Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JULIET
When I glance at my phone after finishing with dinner prep, I notice that I missed another call from Chad. The attorney has called me twice this week, and I’ve missed them both. Whenever I call him back, he’s in meetings, so we’re playing a massive game of phone tag.
I assume that if it were an emergency, he’d say so in his voicemail, but I’m curious about what he has to tell me.
With a sigh, I tap on his number, and his receptionist, Rose, answers.
“This is Kincaid and Leonard, attorneys at law, Rose speaking.”
“Hi, Rose, this is Juliet Blackwell. I missed another of Chad’s calls.”
“Boy, you two are having a hard time tracking each other down, aren’t you? Well, it seems you’re out of luck again because he’s left for the day. He’s in court for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Of course, he is,” I reply with a chuckle. “I’ll try back tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. He’ll be in his office all day tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Rose.”
After hanging up, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
I’m tired, but in a good way. I met Noah here at five this morning to get him acquainted with the kitchen and to discuss ideas for what to put in the case this week.
I’m so happy that he took the job, and he’s excited to get started, taking over the bread and sweet side of the menu.
I’ll handle it two days a week on his days off, which will be a huge weight taken off my shoulders.
I’ve decided to start going into the restaurant from midmorning through the afternoon to prep for lunch and dinner, and handle all the business side of things.
I’ve also hired two more waitstaff, and I’m finally at a place where, with Christy as my new manager, I feel like Sage & Citrus is a well-oiled machine.
It makes me beyond happy.
“Okay, you guys are all prepped for dinner,” I tell Tandy, who’s building a salad for Harper.
My friend will swing by for it on her way home from work.
I wondered if, as she progressed through her pregnancy, she’d start craving other things, but she’s still stuck like glue to this salad.
“I also got all of the food put away from the shipment that came in, so there shouldn’t be any issues, but you have my number if you need me. ”
“We won’t need you,” Erica says as she bustles by. “We’re professionals now.”
I laugh and nod in agreement. “You’re the best. I have such an amazing team. None of you can ever leave me.”
“If Noah’s here every morning,” Tandy says, “you couldn’t make me leave if you tried.”
“No flirting with my pastry chef,” I tell her, narrowing my eyes. “I mean it.”
“Dammit,” Tandy grumbles. “She’s no fun at all.”
I gather my things and leave the restaurant, walking toward home. Brooks should be home by about five, and I promised him that we’d have steak fajitas for dinner. I already have the meat in a marinade in the fridge.
I love cooking for my husband.
In fact, just thinking that thought makes me grin.
I know it might sound like a cliché, the little woman cooking for her man, but I enjoy it.
Food is my love language, and the fact that Brooks likes what I cook is just a huge bonus.
My favorite part, though, is cleaning up together afterward—doing dishes, talking about our day, and making out in the kitchen.
Okay, making out with Brooks anywhere is my favorite thing. The man can kiss. And don’t even get me started on the sex in the rain last week.
Holy shit, that’s going to be a core memory for the rest of my life.
Once I’m home, I make sure that I have everything for dinner, just in case I have to make a last-minute run to the store, but all of the ingredients are here. I have a couple of hours before Brooks is due home, and I glance across the street, smiling at our house just across the street.
I want to go look around.
I haven’t really spent any time over there by myself. I want to wander through and daydream a little. So I grab a tape measure out of the drawer, toss on a light zip-up hoodie and my sneakers, and set off across the street with my phone in my hand.
I’m not going to lie. I was hoping we’d find a secret room with a bunch of old stuff hidden inside.
I mean, that could still happen. Brooks and the guys have been tearing everything apart as they have time, but it’s not easy, and they have to be careful because the house is so old.
We don’t know what kind of stuff could be hidden in the walls.
I don’t want anyone breathing in something they shouldn’t.
We’re into November, and the days are getting much shorter, which means that it’s already headed toward dusk, but I have about an hour of light left, which is just the right amount of time.
Brooks put a new lock on the front door with a keypad, so after I entered the code, I pushed inside and closed the door behind me, not locking it.
“Wow.” My voice echoes through the house. All of the walls down here are pretty much down to the studs. I can see through to the kitchen, which really doesn’t look like a kitchen anymore.
