18. Chapter 18
Dean
The prince’s tenants were evicted. He did not ask how.
The following Monday, Luke Walker stops by to get information about the raccoon situation.
He’s sitting in the front room when I come down the stairs, sprawled back in one of the chairs like he owns it.
He looks younger than I expected. Early twenties, maybe, with wavy light brown hair, and a grin that makes me think he’s either already up to something or would be if given the opportunity.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” I say after introducing myself and then taking a seat on the couch across from him.
Luke rubs his hands together. “So, how many raccoons do you think there are?”
I’m impressed already. He gets right down to business.
“Five, maybe six,” I tell him. “A mother and babies, from what I could see.”
He rubs his jaw. “That does make things a little more difficult. The moms can get defensive.” He looks to the side, out the window. “I might have to get more creative.”
“They all have to live,” I tell him.
He furrows his brow. “Obviously.”
That’s a relief, at least.
“Any of them unusually large?” he asks.
“They’re raccoons,” I say. I’m not familiar enough with raccoons to know what qualifies as large. They just look like regular ones to me.
“Right, but can you tell me how big the biggest one was?”
“I guess,” I say, spreading my hands apart, estimating the size. “Probably about this big?”
He lets out a breath and nods.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” he says. “I just wanted to get an idea of what I’m up against.”
Is he going to remove them with his bare hands? Should I advise against that?
He leans forward in his chair. “Do you have a ladder, a tarp, and some peanut butter?”
“Peanut butter?”
He thinks about it for a second. “And marshmallows.”
“You can find the first two in the barn on the property. I’ll have to grab the other two for you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I think my mom has both in the pantry.”
“Um, okay.”
“How attached are you to the attic insulation?”
I’m not sure what that even means. “Not . . . very?”
He nods. “Good. Sometimes they nest in it, and if I have to pull any out, I’d rather know before I start.”
That sounded surprisingly competent.
“Do you know how they got in?” Luke asks.
“No idea,” I tell him.
“Could be the chimney,” he says. “But I’d bet on the roofline. Or the soffit, vent, loose fascia. Something like that.”
I make a mental note to have all that checked if this actually works, even if I still have no idea what a soffit is and have never heard the words loose fascia in my life. Maybe I should look that up.
“Any neighbors I need to worry about?” Luke asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I can let one of them know you’re coming.”
“Best not to,” he says. “The fewer people who know, the better.”
A trickle of unease moves down my spine.
“Are you sure this is legal?” I ask.
He thinks about that for a second. “It’s kind of one of those ask-forgiveness-later things.”
That doesn’t help at all.
This is exactly why I said I wanted someone insured. Multiple times, actually. And yet here I am, apparently hiring an uninsured twenty-something who needs a tarp, peanut butter, and marshmallows to remove a family of raccoons.
“What exactly are you planning to do?” I ask him.
He smiles. “First, I figure out where the mom is coming and going, and then I’ll convince her to leave.”
He shrugs, like it’s just that easy.
“Convince her how?” Does he plan to have a discussion with her? Hand her an eviction notice?
“That’s part of what the tarp is for,” he says.
“And the peanut butter and marshmallows?”
“Only if necessary.”
I sit back against the couch. “I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think the less you know, the better.”
“I think you’re right.”
This feels like a bad idea all around. But I’m out of options. I needed these animals out weeks ago.
Luke must sense my worry because he says, “I promise they will all get out of there alive. Just let me do my thing, and you’ll have a raccoon-free attic by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I tell him. “How much is this going to cost?”
He gives me a questioning look. “Free of charge.”
“What? I need to pay you,” I tell him.
“This is an afternoon of entertainment for me. Don’t worry about it.”
This might be the strangest encounter I’ve ever had with another human.
“Well, okay. I appreciate it,” I tell him.
We stand up from our seats and shake hands.
“I guess you can just call me when the job’s done,” I say, the words sounding a bit like I just cut a deal with the mafia.
“Will do,” he says.
He leaves, looking excited about the plans, and I’m left wondering if this will be a huge mistake.
But the next morning, I get a picture of the raccoons all together in a field, followed by a text from Luke.
Luke: Evicted.
Me: How did you do it?
Luke: Best if you don’t know.
