16. Chapter 16
Dean
The prince saved the day. It was merely a pile of lumber.
I came to Autumn Ridge to sell a farm. I did not come here to learn how to grout tile while standing shoulder to shoulder with Rosie in a bathtub.
Yet here we are.
“You have to hold the float at a forty-five-degree angle,” she says, trying to demonstrate. She’s wearing the pink overalls again. I think they might be my favorite.
“I thought I was,” I say, trying again.
“Let me help you.” She closes her hand over mine, tilts the float to the right angle, and guides my hand across the tile in one smooth motion.
Grouting, it turns out, is not a neutral activity.
Maybe it’s just me in this close proximity with this infuriatingly charming woman.
The craziest part is she doesn’t even know she is.
I’ve done what she wanted. We’ve gone back to the way things were before Monday. Before the Ridge. I haven’t wanted to. But I’ve done it.
Last night, I watched her almost let her dad leave before asking him to help. The yes seemed to cost her, but she said it. Rosie can ask for what she wants when she decides to.
“Got it?” she asks.
“I think so,” I say.
She gestures for me to try again.
“Go diagonally across the squares. If you go with the line, you’ll pull the grout right back out.”
“Diagonal. Got it.”
I try again and do it right this time. Then I try not to be disappointed in how fast I learn.
“Perfect,” she says.
“You’re a good teacher.”
“Well, YouTube was my teacher,” she tells me, downplaying my words.
I shake my head. “But you’re the one who actually did it. Not YouTube. It’s impressive.”
“But—”
“Rosie. Take the compliment.”
Her cheeks turn the slightest hint of pink.
She goes back to working on the back of the tub, humming while she grouts, while I work on the side.
“What song are you humming?” I ask her.
“Huh?” she asks.
“You’re humming. What song is it?”
“Oh. Just a song my mom used to sing to me. It’s from Cinderella.”
“What are the words?”
She sings a bit of it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it,” I tell her.
Rosie’s eyes widen. It’s the look she gives me whenever I reveal another alarming gap in my princess knowledge.
“How can you not know that song?”
“Maybe I do know it, and it was just your terrible rendition.”
Her jaw drops. Then she schools her features. “Hey, Dean, you’ve got a little something on your cheek.”
She reaches up, and, before I can even realize what she’s doing, I feel something cold and gritty on my cheek.
“Did you just put grout on my cheek?”
“Of course not,” she says, turning back to her side of the tub, her lips working hard to hold back a smile.
I swipe a finger across my cheek, and it comes back with a gray smear.
“You might want to sponge that off. It can dry pretty fast.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
I reach for the sponge, but the bucket of grout is right next to it, and so I drag a finger through it.
“Can you help me?” I ask.
Never one to turn down a call for help, Rosie turns her face toward me, and just as she does, I swipe grout down the center of her face. From her forehead down her nose.
She gasps. “You did not just do that,” she says through a laugh.
“What did I do?” I ask, feigning innocence.
“You’re going to regret that.”
She dips her fingers toward the bucket, and I catch her wrist before she can reach it.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“But you put way more grout on my face than I did yours.”
She looks ridiculous with a gray stripe down the center of her face, like very poorly applied war paint.
“Allegedly,” I say.
She’s laughing now, trying to pull her hand free, and I’m laughing too as I keep her away from my face and the bucket of grout.
Somehow in the struggle, she ends up with one hand braced against my chest, and my arm around her waist.
Then, neither of us is laughing, and somehow, the bathtub feels even smaller.
Her gaze drops briefly to my mouth and then back up. I could kiss her. She would probably let me.
That’s not the same as her asking me to.
“What’s going on here?”
We both turn to see Dominic standing there, hands on his hips, irritated look on his face.
That could just be his normal look. Or at least, the one he usually has around me.
“Dom,” Rosie says, pulling out of my grasp. “I thought you wouldn’t be here until later?”
“I had some time this morning,” he says. “Thought I’d get started.”
“Great,” Rosie says, climbing out of the bathtub one foot at a time.
“We need to get the furniture out of the Beauty and the Beast room first, and then we can get started on drywalling the wall by the bathroom. I think it will be pretty cut-and-dried. The biggest obstacle will be removing the furniture. But between the three of us, it should be fast. How long do you think it will take to do the drywall?”
