“HAVE TIME FOR A drink?” Jacob asked. “I know a place where they make great chocolate martinis.”
I hesitated. I’d been putting Jacob off for weeks, but we’d finally gone shopping together today. I’d been surprised by how much fun we’d had, and how easy it was to be with him.
“Step away from the black sweaters,” I’d instructed when we first entered Banana Republic.
“How about gray?” he’d asked, holding one up against his chest. “I’m not sure I can make a clean break that quickly.”
“Try this on,” I’d said, tossing him a cream-colored crewneck that felt incredibly soft. “We’ve got to do this cold turkey.”
“Your girlfriend has great taste,” a salesman—probably sucking up for commission—had said as he’d wandered over.
Neither of us had bothered to correct him.
Now Jacob was looking at me with those dark-lashed blue eyes, and I knew the implications of his invitation. He’d liked Jimena, but they hadn’t completely hit it off. I’d set him up with another woman, but he hadn’t called her yet. I knew Jacob was hoping I’d change my mind.
It would be easy to slip into this, I reflected. So easy to flirt
and sip martinis and revel in the feeling of his eyes on me. I could see the night stretching out before us: Jacob would walk me to my car in the velvety air, and I’d turn toward him instead of unlocking my door and getting inside. He’d lean in, and I’d reach up to feel his slightly rough cheek, with its hint of five o’clock shadow. Then I’d close my eyes—
But no. It didn’t feel right. Jacob was ready for a serious relationship. He deserved someone who adored him, not someone who’d barely thought of him while she’d been dreaming of life with another man.
“I’d love to grab a drink with you,” I finally said, and there was real regret in my voice. “But I have more errands to run.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Jacob said. He leaned in for a hug and lingered there for a moment.
“I really am going to find you the perfect woman,” I promised.
Jacob winked at me, and I turned around and walked toward Nordstrom. When I looked back, Jacob had already disappeared into the crowd of shoppers.
The phone rang once, and then someone picked it up. But they didn’t say a word.
“Jane?” I asked. “It’s Lindsey, from Blind Dates. Hello?”
Ominous silence.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as my father’s voice began narrating possible disasters: She’d had a stroke; she’d been tied up and gagged by a robber and had managed to knock the phone off the receiver with her big toe; she’d hit her head and had soap-opera amnesia.
“Jane, can you hear me?” I asked. “Make a noise if you can.”
The heavy breathing intensified, then this solemn proclamation: “Elmo’s red.”
“Hi, Katie, it’s Lindsey! Remember me? I gave you all that ice cream?” I said. “Can you do me a favor and get your mommy?”
“Okeydokey,” Katie said cheerfully, then dropped the phone. Two minutes later, I was still waiting. I could hear Jane in the background asking Katie if she wanted some water, and Katie negotiating hard for an upgrade to lemonade, then they walked out of the room and I couldn’t hear any more. I hung up and tried again, but the phone was still off the hook so the line was busy.
I gave up and checked in with the septuagenarian best friends, who’d had fun on their recent double date but wanted a bit more “bang for their buck,” as they’d put it. “Get us someone who can stay out past midnight!” the never-married one giggled.
“And no guys with small hands!” her friend hollered in the background.
“Big hands!” I noted dutifully, trying to hold back my laughter. “Ladies, I’m on it.”
This was my job, I reminded myself. This was what my new life looked like. In three weeks, May was leaving for India and I’d be in charge of the company. We’d decided that I’d stay at her house and take care of the dogs while she was gone, and after that . . . well, after that was what I was going to investigate this afternoon.
“Do you mind if I duck out early?” I asked May, closing the folder on my lap.
“It’s four-thirty,” she said. “It’s not early.”
I grinned and took my teacup to the dishwasher, then tossed the dogs a few treats and headed outside, to the driveway, where my newest splurge was waiting for me. Last night I’d gone to a Volkswagen dealership and driven out in a light blue Cabriolet convertible.
I’d put down the top and felt the wind lift my hair as I’d
stepped on the gas. It felt like a movie moment, the kind where the music swells and the heroine throws back her head and laughs as she roars down an empty highway. Except for the fact that I wasn’t speeding (I always go five miles under the limit, just to be safe). And that at home, my parents were peering out the window, fretting about whether I’d be late for dinner. Plus technically, my car wasn’t exactly an impulse buy, given that I’d spent four solid days comparing safety ratings from
Consumer Reports
and looking up model numbers so I could be aware of exactly how much the dealer had paid for the car before I made an offer.
But hey, at least I’d turned up the music as I headed home. Was it my fault that the only station not playing a commercial was airing a Lionel Richie—a-thon, which didn’t exactly lend itself to swelling?
Tonight I’d gotten wiser. I’d loaded some CDs into my car and I picked Coldplay for my drive. Even though rush hour hadn’t officially begun, I knew the Beltway would be clogged, so I took back roads and wound my way east until I reached Takoma Park. I’d always loved this area. It was a funky mix of artsy small-town shops and coffeehouses, but it was big and busy enough to qualify as a city.
