Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
A Pearl of Wisdom
from Isabel Espinoza
“It doesn’t matter how much you earn. It’s how much you save that counts.”
Tallulah
“I have to confess,” Georgia Smith said on the following Monday afternoon, “I was surprised you wanted to see this place, Tallulah. I didn’t peg you as the fixer-upper type.”
She looked bright and polished today, dressed in a tailored sleeveless dress and wedge heels. Her red hair was pulled back in a twist, and her eyes sparkled in the sunlight. She carried an iPad, and the listing information for this house was pulled up on the screen.
Mary Joy, tucked into her wrap, was cooing happily as we stood staring at the neglected Tudor-style cottage. Due to its location, I’d started calling it the Library House in my mind.
I said, “That’s because I’m not the fixer-upper type, but…”
In my head, I could hear Jake saying, It has lots of potential, which of course made me think of last night, when the girls and I had gone for a walk with him and Daisy. We’d strolled to the sun garden, then had taken a side street to the park where the Flour Festival would be held soon.
Our conversation hadn’t strayed too far from small talk.
Our childhoods—he’d grown up in Florida, and I’d grown up everywhere.
Our favorite books—his was Ender’s Game, because when he read it as a teen, it was the first book where it felt as though he were in the book.
Time had stopped. The real world ceased to exist. Mine was Pride and Prejudice for much the same reason.
“But what?” Georgia encouraged, pulling me from my thoughts.
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Or dreaming about it. This house had all but plagued my dreams the last three nights.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw this house.
Not even twelve hours ago, I’d dreamed of six Christmas stockings hanging from the stone mantel.
Names had been stitched onto them in golden thread but had been too blurry to read.
This morning, I’d finally given in and looked the place up online, hoping to see the fireplace, but there were only a few outdoor photos posted.
The listing price was suspiciously low. Eye-poppingly low.
The write-up was full of phrases like needs TLC, add your vision, and ready for your updates. It was also being sold as is.
Alarm bells rang. Red flags waved.
When I’d bumped into Georgia earlier while dropping Katy off at camp, I impulsively asked her if she could show me the house today. I was hoping that seeing it would rid it from my thoughts. My dreams. Banish it completely.
Yet even as I stood here, faced with its disrepair, I felt a pull. A gentle tug. I could almost hear it telling me that I was home.
It was all kinds of unsettling.
“I didn’t even realize you were in the market for a house,” Georgia added. “I could’ve been keeping an eye out.”
“I didn’t think I was. I mean, I wasn’t planning on living with my grandfather forever, but I thought I’d save for a while, maybe buy a plot of land and build something new. This”—I gestured to the house—“isn’t what I’d had in mind at all.”
I’d wanted a house without history so I could create one of my own. Build it from the ground up, memory by memory.
But there would always be memories, wouldn’t there? Because I couldn’t imagine parting with my mamaw’s sewing table or the tallboy dresser I’d refinished after finding it for a steal at a garage sale in my old neighborhood.
Those things were currently in a storage unit, on the other side of town, just waiting for me to figure out what was next. I’d been waiting for me to figure out what was next for a year and a half now.
Not that I’d had the money to do anything during that time.
That had come only with the sale of my dream house—and the move here.
Scott and I had split the profit. Because of the growth in the housing market over the last eight years, the sale price was more than double what we’d paid for it.
Isabel had suggested I invest what I’d walked away with, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
Which meant I could pay cash for this house, then get a construction loan to fix it up.
If I wanted to buy this house.
If.
A neighbor across the street, one of the library’s regulars, Mrs. Cannon, came out onto her porch with a watering can and waved. “You lookin’ to buy, Tallulah?” she called out.
“Just lookin’,” I shouted back and immediately regretted it when Mary Joy squawked at the loudness of my voice. I rubbed her back and whispered an apology in her ear.
Mrs. Cannon poured water onto hanging ferns. “That house has got good bones! And good neighbors!”
“Great neighbors,” Georgia added.
I laughed, because she and her daughter lived a few doors down. “Have there been many showings?”
“Not too many. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, and I’ll deny it to my dying breath, but the only true interest has come from Evanthe Kilburn. She’s considering it as a rental property.”
