Chapter 8
EIGHT
cole
I hadn’t slept well, and I was dragging when Moretti picked Mariah and me up the next afternoon at one o’clock.
We piled into his car—Mariah liked his SUV better than mine because it was a Mercedes, which she insisted was superior to my trusty old Dodge Durango.
You only had to push a button to start it, it smelled new, and it had a sunroof.
“It’s freezing cold,” I told her irritably. “We can’t even open it.”
“The hell we can’t,” said Moretti, turning up the heat and opening the sunroof. “It’s not even snowing today.”
Mariah laughed. “Yay! Dad, can we get a new car with our new house?”
“No. Now buckle your seatbelt back there.”
“Jeez, you’re cranky today,” Mariah muttered.
She was aggravated with me because I’d said no to inviting Cheyenne to the movies with us tonight.
My reasons—it was a tradition just the two of us shared, I wanted some father-daughter time, Cheyenne probably had plans anyway—were not to her satisfaction, and she’d marched up to her room after the argument and hidden out in there until it was time to go.
My mother had annoyed me too this morning, dropping all kinds of hints about Cheyenne, wanting to know how things had gone last night, remarking again and again on how beautifully she’d grown up, what a sweet daughter she was, how much Mariah loved her.
Finally, I’d gotten tired of it and locked myself in my room just like Mariah had.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me how amazing Cheyenne was.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed she was beautiful and sweet and great to Mariah—and beyond that, I knew she had a dirty mind and she sometimes imagined doing filthy things with me—it was that I couldn’t do anything about it.
And that was driving me fucking insane.
Our first appointment was at the house nearest to my mom’s, a stout brick colonial with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a den off the back, and a kitchen that looked like it had last been remodeled while Reagan was in the White House.
It was okay, but I didn’t get a feeling when I walked through it that told me I’d live there.
We shook hands with the agent, a woman named Florence Billingsly with a towering beehive hairdo whom I recognized as a town council member and Bellamy Creek Historical Society volunteer.
She asked after my mother and made sure to emphasize how close we’d be to her house if we lived here.
“Why, you wouldn’t even have to call her to borrow a cup of sugar,” Mrs. Billingsly said with a laugh. “You could just walk right over.”
I shuddered.
“So what did you think?” Moretti asked as we drove away.
“I don’t know,” I said, craning my neck to look at the Dempseys’ house as we drove past it. Was Cheyenne home? Was she thinking about me? “Some of those kitchen appliances are older than we are.”
“They could easily be replaced,” he said reasonably. “The bones of that house are good.” As a builder, Moretti was used to looking beneath a house’s cosmetic appearance to the foundational structure.
“The deck in the back looked a little warped, didn’t it?”
“Another easy fix,” Moretti replied. “We can replace those boards. Or better yet, tear the whole thing off and build a new one in a weekend.”
“It’s really close to my mom’s.”
Moretti laughed. “I can’t help you there.”
The next one was only a few blocks off the lake, almost walking distance and definitely biking distance to the public beach.
Mariah liked one of the bedrooms, which was painted a pale blue with an underwater mural scrolling across three walls.
“A mermaid room,” she gushed. “And it has its own bathroom right there! I wouldn’t even have to go down the hall. ”
The kitchen was definitely an improvement over the previous one, but the house was slightly newer construction—about fifteen years old compared to fifty—and Moretti wasn’t as confident in its bones.
The central stairway seemed to tilt slightly to one side, and when we checked out the back of the house, he said the gutters had obviously been dumping water right next to the foundation for years, the yard wasn’t graded properly, and I was definitely looking at replacing the roof soon.
“They went cheap on those shingles,” he said, shaking his head.
“You might get another couple years out of them, but that’s it. ”
On our way out, we stopped in the kitchen to say goodbye to the agent, who was doing a crossword puzzle at the table.
He wore a cardigan sweater and bow tie, and his name was Moe Kravitz.
He was an old-timer, retired from the Post Office, and he’d taken up real estate after his wife died a few years back.
Confidentially, he whispered behind one hand, he thought this one was overpriced.
“I think you’re right,” said Moretti, looking over the spec sheet.
Moe looked pleased someone agreed with him. “And what’s your name?” he asked Mariah.
“Mariah Mitchell,” she recited.
“And how old are you?”
“I’m nine.”
“That’s a wonderful age,” he said. He shuffled over to a briefcase on the counter, opened it up and took out a Dum Dum sucker. “Would you like a lollipop?”