Me: And the house?
Luke: Nothing new from me. They’d already done some damage just from living up there, but getting them out was clean.
Just like that, the great raccoon infestation of Alden Farm has been resolved.
“So, it was the soffit?” Rosie asks, sitting at the island in the kitchen, talking to me while I make us dinner.
This time it’s just pan-grilled chicken and roasted broccoli. But it will be “the best” chicken and “the best” broccoli Rosie has ever had.
She says it every time.
I doubt anyone else will appreciate my cooking as much as Rosie has.
“That’s what the contractor said,” I answer.
Luke removed the raccoons on Monday, and the contractor came out the next day to find where they’d been getting in. It turned out to be a damaged soffit, which he finished repairing today.
“What is a soffit, anyway?” she asks.
“I have no idea.”
She laughs at that, and I find myself smiling with her.
Four more nights before I move up to Burlington, to a boring old hotel without a kitchen at my disposal and without Rosie sitting across from me in denim overalls and a white T-shirt, looking way too pretty for someone who hasn’t slept in days.
“So, now that your tenants have been evicted, what’s next?” Rosie asks after a yawn, leaning her head on her hand.
“Getting rid of all the furniture,” I say.
“What are you doing with it?”
“Since it’s been tainted by raccoons, I was told to haul it to the dump.”
She frowns. “That seems like a waste.”
I thought so too, but I’m not sure may or may not have been touched by a raccoon is an acceptable Facebook Marketplace description.
“Luke came through, though. I told you the Walkers would take care of it,” she says.
“I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“You should never doubt me again.”
I never doubted Rosie. I was just worried more damage would happen to the house than was necessary, and it didn’t.
Still, I give her the straight line of disapproval. Which is now just the look I give her whenever she says something ridiculous.
It was never disapproval anyway. Maybe some mild annoyance at the beginning, but somewhere along the way that changed. Now it’s mostly me trying not to smile.
Rosie smiles, but then it turns into another yawn. She rubs one eye, and I have the ridiculous urge to tell her to go to bed.
“I probably shouldn’t have sat down,” she says.
“You’ve been working all day. You need a break,” I tell her.
“I’ll take a big long break after the festival.”
Somehow, I doubt that.
I flip the chicken over, and it sizzles against the hot pan.
“I never got a chance to talk to my dad,” she says.
I look over my shoulder to find her staring off at nothing in particular.
“Why not?” I ask.
She sighs. “There was never a good time to do it. Plus, bringing it up while he was helping me felt unfair. Like, thanks for everything Dad, and while you’re here, let me tell you everything I’m mad about.”
“Are you mad?” I ask, looking over at her.
She told me the day after her birthday that she’d found out her dad was dating a woman named Alvina and planned to ask him about it when he came to help today.
Instead, he spent the afternoon with Dominic in the Beauty and the Beast room while Rosie and I hung dozens of pictures of apples in Snow White.
She panicked for a minute when she realized she’d forgotten about the seven dwarfs in the room, then said she’d add them later.
I don’t know if this place will ever be done enough for Rosie.
She shakes her head. “Not mad. Just . . . confused. I didn’t expect him to be alone for the rest of his life. Actually, that’s not true. I never really thought about it.”
“Makes sense,” I say.
“How did you do it? With your mom dating.”
I snort out a laugh. “It’s all I ever knew.”
“She was always dating someone?”
“Pretty much. Sometimes it was serious; most times it wasn’t. We actually moved across the country for one of them.”
“You moved because of a guy she was dating?”
“Yeah. To Phoenix. It only lasted a month. My mom hated the weather. And eventually the guy too.”
“I can’t imagine. My dad has lived in the same house for over thirty years.”
“And mine is moving again to Vegas.”
“Didn’t you just say she hated the weather in Phoenix?”
“Exactly,” I say, my tone flat.
“For another guy?”
“With husband number three.”
Rosie winces. “Okay. That does make my dad dating Alvina feel slightly less catastrophic.”
“Slightly less?”
“I think she’s been divorced a few times.”
I bob my head back and forth. “Fair enough.” I give her a half smile. “Your dad isn’t my mom, though. Dating someone doesn’t mean he’s about to change everything.”