My eyes widened. “Really? I didn’t realize she was an active investor—I thought she only maintained what she’d inherited.”
“To my knowledge, this is the first house she’s ever looked at. It’s a recent development. Very recent.”
I glanced toward the library, fully expecting to see Evanthe’s red bike tethered to the rack near the doors, even though the building was closed today. She often went in on her days off. But the bike wasn’t there.
In my mind, I could easily see the empty chair at the book club meeting. Even though Evanthe had warned me she might not attend, I had set my hopes high. And when she didn’t show, those hopes free-fell, crashing down.
“But she hasn’t made an offer?” I asked.
Georgia shook her head. “Not yet at least. Mrs. Cannon was right, though, about the house’s bones.
It was built in the 1920s and is bigger than it looks.
Three bedrooms upstairs, and a den downstairs that could be converted into a primary bedroom if you prefer it to be on the first floor. Did you know Bitsy Krebbs?”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t pull up a face to go with it. “I don’t think so.”
“This was her place. You’d often see her out here puttering around the yard—she loved to garden.
When she took ill about two years ago, she moved in with one of her daughters near Fort Payne.
It was supposed to be a temporary move, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
She passed away about nine months ago, and the house went on the market as soon as it was out of probate. ”
My chest ached with sorrow for a woman I hadn’t even known.
“Don’t be alarmed by the tarp on the roof,” Georgia said. “It looks worse than it is.”
“What happened?”
“A tree fell in a storm about a year ago. The damage was minimal, thank goodness, but it knocked off quite a few of the slate shingles.”
Now that she said it, I could see where the tree had once stood, its stump just visible in the tall grass. “Shouldn’t insurance have paid to fix it?”
“Bitsy had accidentally let her coverage lapse. Us neighbors pooled together and took care of the tree, at least.”
“Do you think the house’s condition is what’s keeping buyers away?”
“Honestly, I don’t think the condition is that bad.
Other than the roof, most of the work it needs is cosmetic.
Yes, it definitely looks like someone hasn’t lived here in years, but the foundation is solid.
There’s no mold. No termites. It doesn’t make sense to me why it hasn’t already sold.
” Then she added, “But maybe everyone else’s loss is your gain?
I can definitely see you and the girls here. ”
I nodded. For some reason, I could, too. I blamed the dreams.
“Let’s go in,” she said. “So you can see for yourself what I mean.”
As she pushed open the wooden gate, giving it a good shove, something rustled in the tall grass. We moved closer together, as if that would protect us from whatever it was that was making its way through the yard.
She looked back at me. “Perhaps I should’ve brought a lawn mower.”
Smiling, I wrapped my arms around Mary Joy protectively. “We’ll just have to high-step it.”
“Blaze our own trail. Seems fitting somehow.” She forged ahead. “Watch your footing there. One of the stones is loose.”
“Thanks for doing this, by the way. Especially on such short notice.”
“I’m happy to help.” She freed a key from the lockbox, and before I knew it, the front door was swinging open.
“Now I’m a big believer in being forewarned, so brace yourself for how dirty it is inside and try to look past it, okay?
It’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a scrub brush and some elbow grease. ”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as I followed Georgia inside.
Dust motes danced in the hot, stale air of a wide foyer.
There was a stairway on the right, its walls covered in sagging wallpaper.
The woodwork on the staircase, however, was beautiful.
And filthy—just as Georgia had warned. I ran my finger over the design on the newel post, an eight-pointed star, then wiped the grime on my shorts.
Georgia left the door open behind us. “The HVAC system needs servicing, so the air-conditioning doesn’t work at the moment. The den is here on the left.”
The spacious room was filled with moving boxes, making it hard to see much.
I glanced past more peeling wallpaper, crown molding, and a hideous green carpet to focus on the wooden bookshelves.
They stretched the length of the room and appeared to be original to the house.
I tried to imagine all my books on the shelves and found I could picture it quite easily.
Georgia returned to the foyer and started down a short hallway. “You’ll be happy to know there’re hardwood floors underneath the carpets.”
I wasn’t sure why anyone had covered them up to begin with, but then I recalled how Mamaw always liked something soft underfoot and wondered if Bitsy had been the same.