Chapter 21 What’s the “Original Plat”?
What’s the “Original Plat”?
The Longest Day of the Year
Under the direction of Trent Bauer—the biggest, beardiest, most dickish of the Bauers—the deputies were much more effective at clearing out the campers.
Lainey had made a halfway persuasive argument that they had no evidence anyone would be sleeping overnight.
For all the police knew, they were throwing a camping-themed party.
“My brother Brad will love hearing all about this raucous party you were throwing in a house that hasn’t passed an electrical inspection.”
“Just give us the permit violation,” Elliot said, resigned.
Trent looked Elliot up and down, picking his teeth with his pinkie nail. “You the one I hear is shopping at EZ Gas?”
“He’s new in town,” Lainey tried to explain, but Trent held up a dismissive hand.
“He’s not that new.” Trent ripped a piece of paper from his pad and slapped it to Elliot’s chest. “You can pay your citation at the county clerk’s office.”
With twenty minutes to go before sundown, they could still watch the bridge connect, alone on their deck, just as they’d intended.
But somehow, it had turned into something that wasn’t at all what they’d imagined.
Her foot kicked a crushed McDonald’s wrapper as she took in the torn-up grass.
She’d have to take care of that tonight, or the foxes and raccoons would run wild.
It felt like her whole life would be determined by the next twenty minutes.
“Why didn’t you talk to me?” Elliot asked, bracing his hands behind his head.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes pinched shut as the world spun around her. “I thought I’d fixed it.”
“Why would you even agree to this in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Okay?” Her hands flew up in defense.
She was exhausted and wired and not at all ready to have this argument, but she couldn’t stop it as the sun plunged into the lake like a ticking clock.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have.
I know I should have. I-I’m not used to talking to people about things before I do them.
I’m not used to people caring about what I do or my choices having an impact on other people. ”
“How could you not think this would affect me?” he asked, not unkindly, but truly baffled. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice hundreds of people camping next to our house? I met more than one woman named Sedona today and a man wearing a literal tinfoil hat. Were you hoping I’d just miss that?”
“Elliot,” she cut in, her voice bone tired.
“I grew up in a house that belonged to somebody else, and now I own it because nobody noticed I was there. My life is so small, sometimes it feels like I could just disappear in it. And then you showed up. And you noticed.” She could barely get the words out as years of repressed sadness gripped her throat.
“And I love it, I do, but I don’t always know what to do with it.
I’m still learning how to trust it. So when my car broke down, and you left my medication in your truck, and I was alone, in pain, and absolutely terrified…
” Her voice shook, making her feel even more out of control.
“I fell back into what felt familiar, and going it alone and risking everything for ‘a little bit of money’ is familiar to me. But the second you came home, I knew it was the wrong thing and I was scared I’d ruined everything, so I tried to fix it.
Alone. Because that’s what I’m good at.”
“But don’t you see?” He ran a hand through his hair, his sad eyes scraping over her like the broken bottles at her feet.
“When you push me off to the side, even when you think you have a good reason for it, I’m alone.
And I feel it, Lainey. I feel you walling off, and I never know why or for how long.
What we have…I can’t make it work alone.
You have to talk to me. You have to let me in. ”
“I don’t want you to ever feel alone,” she sniffed. “But I’m scared I’ll get used to this, and then one day, you’ll notice I’m a mess and change your mind. Then you’ll go, and it will hurt so much worse because I let myself want this.”
Lainey didn’t allow herself to need people. People had a tendency to let her down. Every time, that betrayal—that crushing disappointment—took something from her. It left her feeble and hollow—and somehow, lonelier than ever.
He seemed to sit with her words, taking them in. “That’s never going to happen.” He said it like a promise. A vow. “I’m not going to change my mind about us.”
He reached out a hand to her. It was warm and rough and exactly right in hers. Perfect.
“Just let me be in this with you,” he nearly groaned.
“I’ve wanted us to get to this place for so long.
I think I’ve been hoping for it since you agreed to marry me.
” There was that word again. Hope. “Can you believe that everything in your world matters to me, just because it’s yours? Yours and mine.”
She pressed her head into his shoulder, breathing in and out until their chests rose and fell as one.
They stayed that way—time elastic, stretching around them with each shared inhalation—until the alarm pinged on his phone.
She gathered the strength to let him pull away, but he held the back of her head in one hand and canceled the alarm with the other.
“That’s for the sunset. We have to get on the deck,” she reminded him.
“Only if you want to.” His voice was velvety smooth.
“Yes, I want to,” she replied, almost laughing. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’ve only been hearing about this for months.”
He considered her for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
She led him onto the deck. They sat down, scooching back against the wall for what they hoped was the perfect view.
“What if this is how we find out we built it wrong?” she whispered into his shoulder.
His head shook. “We built it perfectly. If it’s wrong, it’s a design flaw.”
“Wow. You’re going to come for your main guy like that? Oh! I think it’s happening.”
The yolky sun had nearly sunk into the lake, melting into a perfect river of orange light, and as they sat in the center of their cedar deck with unfocused eyes, they were a part of the sunset.