Mariah looked at me dutifully. “Can I have it?”
“Sure,” I said, stifling a yawn.
Moe handed it to her, and she thanked him. “You know, there’s a beautiful old house that just came on the market over on Rosebud Lane,” he went on. “I forget who has the listing, but it’s real nice. Needs a little TLC, maybe, but the lot’s terrific and it seems to me the price is right.”
“We’re actually headed there now,” Moretti told him, folding the spec sheet. “It’s Joy Frankel who has that listing.”
Moe nodded enthusiastically. “Yup, yup. That’s it. It was Charlie Frankel who told me about it last week at the Rotary Club meeting. That’s his daughter-in-law.”
“Right.” Moretti caught my eye and jerked his head toward the front door, and I got the message—we had to get out of here, or Moe was going to want to talk forever. He held out his hand. “Thanks for showing us the house, Moe.”
“Oh, sure.” Moe shook Moretti’s hand and then mine, but kept right on talking. “Joy’s the one who won that beautification award from the Historical Society for the work she did on those flower beds out in front of the general store.”
“Is she?” Moretti said absently as he steered Mariah out of the kitchen by the shoulders.
Moe followed us. “Yup. Yup. Fine job she did there. She’s married to Chuckie Frankel. Remember when he hit that home run to win the state tournament back in, ohhh, what was it, seventy-nine or so?”
“Can’t say that I do, but I’ve heard the story.” Moretti pushed the front door open and herded Mariah and me through it. “Well, we should go. I don’t want to leave Joy waiting.”
“Right. Enjoy your afternoon!” Moe stood on the front stoop of the house, waving at us as we got into the car like a grandpa saying farewell after a Sunday visit.
“What a nice old man,” Mariah said from the back seat, tearing the wrapper off her sucker.
“He is, but he’ll gab your ear off,” Moretti said, starting the car. “And I don’t think that’s the house you want.”
“It’s not,” I agreed, yawning again. “I don’t mind some manual labor, but I really don’t want to have to buy a new roof so soon. Or deal with water in the basement. Or a crooked staircase.”
“This next one should be better, at least structurally,” Moretti said.
“It’s at the top of your price range because it’s got four bedrooms, more square footage, and it’s on a huge lot, but we can probably get them to come down a little since it needs some cosmetic work.
No deck, but like I said, we can build one in a weekend.
And it’s definitely far enough away from your mom to avoid unannounced drop-in’s. ”
“Not even the moon is that far,” I mumbled.
As we headed west, we passed the elementary school Mariah attended. “That’s my school!” she said.
“Oh yeah? What grade are you in now?” Moretti asked.
“Fourth. Miss Cheyenne teaches kindergarten there too.”
I pictured her there, sitting with her little students on a colorful rug, reading them a story, teaching them to add and subtract, making construction paper turkeys. She was probably a great teacher. I bet the kids adored her.
She was a great kisser too. I propped an elbow on the door and rubbed my thumb along my lower lip, recalling that bourbon-and-pumpkin-pie-flavored kiss last night—her mouth beneath mine, her hands fisted in my shirt, our bodies pressed together.
It seemed unreal, like a dream. My eyes drifted shut, and next thing I knew, my head nodded and I jerked myself awake.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
The SUV was stopped at a red light, and Moretti was looking at me. I straightened up in the passenger seat and ran a hand over my hair. “Yeah.”
“You seem kind of out of it today.”
“I’m tired. Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Why not?”
“A lot on my mind, I guess.”
The light turned green, and he focused on the road again. “How about a beer when we’re done?”
“I’m taking Mariah to the movies tonight, but we could go for a beer before dinner. Just have to drop Mariah off at home first and check with my mom.”
“Cool.” Then he squinted, his neck elongating as he pulled up in front of the house for sale and stared out the windshield at a car parked in front of it on the street. “What the . . .” He groaned, long and loud. “No fucking way.”
Mariah gasped in the back seat. “Uncle Enzo, you said a bad word.”
“Sorry, Mariah. It’s just that . . . what the hell is she doing here?”
“Who?” I looked at the charcoal gray Audi in front of us. The license plate read BDR.
“Bianca DeRossi.” Moretti’s tone was venomous.
“Who’s Bianca DeRossi?” Mariah wondered. “She has a fancy name.”
“She’s a real big pain in the”—he stopped himself and reconsidered—“culo.”
“What’s a culo?” Mariah asked.
“Never mind,” I said. “What’s your problem with her?”