The Treasure House

Chapter One

One

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

Ordinary days change your life. They roll in like the tide, one after another, and you don’t realize how far they carry you until you reach the shore.

This particular ordinary day was a prosaic Thursday in early summer, just another monochrome workday, and I was killing time on my lunch break.

I never thought opening an app would upend my life.

“Where shall we live today?” I asked my co-worker Eva, who was slumped at the end of the lunch table playing Candy Crush, her body as crumpled as her pinstriped work shirt.

I was engaging in my favorite pastime of fantasy house hunting as I punched open one of my many real estate apps, eager to escape our colorless corporate break room that smelled of reheated lunches and burned coffee.

“Yesterday we were hunting in Fair Lawn, New Jersey,” I reminded Eva, who barely looked up from her game.

Fair Lawn looked like something out of a Disney movie—like the town in Lady and the Tramp, which my daughter Florence watched roughly nine hundred times when she was little.

Flo had always spent her summer vacation being shuffled from babysitter to babysitter, often parked in front of the TV.

I didn’t have the money for summer camp, or even a day camp, and I could never afford to take time off work to hang out with her.

The only thing summery about my own summer was that our boss had launched “popsicle days,” where if it was over ninety-five degrees, she brought in boxes of popsicles for us.

But it was hardly ever over ninety-five degrees in Pittsburgh, and the temperature didn’t really register in the medical center anyway, with its industrial strength air-conditioning.

The center was a satellite clinic to one of the big university complexes—a little brick bunker on the fringes of South Oakland.

My section, which handled patient financial records, was right in the windowless center of the place.

Surfacing at the end of the workday, I always felt like a deep-sea creature that had never seen light, blinking as I emerged.

In no way could my unglamorous job finance me buying a house—which is why I engaged in fantasy house hunting on my lunch break, rather than actual house hunting.

Although, I really did need to do some actual house hunting, because my landlord was raising my rent again and I couldn’t afford another cent, particularly not for a rundown one-bed with erratic hot water and an overabundance of pests.

But who wanted to cruise rental listings for depressing little apartments during their lunch break? Fantasy house hunting was way more fun.

Yesterday’s house had been a pristine white colonial in a lush green square of lawn, with a swing on the porch.

It was the kind of house Hallmark movies are set in.

Where you’d make patchwork quilts and bake apple pies and leave them to cool on the sill.

And there’d probably be a (hot) gardener who’d come mow the lawn for you and let you hand him an icy glass of lemonade after.

You know, wholesome, but with the possibility of fun.

It was the kind of home I used to imagine other kids lived in when I sat in school with my stomach rumbling, hiding behind the curtain of my uncut hair. It was the kind of house where laundry dried on the line in the sun, and there was always dinner on the table promptly at six.

It was the kind of home that belonged to people who weren’t me.

For me, growing up, home wasn’t even a place.

It was a person. Christina Lynn Copeland.

My mother, who most definitely never made an apple pie and left it to cool on a sill.

And who wouldn’t have been caught dead in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

Stick with me, Angel Face, Tina would say with a snap of her gum as she shoplifted a candy bar for me, No one loves you like your mom.

She wore tight jeans and short skirts and dyed her hair bright colors.

She had jangly jewelry that flashed in the sun.

She swore and laughed and cried; she loved pop music, turned up loud, and dancing, which she’d do even on the subway.

She lived off sweet drinks in cans, vodka from the freezer, and any pills she could get her hands on.

Tina was a party waiting to happen, or the aftermath. There was no in-between.

I shifted in my chair, discomforted. Why was I thinking about Tina? She was more than 350 miles away in Hazelton Federal Correctional, and I hadn’t seen her in years.

“Can we hunt for houses at the beach, Zoe?” Eva asked me. “We might as well pretend-enjoy the summer.”

“Oh, pick Miami,” said Caitlin, one of the clinic nurses, as she microwaved her leftovers. “I love Miami. And if you get a place, I can come visit.”

“She’s not getting a place,” Eva said. “She’s just imagining getting a place.”

“So? Imagine getting one in Miami, and I can imagine staying with you.”

Obediently, I searched properties for sale in Miami, pushing away thoughts of rent hikes and Tina. “Which suburb?” I hadn’t hunted in Miami before.