In fact, we could do literally anything down here. I wonder if we could open up the living room to the kitchen and create an open-concept space? I’d still want my library separate, though.
I plant my hands on my hips and gaze around, pondering it.
“Maybe these are load-bearing walls, though,” I say out loud. “And we can’t take them down to make it open. I’ll have to ask Brooks.”
Walking into the kitchen, I feel my eyebrows climb in surprise.
“It’s so big in here.” The dark cabinets and wallpaper made it seem so small, but now that it’s empty, I can see that it’s much more spacious than I thought. Immediately, I open the Notes app on my phone and take some measurements.
I want an island in the middle the size of California, without a sink in it. I want all that counter space for baking. And I need the sink to be under the window, so I can stare out into the backyard while I do dishes.
There’s enough room for a nice-sized butler’s pantry, so I put that on the list. Then I open Pinterest to create a new vision board for the kitchen and pantry, pinning some ideas for that.
“I really need to consult with Ava. She’d have some great ideas in here.”
My new best friend is an interior decorator and is actually working with Billie and Connor on the new condos up at the ski resort.
Those condos are super expensive, and the uber rich expect them to be gorgeous inside.
That’s where Ava comes in. I haven’t been up to see her handiwork yet, but I know she’s killing it.
She’ll help me with decorating this house.
Brooks said we have about four thousand square feet to work with in here, and that seems like a lot of space. There are two guest bedrooms on the first floor, but without sheetrock, I can’t really make heads or tails of them, so I’ll wait to daydream in there until I’m with my husband.
One of those rooms will be our office. The other will be a guest room. I don’t know who might come stay with us, but it’s nice to have the extra space, just in case.
I step outside and take in the backyard. I’ll absolutely put a covered pergola over the concrete patio, similar to the one we have at the other house. I also want a water fountain.
No fish, though. I’d probably kill them.
With a smirk, I go back inside and head up the stairs, which have been reinforced. Probably a good idea.
My phone pings with a text from Brooks.
Brooks: Hi, beautiful. Running about thirty minutes behind here. I’ll call you when I’m on my way home.
When I reach the top of the steps, I fire off a response.
Me: No worries at all, but thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you soon! xo
In addition to it being later in the day, the clouds are low and heavy today, so it seems darker upstairs. They haven’t started tearing out walls up here yet.
Starting in the primary suite and bathroom, I grin when I see the bed that Brooks and I spent our wedding night on. The linens, candles, and rose petals have all been cleared away, but the bed remains. The bathroom is still a hot mess.
I’ll be glad to get all of the destruction out of here and start brand new.
Opening the app again, I start a board for primary suites and pin some ideas for bathrooms and closets.
I don’t need a huge closet like Billie. I am not a fashionista, and that’s just fine with me, but we’ll want something functional and nice.
Finally, I walk down the hall and spend some time in each of the smaller bedrooms.
Pulling my lip through my teeth, I ignore the creaking down below.
“It’s an old house, Jules. They settle. They make a lot of noise.”
It sounds like something falls downstairs, and I jump, but then cover my heart and try to slow my heartbeat.
“Just a loose board,” I mutter, doing my best to believe it. “This is our house. Nothing can hurt us in here.”
It’s cold up here, and I tug my sweatshirt tight around me as I stride across the hall to the next bedroom and walk a slow circle, taking everything in. The walls are baby pink.
“This might have been someone’s nursery.”
The idea is a pang in the chest.
I want to have babies with Brooks. I always did. He’d be such an amazing dad, and I know we’re in our late thirties now, but there’s still time if we get started right away.
“We just got married,” I remind myself as I walk over to run my hand down the white molding around the small closet. “He might not want babies yet.”
But since we don’t use protection when we have sex, and I am not on birth control, we’d better figure out what we want. Although if we didn’t want kids, I think we would be more concerned about preventing pregnancy.
“This was someone’s baby’s room,” I murmur and smile before walking farther down the hall, past another bathroom that needs to be gutted, to the last bedroom.
It’s bigger than the other two and has tacks in the wall that no one ever bothered to remove.