“I know.” She lets out a breath. “I think I just need some time to get used to the idea.”
“Then you should give it some time.”
It’s quiet for a minute while I sprinkle Parmesan over the broccoli.
“Was that hard? Moving around like that?” Rosie asks after I close the oven.
I shrug. “You get used to it.”
“Did you?”
I glance over at her. Most people take you get used to it as an answer. Not Rosie.
“I guess,” I say, turning back to the stove. “After a while, I stopped getting attached to the apartments.”
“Is that why you don’t mind living in hotels? Or, cozy, understated inns,” she says, and I look back to catch a smirk on her lips.
I should make some comment about the inn or make a joke about hot glue. Instead, I just look at her for a second too long.
“Probably,” I finally say.
I think about her words. Yes, moving around is what I knew when I was younger. The only steady things in my life were my grandparents and the farm.
But living in hotels is a practical thing now. Having an apartment I rarely spend time in, that never felt like home, was a waste of money.
The oven timer beeps. I pull out the broccoli, plate it with the chicken, and slide the dish across the island before grabbing a fork from the drawer on the left.
That’s one thing I’ll miss when I’m back living in a hotel: being able to cook for myself.
My eyes move to Rosie as she takes her first bite.
Maybe not the only thing.
“Dean, this is the best chicken I’ve ever had,” she says, her eyes closed.
“You said that last time,” I remind her. I smile this time, not bothering to fight it.
“I was wrong last time,” she says.
The next morning, I go back to my grandparents’ house.
It’s Thursday, and the rest of the rooms need to be ready by Sunday, so I hate leaving Rosie at the inn. But Dominic is there helping, and Rosie practically shoved me out the door herself.
I mentioned once yesterday, in passing, that I still needed to get some paperwork from the house, and she refused to let it go.
“Dean, don’t you need to get those insurance records?” she asked while I was laying tile in the bathtub of the Beauty and the Beast room. The tile is yellow with a single rose in the center.
Roses are apparently very important to this particular princess story. I asked why, and Rosie looked personally offended that I didn’t already know.
This time she didn’t make me promise to watch the movie with her that night. We both know we’re running out of time. She did, however, make me swear on everything I love that I’d watch it eventually.
When I was about three-quarters of the way done with the tile, I took a break and drove over to the farm.
Actually, took a break makes it sound voluntary. Rosie grabbed me by the arm and physically steered me toward the door.
The house smells worse than I remember as soon as I walk inside. Stale air, dust, and something distinctly animal underneath it. Next week junk haulers will be here to remove everything, which means I still need to go through the place and figure out what I want to keep.
But I won’t have time for that today.
I head straight for the back bedroom, where there’s an old file cabinet in the corner. I remember it because my grandpa once told me to stay out of it, which naturally made eleven-year-old me desperate to know what was inside.
One night, after my grandparents had gone to bed, I snuck into the room and opened it. Imagine my disappointment when all I found was paperwork.
I think I’d been hoping for buried treasure. Or, at least a map to some.
There’s a layer of dust on top of the cabinet now. I pull open the top drawer and start thumbing through my grandpa’s filing system, which is more random than a system.
I find a file folder with a tab that says “insurance” and pull it out. I look through it and I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what I need.
That went much faster than I expected it to. Good. Now I can get back to the inn.
When I go to shut the drawer, I find a folder with my name on it. I’ll have time to look at it next week when the inn is finished, but I can’t help but take a peek.
I set the insurance file on the bed beside the cabinet, sending up a small cloud of dust from the old floral comforter.
Opening the file, I find school pictures. Seven-year-old me is missing a front tooth, my unruly hair gelled so aggressively to my head it could have survived a hurricane.
There’s so much in here. Pictures from school. Report cards. Things I didn’t even know they held on to.
There are things from later, too. A printout of an article from my high school website about our baseball team making the state playoffs, my name highlighted in yellow. Another one about a game-winning double I barely remember hitting.
I stopped coming every summer, but apparently they never stopped keeping a place for me here.
I think I might have that pesky indigestion again.
Instead of putting the folder back, I take it with the insurance file, tuck both under my arm, and head back to the inn. I’ve got a quarter of a bathtub left and two days to finish it.