it only takes three days until the place is looking really good.
The outside needs more work, and we’ll probably hire professionals to paint the house since it’s two stories tall. I’ve just finished adding new contact paper to the base of the kitchen cabinets when I look over at Jett. He’s putting together a ceiling fan.
”Babe?”
”What’s up?” He peers at me with a screwdriver hanging out of his mouth.
”I want to move in.”
”Move in where?”
”Here, duh. I’m ready.”
”What, like today?”
I nod. “Why not? The inside is pretty much done.”
He considers it, glancing around. “We still have four ceiling fans to install, the cable guy can’t come until next week, there’s no rugs and the hardwood floor gets cold and we have a cold front coming in soon, the outside is a mess, and that upstairs toilet doesn’t work.”
”So what?” I put on my most convincing smile. “I want to sleep in our own room. I want to be our own house all night, not just from dawn to dusk. Let's do it.”
”We also have no furniture,” he says.
“It’s only noon. There are furniture stores in town that deliver.”
He runs a hand through his hair. There are still tiny little white dots of ceiling paint in his hair. Probably some in mine, too. It’s inevitable when you’re rolling a paint roller over your head for ten hours a day.
Jett watches me for a moment. I hold my breath, hoping he says yes. Is this crazy? I don’t know, maybe. But I don’t care.
”Okay,” he says. The corner of his lips quirk into a grin. “Let’s do it.”
”Really!?” I leap into his arms. He drops the screwdriver to the floor and holds me tightly as my legs wrap around his waist.
I don’t care how long it takes to rebuild the other house now. We’ll just sell it and use the profits to keep fixing up this house. Maybe we’ll even get a pool one day. We have the back yard space for it. I know Harper would love a pool and I bet Arko would, too.
I pull back and Jett sets me down gently on the floor. With my arms still around his neck, I can’t stop smiling as I say, “I love this journey for us.”
He kisses my forehead. “Told you it would all be okay.”
It’s the easiest moving day ever. My parents watch Arko while we take Harper to a nearby furniture store.
We let her pick out whatever she wants for her bedroom and she chooses an adorable light pink furniture set.
The bed has a fabric canopy that drapes across it, making her feel like a princess.
There’s a matching dresser and night stand, and the best part? They can deliver it tonight.
Normally I’d want to spend all day perusing a furniture store, ambling slowly through every single inch of the place in search of the absolute perfect furniture for our style and space. Normally I’d want to go to several furniture stores, maybe more than once, before making a choice.
But this isn’t a normal day.
”What can be delivered today?” Jett asks the sales guy.
He motions to the left side of the store. “Everything on this side of the aisle is in stock in our in house warehouse and we can deliver by five. Everything on this other side needs to be ordered and takes about five days to get to you.”
Jett and I pick out a king-sized bedroom set in about three minutes. It’s a distressed wood style, painted white, and has kind of a farmhouse vibe to it which seems perfect for the style of our home.
While Harper bounces on every single couch, looking for the perfect “bounciness” to satisfy a four-year-old, we all decide on a living room set in about twenty minutes.
Shopping on a time limit is fun and kind of thrilling.
I thought I was excited to move into my first home, but I’m even more excited about this one.
“What else do we need immediately?” Jett asks as our sales guy rings up the stuff we’ve picked out already.
”We’ll eventually want furniture for the guest room, but that can wait…” I glance around the huge showroom floor. “Oh crap! A kitchen table!”
I can’t believe we almost forgot that. “The dining room table can wait—let’s pick out a cute little table for the kitchen area today.”
Once the sales guy hears our story about losing everything in a house fire, he talks to the manager and they tell us they’ll be delivering the furniture in an hour, and they give us a discount, which is so kind it brings me to tears. I absolutely love small towns, where everyone feels like family.
Our appliances are another story. The house came with appliances in the kitchen but they’re all dated and on their last legs. The fridge works, so we’ve got a few groceries in there for now but I don’t want to fill it up with food until our new fridge arrives next week.
As for the moving? We’ve bought a few clothes and toiletry items to get by over the last few weeks, and that all gets loaded up in the car with only a few garbage bags. Like I said, easiest move ever!
We stop to buy a new TV at Walmart and unpack it on the living room floor.
With no internet installed yet, it’s kind of useless, but Jett streams his phone to the TV so Harper can be entertained while we figure out where we want the new furniture to go.
It was delivered just as quickly as promised, and once we’ve situated everything where we want it to be in each room, my stomach growls.
”Babe, I’m starving,” I say, touching my stomach.
Harper had breakfast and lunch at my parent’s house but I’m starting to think we haven’t eaten at all today. I’ve been so busy I didn’t even stop to think about food.
I’m regretting that now.
”Pizza?” Jett says.
”Perfect.”
And it is perfect, until we sit down at our brand new kitchen table and realize one silly little thing: we forgot to buy dishes and paper towels.
”Mommy!” Harper says, eyes wide as she stares at the open box of pizza in front of her. “How do we eat with no plates?”
”Like this,” I say, grabbing a slice and taking a bite. I do a silly little dance while holding my pizza slice in the air. “We don’t need no stinkin’ plates.”
This makes her laugh. We eat our pizza and make a slight mess, but who cares? We’re making the best out of a wild situation.
Yep, we’re making the best out of it.
And that is exactly what I tell myself when I wake up at two in the morning to a cold shock on my face. I dreamed I was being hit with something, like a water blaster in a swimming pool. I blink awake, rolling over in a bed that feels weird because it’s brand new and I’m still getting used to it.
Cold hits my neck. I startle, fully awake now. What the heck is happening?
I touch my neck. It’s wet. My pillow is wet. A loud boom of thunder bursts through the sky, making me jump. The windows light up with lighting. We kept the blinds closed but there’s no curtains yet, and light from the thunderstorm flashes across our barren bedroom wall.
Another cold drop hits me. I jump out of bed, wrestling with the covers. Jett moves in his sleep, stirring but not waking up.
I look up, but don’t see anything. That is until another burst of lightning lights up the room just quickly enough for me to see the massive water spot on the ceiling. On my freshly painted ceiling!
The roof is leaking.
Great. Just great.