They were on a bridge leading all the way into the sky.
Her small life in that odd little house suddenly seemed like a miracle.
“Perfect,” he hummed.
When she looked over at Elliot to check if he was seeing it just as she did, he was looking back at her.
And in that moment, bathed in sunlight, basking in a view only they could’ve seen, she knew she loved Elliot Hodges.
Elliot: I can’t believe you did this every night. These people are awful.
Elliot: Actually, it would be one thing if every passenger was uniformly awful so I could get my bearings, but it’ll be two normal rides and then, BAM, someone slides into my back seat with a ceramic bowl of hot soup and demands that I “drive smoother” so she doesn’t scald herself.
Elliot: Please tell me you’re having better luck with the lawyer than I am as an Uber driver. Also, I miss you.
Lainey: You text too much for someone who’s supposed to be safely operating a vehicle.
Lainey: Miss you too.
Paying the citations for the camping mishap had all but cleaned them out.
Elliot was far from his original goal of buying Forest’s Bridge by the end of the season, but the prospect of another year in Timber Creek didn’t sound so bad to Lainey anymore.
They’d stopped talking about how or when their arrangement would end, and consequently, she was starting to believe that it wouldn’t.
She still craved a change deep in her bones, but something about her life these days was comfortable.
Routine. She was happy. She was discovering that there was a distinct difference to being happy with her life and being happy in it.
Nothing was quite what she wanted, but she was sharing it with the person she wanted, and for now, that could be enough.
With Lainey’s car still out of commission, Elliot was figuring out how to make a little money driving for Uber while Lainey worked on circumventing the bureaucratic red tape that was keeping the county from reissuing their rental permit.
“Maybe it’s just the bangs I want.” Bree analyzed the same photo from the same celebrity magazine she’d plucked from the same mahogany table three months prior.
You’d think for the rate he was charging per hour, Mark could spring for a People subscription.
Though, she supposed, she’d never paid her bill.
Maybe he had a whole stable of clients with similarly shaky financials.
“Trust me, you don’t want bangs. I regret mine all the time.”
Bree pursed her lips. “I need some sort of shake-up in my life.”
“You’re about to have a child. You don’t think that’s enough of a shake-up?”
Bree inhaled through her nose and returned to her magazine, giving Lainey the distinct impression she was missing some crucial bit of information that might make the notion of bangs more persuasive.
“You.”
Lainey looked up to find Mark guarding the waiting room exit like a hound presiding over the gates of hell.
“This will only take a second, Mark, I swear.”
“Haven’t you done enough?”
“You know, I’ve tried very hard to make everything up to you. I made you a birdhouse, which you still haven’t thanked me for, by the way.”
He raised his cast with great import.
“Okay, how could I have possibly had anything to do with that?”
“Where do you think the splinter came from?” he gritted out.
“Oof, that’s bad luck.” Bree sucked in through her teeth. “Well, I’m certainly going to be paying you enough soon to earn a little goodwill, and my friend needs fifteen minutes of your time.”
Lainey looked at Bree curiously. Mark glared at Lainey, motionless.
“Ten minutes,” Lainey countered to no one. “And then you’ll never see me again. Ever.”
“Can I have that in writing?” he asked, then gestured for them to follow him to his office.
They found their seats among the familiar piles.
Mark opened a drawer and pulled out a pill organizer.
He popped open the yellow lid of Tuesday p.m., unhinged his jaw like a snake, and poured the horse pills into his mouth.
“Because of the splinter from your ‘birdhouse’ ”—he said birdhouse like someone else might say meth lab or cobra pit—“I’m on an aggressive antibiotic to fight off an infection that’s spread to the bone. ”
Never before had a sliver taken such a dramatic turn.
“We don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mark.” Bree signaled with her eyes for Lainey to hand over the envelope of documents.
“We’ve run into a permitting issue with the rental property.” She placed the manila envelope in front of Mark, giving him a wide berth.
“Her business partner shops at EZ Gas,” Bree explained.
“Is he a tourist or a degenerate?” Mark asked genuinely, his eyes scanning the documents.
“Uh, neither. Is there some way we can move this along? They’re trying to claim that there’s an issue with the deed, but you already helped me sort that out. The house belongs to me, free and clear.”
“Yes, but it looks like you signed this document that gives Mr. Hodges the right to restore the original plat of all real property brought into the marriage, in the event of a divorce.”
Bree stiffened beside her as something that felt suspiciously like dread coiled around Lainey’s throat.
“Restoring what? What’s the ‘original plat’?” Bree asked.
“It’s the first recorded version of the division of land.”
Lainey’s throat turned to sand. “But we already knew he owned the land. So what difference would that make?”
“ ‘Real property’ includes permanent structures, like houses.” His plaster cast pointed at the word real.
Real. Real. Real. She repeated it in her head until it became a foreign sound to her, devoid of all meaning.
Mark finally looked up from the document, pity in his eyes. Lainey knew that whatever he said next would send her world crashing down around her.
“The house—the land, everything on it—you signed it all over to him.”