She’s rambling. And with that dried grout down the center of her face, she looks ridiculous doing it.
I’ve only known Rosie for just about a month, and even I know she rambles when she’s nervous or anxious. I can guess her twin knows exactly what she’s doing right now. Deflection is not one of Rosie’s strong suits.
“It’ll take a week, probably,” he says.
“A week? That’s longer than I thought.”
“I have to hang it, tape, two to three coats of mud with drying time between each. Then there’s sanding, priming, and painting.”
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll be cutting it close. But at least we can be in there working on the floor and baseboards.”
“You’ll have to wait for that,” he says. “I’ll be dropping mud. And once I start sanding, you’ll have dust in everything.”
“Dom,” she says, her pitch going up. “I don’t have time for that. I’d only have a couple of days to get the room done before guests arrive.”
She looks at me. I could tell her we’ll figure something out, but I have no idea what that would be. Two days to finish a room isn’t enough. She’d need help, and getting Rosie to ask for it would take longer than the drywall.
“Hear me out,” Rosie says. “Could we use hot glue?”
“No,” Dominic and I say at the same time.
“What else can we do? Is there an alternative?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” her brother says. “Well . . . actually, we could cover it with wood.”
“How would that work?”
“The wall’s already open,” says Dom. “I nail boards straight to the studs. No tape, no mud, nothing to dry. It’d be up in a day.”
“That could work,” Rosie says, looking excitedly from Dominic to me, as if I’ve had any input in this conversation. “I could put the bed in front of it. It would look rustic.”
“Let’s do that, then,” says Dom.
“Where do we get wood?”
“There’s a salvage place in Burlington. Reclaimed barn board, if they’ve got it. It’s not cheap, though.” He shrugs. “They also might not have enough for a whole wall. It might take a bit to find it.”
Rosie’s shoulders fall. It’s a small movement, but I catch it. I can guess that she’s doing the math in her head. The cost of the wood, the time it will take to get it. The fact that we still need to finish grouting the bathroom we’re in now.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s just hope we can find some.”
“Actually,” I say, finally having something to contribute to the conversation. “I think I might know where.”
“Really?” Rosie’s eyes light up at the prospect.
“In my grandparents’ barn. I saw it a few weeks ago when I went for a ladder. It might not work. It could be rotted, and I have no idea if there’s enough.”
“Where’s the barn?” Dom asks.
“Alden Farm. The one past the bridge,” Rosie says.
“The one that burned?”
“That’s the one,” I say.
“Well, somebody go check it out.”
“Dean, it’s perfect,” Rosie says from her knees, holding a piece of dirty lumber on its side as she inspects it.
“It’s yours, then,” I say, squatting down beside her.
She squeals and drops the wood. It lands with a thud, kicking up dust.
“This is going to work. And I think it might turn out better than my original plan.” She looks at me. “You’ve saved the day once again, Dean. I could just—”
She stops herself.
“Kiss me?” I say.
She stares at me for a second. “It’s just a saying,” she says.
I give her a smile, letting her know that I’m teasing.
Even if a part of me is very much not.
We spend the next half hour carrying heavy pieces of wood out to Dominic’s truck, backed up to the barn doors. It’s an old red-orange Ford he let us borrow while he stayed at the inn to clear the furniture out of the room.
Rosie dusts off her hands when the last piece has been loaded into the bed of the truck.
“So, this is the farm,” she says, looking around at the burned trees and the dilapidated house.
“This is it,” I say.
She walks over to one of the dead apple trees, running her hand along a charred branch.
“I’m sure it was hard to see it like this,” she says.
“It was,” I tell her.
“I don’t remember it much until after the fire,” she says. “I would have loved to see it when it was up and running.”
I want to tell her that it wasn’t much then either. But it was to me. So much more than just a farm.
“I wonder what whoever buys it will do with the place,” she says.
I hum in agreement. I’ve wondered the same thing. Many times.
“I hope they don’t tear it down,” she says.
“Me either,” I say. “But that’s probably what they’ll do.”
What else do you do with a house that’s been inhabited by raccoons, a partially burned barn, and a grove of dead apple trees?