“Probably a teenager who had posters on the wall.”
I glance out the window, which looks out to the backyard, and then turn to look around the room again.
Something feels off.
“Why does this room feel smaller than it should?”
Frowning, I pace back and forth, then glance outside again.
The window is only about a foot away from the interior wall perpendicular to it. However, when I look outside, I can see that the wall should be about six feet away, as the outside extends much farther.
But there’s no door.
I knock around on the wall, and then feel when I hit a solid spot.
That’s not a wall.
“I need a hammer.”
I push my phone into my back pocket and hurry downstairs to where I saw one leaning against the wall by the back door, then head back upstairs with it.
These walls are coming down anyway. There’s no reason I can’t start now.
I take a swing where the solid spot was, and the drywall starts to fall away. It’s brittle. I cover my mouth and nose with my sweatshirt, but soon I’m too hot from all of the swinging, so I shed the sweatshirt, and then grin.
Because I just found a freaking door.
“This is what I’m TALKING ABOUT!” I yell as I dance in a circle. “A secret door! I’m absolutely not waiting around for Brooks. I need to know what’s back there.”
I have to chip away at more of the drywall, but soon, I’m able to shimmy the door open, and when I grab my phone out of my pocket and turn the flashlight on, I see a stairway that goes up.
“There’s an attic?”
I frown and poke my head around the corner so I can shine the light up to see where it leads.
Sure enough, there’s an attic up there, and it looks like it’s full.
“Sold. Going up.”
But there are a lot of cobwebs. I’m refusing to call them spiderwebs. I’m in denial that there could be a whole family of big-ass spiders up there.
No. Just no.
Gingerly, I climb the stairs. They’re not … great. But they’re holding me as I climb, and when I get eye level with the floor, my eyes widen and I let out a low whistle.
“Holy fucking jackpot, Batman.”
There are trunks, stacks of newspapers, old toys, and a stroller that looks like it held a baby a hundred years ago.
I climb the rest of the way and pick up a newspaper, and once I clear about an inch of dust away, I see the date.
August 7, 1964.
But then, in the back corner, are more newspapers, and once I make my way around a ton of stuff, I see that they are dated twenty years prior to that, announcing the end of the Second World War.
“Crazy,” I whisper, shaking my head. “This is a fucking treasure trove.”
I’m giddy at the thought of opening all the boxes, the trunks, and the bags. Obviously, I can’t do all of that tonight. It’s starting to get dark, and I need to go home and take a shower before I cook dinner.
Checking the time on my phone, I see that Brooks should be headed home soon, too.
It’s time to set this all aside for another day, but man, it’s cool.
I direct the light to the other side of the attic.
It must span the entire house, and every square inch is full of stuff, with just little paths here and there for walking.
I’m standing on old two-by-fours, and as I start to make my way back to the stairs, the wood beams give out beneath me.
“Ahhh!”
I scream as I fall through the floor. Pain shoots up my leg, the crash is almost deafening, and I lose my phone. But I don’t fall all the way through.
My hips catch on something, with my legs hanging down through the ceiling below me. I cough because of all the dust and God-knows-what that just got kicked up. My heart pounds, I have tears in my eyes, and my leg is on fire.
My phone rings, and it’s Brooks’s ringtone, but it sounds far away.
With my heart in my throat, I search around me. “Come on, I need you to come help me.”
I sound out of my mind. My voice is shrill and full of panic.
“WHERE IS MY PHONE??”
It rings again, and I’m able to look down between my legs and see my phone, face up, on the floor below.
“No.” Tears spring to my eyes. “Oh shit, I’m in trouble. I’m in so much trouble.”
Did I tell Brooks I was here?
I think back on our texts. No. I didn’t. I just told him I’d see him soon.
Oh God.
I can feel blood running down my left leg, and I can even hear it dripping on the hardwood below. The ache in that leg has its own heartbeat. It fucking hurts.
“I hope that blood doesn’t hit my phone.”
My laughter at that thought sounds hysterical.
I’m stuck here, hanging half in, half out of an attic that no one even knew existed. It’s getting dark, and no one knows where I am. And I’m worried about blood messing up my phone.
I’m so fucked.