Chapter Seven
Seven
The master bedroom ran along the entire front of the house, over the parlor and dining rooms, an ocean-facing sweep of coziness.
And it was the only room in the house that wasn’t full of junk—in fact it was immaculate.
The far wall was dominated by three dormer windows, all of which looked out over the quiet little dead-end street, out to the cliffs and the bay below.
From this high, the glitter of the water filled the view.
As I stepped over the threshold, I could see the lazy gulls drifting on the sea breezes.
“The windows are clean,” I said stupidly.
“Yeah.” Jake leaned against the doorframe.
“And so is the room.” I took in the long sprawling upstairs room at the front of the house, with its pale rugs and brass bed.
A pink-and-white patchwork quilt sat folded neatly at the foot of the bare mattress.
There were no plastic bags, no boxes, no milk crates.
The floorboards were glossy and worn, honey colored where they weren’t covered by the expensive-looking rugs.
Facing east, the bedroom would catch the dawn and full morning sun.
There was a little sitting area with a squashy floral loveseat and a couple of matching armchairs.
The wall sconces were pairs of upside-down frosted glass tulips and there was a scalloped mirror hanging on the wall above the loveseat, reflecting the sea and the sky.
It felt like home. Only no home I’d ever known.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, drawn across those honeyed floorboards to the windows.
The sky was bluer than blue, and the ocean was sequined with jumping silver sunlight.
From here I could see the bulk of the forest to the right, the shingled roofs of the summer cottages to the left, and Jake’s store at the corner of the street.
My breath caught as a cloud of orange-and-black butterflies rose from the tangle of the front garden.
“Monarchs,” Jake said. He’d followed me to the window. “They like the milkweed.” He was sounding terser than ever. “Look, Ms. Copeland. You don’t want this house.” He was firm.
“I don’t?” Wasn’t the fact I’d made it through the entire house tour enough to prove to him that I was serious? And I knew they were monarch butterflies; I didn’t need him to tell me. There’d been plenty of butterflies in Suni and Wayne’s garden.
“This place is a wreck,” he said forcefully.
“I thought you said it was just culch?” I kept my eyes on the butterflies as they spiraled across the green wilds. I wondered if I’d be able to make this garden as pretty as Suni and Wayne’s. Maybe Wayne could teach me a thing or two about lawns…
“A lot of culch,” Jake snapped. “And plumbing and window screens and lightshades and all the rest of it.”
“You said a plumber would make short work of that toilet and that I could find lightshades cheap online.” Annoyed, I turned away from the butterflies and the bright day and turned back to Jake Abernathy.
He was standing with one hand braced against the sloping shiplap ceiling; his silly cartoon lobsta T-shirt had ridden up, showing his bronzed stomach. I tried not to look.
“You’re not the type for this,” he told me firmly. “This place needs serious time and money spent on it.”
“How do you know what type I am?” I wasn’t even sure I knew which type I was, but I didn’t appreciate him mansplaining me to myself.
“You ever renovated a house before?”
“I’ve never had the chance to own a house before.”
“Mom, come see this!” Flo’s shrill excitement cut through the quiet house.
“It’s work,” Jake told me flatly. “Owning a house like this is work. Nothing but. This place needs someone who can restore it, not let it fall apart even more.”
Oh. My. God. Was this guy serious? Did he think I couldn’t see with my own eyes how much work this was going to be?
“Mom!” Flo interrupted, her voice echoing from the bathroom down the hall. “You have to come check out the tub!”
Pointedly, I turned my back on Jake and his disapproval and went to see the tub.
The bathroom was another time warp, this time to the 1930s or ’40s. Flo was enamored with the clawfoot tub and floral wallpaper. The same upside-down glass tulip lights that were in the master bedroom hung on the walls. Whoever had decorated this place sure had a thing for fancy light fixtures.
“We’re keeping this bath,” Flo declared. “It’s got feet. It looks like it might walk around while you sit in it.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Your mother hasn’t bought the place yet,” Jake said from the doorway. “And she should think about it carefully, because this place—”
“—is a lot of work, I know,” I finished his sentence for him. I wished he’d go wait outside and let us look around by ourselves. Maybe he could make friends with a snake or two while he was at it.