“Nowhere too spring-breaky,” Caitlin advised. “Somewhere classy.”

I had to google classy neighborhoods. “Coconut Grove?”

“Sure, why not.” The microwave beeped and Caitlin grabbed her lunch and joined us.

“Oh, look at this. A Mediterranean villa in South Coconut Grove. It has three beds and two and a half baths—”

“Who has half a bath?” Eva grumped. Sometimes fantasy house hunting put her out of sorts. Usually when her credit card payments were due.

“It has a pool!” I was more than a little mesmerized by the glitter of the blue water against the tropical gardens.

I turned the phone so she could see the screen.

Fantasy house hunting was like opening the pages of a book and imagining yourself into another life.

Whether it was a Mediterranean-style villa in Miami or a midwestern bungalow in Minnesota, I could picture a fantasy life in all of them.

From a very young age, I’d known that all houses were different and that they hid different tastes and smells and colors and hopes and temperatures of feeling.

I may never have had a home, but I’d seen a lot of houses in my life.

Between the foster houses and all of Tina’s apartments, I’d lived in more places than I could count.

Why was I thinking about Tina again? Nothing about a Mediterranean villa in South Coconut Grove should remind me of foster care or Tina.

I pushed the thoughts away more forcibly and pretended I was about to buy the house in Miami, where I’d live a sun-splashed life with my daughter and never have to worry about my living arrangements ever again.

Despite her mood, Eva had been lured in by the villa. She’d lowered her Candy Crush and inched her chair closer. “How much is it?”

I looked. “Five-point-three million.”

“Ouch.” Caitlin winced.

“This is nothing.” Eva gave her a pitying look. “Go on, Zoe, show her what you’ve got.”

“Do you do this every lunchtime?” Caitlin asked, leaning in.

“Zoe does.” Eva leaned her head on my shoulder affectionately. “She’s what you’d call a pathological nester. She also has champagne tastes on a beer budget.”

“Not even a beer budget.” I sighed as I swiped through glossy real estate photographs until I found what I was looking for.

“I’m on a tap water budget.” And I wasn’t a nester, not in real life anyway.

My actual home looked like temporary student accommodation.

Every piece of furniture I owned was secondhand.

“Me too,” Caitlin commiserated. “I should probably even be rationing tap water these days.”

“Here.” I stopped on a jewel-bright listing for a place in Palm Beach. “This is our house.”

The listing had the heading, Your Once in a Lifetime Dream House. Eva gave a low whistle at the sight of it. I laughed as I read the property description, because the word fantasy wasn’t enough to cover this one. Delusion might be a better word for it.

“Thirteen-bed, fifteen-and-a-half-bath single family house.” I laughed in disbelief. “Which single family is this exactly?”

“One of those billionaires who has been divorced fifteen times and has summer custody of all his kids,” Caitlin suggested as she reached over my shoulder to scroll through the photos.

The place had a saltwater fishpond, an infinity pool, three waterfalls in lush tropical surrounds, and a yacht at its own private mooring.

The three of us looked up from the phone to regard the pedestrian sight of Pittsburgh out of our lunchroom window. In unison we sighed.

“That’s not a home, it’s a resort,” Caitlin said, straightening up and returning to her lunch with the air of someone resigned to reality.

I made an involuntary noise when I saw the listing price.

“That bad? How much? Fifteen million?”

“Thirty,” Eva guessed.

“Uh…” I cleared my throat. “Try a hundred and thirty-six…”

“No way. Wait. You mean million?”

I tilted my phone so she could see. She swore.

“I need to win the Mega Millions.” I sighed, putting my phone facedown on the table and reaching for my wilting salad.

If I could win the lottery, I could move Flo out of our now unaffordable one-bedroom apartment.

I didn’t need three waterfalls and a mooring for a yacht.

I just needed somewhere large enough for two people, maybe with a garden, and a good school nearby. Somewhere we could make a home.

But I knew a pipe dream when I saw it. I had just as much chance of buying a house as I had of winning the Kentucky Derby on foot.

Even so, I loved fantasy house hunting. I got a steady feeling when I imagined living in those houses, particularly the simpler places—little homes in flowering gardens, on quiet streets, in suburbs and small towns beyond the rippling wake of the cities. Ordinary homes.

Homes like the last foster home I went to.