Chapter 63
No one bothered to tell me they’d gone.
It was only when I found a random key on the windowsill by the front door that Arabella finally remembered to fill me in, to let me know I was supposed to be keeping an eye on their house.
(I can do that for you, Hailey, it’s no trouble.)
The grandma in Florida died, apparently, but I know they aren’t down there picking out hymns and a casket.
There’s no trace of them yet, not since they bought four plane tickets and a pet passport to S?o Paulo, but they’ll pop up eventually.
It’s tough, building a whole new life, and most people slip up at some point.
Even me. Eighteen months ago, I tried to buy four acres to build my own piece of Bratenahl paradise.
I had plans drawn up for a house, with a ninety-foot tower and views all the way to Canada.
But just as I was about to close on the deal, the landowner figured out that he could make more money by carving up my plot into smaller ones.
And then who should come along sniffing for a land grab?
Mack and Hailey Evans and their crafty realtor, that’s who.
They outbid me by $47,000 for the prime lot—on the corner, view of the lake, best one in the development.
I would have coughed up another couple of million to keep my estate intact, but I never even got the chance to counteroffer.
So, it had to be a longer game: two plots while I waited for the third to come available again.
One horrible little gray house of my own, easy to build and easy to tear down when the identical monstrosity next door finally crumbles and I can wall off a decent chunk of land—though not quite the size of my original vision, thanks to the riffraff on the other side of the street.
In the meantime, I’m tossed in among the neighborhood masses, forced to endure afternoon tennis matches and midmorning Botox parties.
(I myself don’t partake of the face poison, by the way. I just like to watch the needle go in.)
Amid that real estate clusterfuck, though, I really thought I had found myself a consolation prize: right from the beginning, right from the moment they first staked their plastic flamingo into the best plot of land left in Bratenahl, I recognized that Mack and Hailey Evans had bitten off more than they could chew.
It’s a most important quality in a potential contractor: Get ’em when they’re starting out, my father used to say of his reporters, when they’re hungry and desperate.
Maybe Mack and Hailey were too desperate, maybe that was the problem.
Maybe I should’ve known better than to choose a couple who were about to have the ceiling fall in on them—and not metaphorically, either.
Unlike my dad, though, I don’t give up when the going gets tough.
And even if I never find those Evanses, even if they do manage to keep running forever, I wasn’t bluffing: As the good Dr. Ashman would tell you if he were still with us, there are plenty of others out there, just like them, with just the right amount to lose.