“Mom’s good at work,” Flo told him. “How do you think she got the money to buy a place like this?” She climbed in the tub.
“Don’t.” I reached for her but wasn’t fast enough. She was already reclining in the tub.
“This thing is huge!”
Too excited to sit still, she soon hopped back out again and tore off toward the bedroom, leaving me alone with Jake. He was very still and watchful. “You seriously want this place? Even after seeing it?” he asked.
“Thanks to you showing me its potential.” I gave him a fake smile.
“Right. Fine. Well, so long as you know what you’re in for.” He seemed to mentally shake himself. “Who am I to tell you how to live your life? Especially if the family have decided you can take a look at the place.”
“Indeed,” I said dryly.
“You’ll want to see the furnace and the utilities, then.”
When we walked back into the main bedroom, Flo was in one of the squashy armchairs by the window, flipping through a book.
“Look, Mom. It’s the same copy you have.
” She held up, of all things, Anne of Green Gables.
It was a green cloth hardback with faded gold lettering and a little silhouette of a house under the title.
I got that twisty feeling again. I’d gotten my copy at a library sale when I was a kid.
This copy had probably been in this house since the year it was printed.
I’d been thinking about Green Gables in the kitchen earlier, and how much this house reminded me of Anne and Marilla, and now here was the book. In my new bedroom.
A glorious sign!
Tina had always believed in signs. She used to say if we saw a yellow car it was going to be a good day (it usually wasn’t).
If the radio played “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston, her favorite song, it meant that she was about to meet the man of her dreams (she never did).
If a cat looked you in the eye, someone unexpected would drop into your life (that happened all the time, but more because of Tina’s nature than because of any cat).
I took the book gently from Flo. It was familiar in my hands as I opened it. The same marbled flyleaf, the same yellowed pages. The same smell of aging paper.
“She loves that book,” Flo told Jake. “I don’t really get it. I tried to read it a couple of times, but nothing really happens. It’s just a bunch of people going to school and walking about and talking and doing chores.”
“A lot happens,” I corrected her, appalled by her indifference to the folk of Avonlea. I put the book down gently on the little wooden table. There was a neat pile of hardbacks there, including one that looked like a bodice ripper, judging by the image on the dust jacket.
“Anne of Green Gables has no magic schools or Hunger Games or anything,” Flo told Jake as she followed him down the stairs. “It’s boring.”
I paused at the threshold of the bedroom before I closed the door. The sun was a sharp sparkle on the ocean and the room shivered with light, even though it faced east and the day was leaning to a close.
This could be mine.
I imagined watching daybreak over the ocean from the brass bed; curling up on the loveseat on lazy weekends, listening to the call of the gulls and the restless whisper of the waves.
The house was a promise of a life I’d never thought I could have.
It gave me a buoyant, giddy, gusting feeling, like I was one of those gulls lifted on currents of marine air.
I knew I was buying this place.
I was a little unsteady as I followed Jake and Flo downstairs.
I’d never been in debt before—the thought of taking a loan from Suni and Wayne was intimidating.
I didn’t want to let them down. I remembered the Tiffany lamp and the paintings stacked in the dining room.
Maybe I’d find a treasure or two that could help me fund the renovations… and pay them back.
“There is a secret tunnel!” Flo all but squealed when Jake swung open the narrow wooden door under the stairs. “I knew Narnia would be here somewhere!”
“It’s just the door to the basement,” Jake told her calmly.
“But it’s a secret door. How cool is that?”
Behind the secret door in question was a steep flight of stairs leading down into the dark.
Jake yanked on a tattered cord that hung down the wall to turn on the basement light.
“That’s really weird.” Flo couldn’t resist trying it herself, pulling on the cord a few times to turn the light off, on, off, and on again.
“Not weird, just old-fashioned,” Jake said. The two of them had fallen into a pattern of amiably disagreeing with each other.
They creaked carefully down the stairs into a dank-smelling basement, and I followed. The musty space was full of old furniture and garden tools. There also seemed to be enough empty pickle jars to start a small pickling business.
I jumped as the shadows moved. “Oh God!” There was a low, frightened yowl as something bolted over the tumble of junk.
“It’s a cat!” Flo was delighted.
Jake hurried to close the basement window behind the departing animal.