“What would you do with it? If you kept it, I mean,” Rosie asks.
I put my hands in my pockets, turning in my spot, looking at the farm, wondering what I’d do if it were mine.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. It’s the truth. “What would you do?”
She looks at me, holding my gaze. “I’d probably paint it pink and turn it into my very own castle.”
I chuckle. “Of course. I should have guessed.”
“I’m kidding,” she says. “I’d probably salvage as much as I could. Fix the siding and porch and paint the house white. I’d rebuild the barn and start planting trees where the orchard used to be.”
She looks across the property. “It would take forever, but eventually there’d be apples again.
And I’d fill the house with cozy couches and throw pillows and frilly curtains.
And the kitchen.” She’s gesturing now. “A big one. One of those farmhouse sinks, and an island where everybody ends up standing around instead of sitting down—”
“Why would you need a kitchen?”
She stops, pretending to consider my words. “Good point. Why waste the space? Just the island and a fancy microwave.”
“For the frozen pot pies?”
“Exactly,” she says.
She smiles out at the property like she can already see it.
I look at the house again, trying to imagine what I would do with it.
The problem is, I can’t picture anything now except her version. White siding. New trees. A uselessly large kitchen. Rosie standing in the middle of it, making the whole place feel alive again.
It’s a good picture. One I have no business wanting.
That version of the farm stays with me the next morning when I meet with Wendell’s nephew—a man in his early forties named Owen—at the Beet and Barrel Café.
We’re sitting at a small table by the window overlooking Main Street. Between us is a folder with a market analysis, tax records, a listing agreement, photos he took walking the property, and several other things I don’t really understand.
The guy is thorough. Which is a good thing, except my head is spinning and the coffee I’m drinking hasn’t quite kicked in yet. I’m having a hard time keeping up.
Rosie and I were up late, finishing the bathroom and then prepping the Snow White room for painting. This time, the color was called Fairest of Them All. It’s white. I accused Rosie of buying the paint color just because of the name. She didn’t deny it.
“What else needs to be done?” I ask Owen.
He’s already told me that the raccoons have to be removed before this house can be sold, something I know well enough.
It will hopefully be done soon because I asked Rosie to make a call to the Walker brothers and see if they were willing to help. I hope I don’t regret it.
“You’ll need to find paperwork,” Owen says. “Hopefully things your grandparents kept. If not, most of it you can request from the town clerk. Except for the insurance records. That should hopefully be in the house somewhere.”
“Right,” I say, feeling an ache start in my forehead, just above my eyebrow. Were my grandparents organized enough for me to find that information easily?
“There’s also the well test, septic inspection, someone to assess the damage on the barn structure.”
I rub my forehead, and Owen gives me a closed-mouth smile. “It’s a lot, I know. I’ve made a list for you.” He taps the folder.
“I appreciate it,” I tell him.
“Have you gone through the place to see if there’s anything you’d like to keep?” he asks. “After the raccoons are out, we’ll get a crew in there to remove everything.”
Anything I’d want to keep?
I hadn’t even thought about that. I’m sure there are pictures and other things I’d want to keep, or that my mom would want.
The idea of a crew coming in and stripping the house bare sits strangely with me. It’s just furniture and old things, but almost every one of them is tied to some memory I have of the place.
It’s not like I can keep it all. My storage unit in Worcester isn’t big enough, and most of it is just stuff. My grandparents are what made that house a home.
“How long do you think this will all take?” I ask.
Owen thinks about that for a few seconds. “Before we could list? Three weeks, maybe four. But the parts you’d need to be here for, I’d say it could all be done in about a week.”
A week.
Why did I put off having this meeting? It should have been something I did when I first came to town.
But at that point, I didn’t know what I was going to do.
Plus, there were the raccoons to figure out, not to mention all the renovations at the inn that somehow became more important than dealing with my own property.
I leave for Manhattan a week from tomorrow. How am I supposed to do all this plus help Rosie with the inn?
The answer is, I can’t.
Owen leaves me with the folder of paperwork and a time to meet again next week, when I can hopefully tell him the house is free of its raccoon inhabitants.
Having a plan should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. There’s one thing I can do right now, though, so I pull out my phone.