The real estate agent was waiting for me outside the house.
“Lindsey?” he said, coming toward my car as I got out and offering his hand with a warm smile. “I’m Jim.”
Jim had a great voice, deep and calm and sexy. When we’d been talking on the phone, I’d idly wondered if he might just happen to be a square-jawed, newly single real estate tycoon who would serve as a lovely distraction from Bradley. But since this is my life, he was just a portly middle-aged guy in a velour sweat suit with a bald spot shaped like a yarmulke.
Lionel Richie and velour sweat suits. I could see it now: Jennifer Garner and Anne Hathaway would duke it out over the
rights to my life story. (“Don’t skimp on the Krispy Kremes,” the director would instruct the movie’s caterers. “We need to plump up my actress.”)
“So this is it?” I asked, looking up at the house.
“This is it,” Jim said, spreading out his hands.
I’d known real estate agents had a reputation for stretching the truth. But when Jim had called this a fixer-upper, I’d assumed there would be at least equal amounts of fixer and upper. My eyes traveled past the yard—technically weeds and bare spots—to the front walkway, which was missing half of its stones. An upstairs window was broken, and bits of jagged glass clung to its frame, making it look like an angry mouth. Jim headed across the front porch, and when I followed him, the boards creaked ominously. If Jim were a serial killer, this is where he’d lure his victims, I thought, reminding myself to use the ballpoint pen in my purse as a weapon if he attacked. (“Go for the eyes!” I could hear my father coaching.)
“It’s a little dusty,” Jim said apologetically as he opened the creaking door, oblivious to the fact that, in my murderous fantasy, he was on the ground writhing in pain while I liberated his young female hostages.
When I looked in the front door, I saw that dust was the least of this house’s worries. Random holes were hacked into a wall, the living room floorboards buckled in the middle, and a pile of what looked like mouse droppings decorated a corner. Then I looked up, and I noticed beautiful exposed oak beams lining the high ceiling.
“This house needs a little TLC,” Jim said in possibly the biggest understatement in the robust history of real estate fibs. “The owners were elderly and they couldn’t keep up with it. They died about ten years ago and their son never bothered to check on the house. He lives in Seattle in some sort of commune.”
Jim’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper: “Drugs.”
I stepped into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. The wood was faded and worn, and the linoleum on the countertops was a color that Benjamin Moore would call Solitary Confinement Gray.
But if you stripped and refinished the cabinets, and tore up the linoleum, and knocked down the wall between the kitchen and living room . . . I blinked and saw yellow tiles on the countertops, cherrywood cabinets, and a cozy little breakfast bar separating the living room from the dining room.
“Nice stove,” I said, lifting a burner on the big, old-fashioned range. It broke off under my touch.
“Want to see upstairs?” Jim suggested brightly after a bit of an awkward pause.
The upstairs was even worse than I’d feared. Underneath a thick layer of cobwebs I could see two bedrooms with big windows and a bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-footed tub that may once have been white. The bedrooms had the feel of a haunted house, with sheets draped over a few pieces of furniture and dust motes swirling in the meager light that came in through dirty windows.
Jim whipped a sheet off the bed, revealing a stained, saggy mattress, then covered his mouth with his handkerchief and suffered a coughing spasm.
“The furniture conveys!” he announced grandly when he could breathe again. “If you’re interested, I’m sure we could work out a deal.”
I wandered over to open a window, letting fresh air stream into the room for the first time in far too long. The windows were old-fashioned, floor-to-ceiling ones that spread open like arms to embrace a beautiful view of the crepe myrtle and apple trees lining the street below. I wandered back across the room and peeled off a strip of old-lady flowered wallpaper over the
bed. What would this room look like bathed in a coat of warm, rose-colored paint? I wondered. With snow falling outside those huge windows, and a wood fire burning in the little brick fireplace tucked into one corner?
I walked to the fireplace and looked at it more closely. Someone had painted the bricks dirt brown, I thought indignantly, scraping at one of them with my fingernail. Underneath the layers of drab paint were old bricks in rust tones. What would they look like cleaned and polished?
“Sometimes people don’t see the beauty in something when it doesn’t hit you right in the face,” Jim said. He was leaning against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets, probably because he didn’t dare sit down anywhere. “This house could be beautiful, if someone took the time to appreciate it. But a lot of people just walk right by it, not ever knowing how special it is.”
I did a quick bit of mental math. My savings account could cover a healthy down payment, with enough left over to fix the house up, especially if I did some of the work myself. Despite my frequent shopping sprees, my account still had a nice balance. After all, I’d spent seven years building it up. Seven years of never taking a risk. Of watching the world pass by beneath the glass windows of my office.
I’d only done the math as a formality. I’d made my decision as soon as I walked inside this house.
I turned to Jim and smiled.
“I want it,” I said. I’d never felt as sure of anything in my life.
I was just drifting off to sleep, my mind filled with images of exposed ceiling beams and window boxes overflowing with gerbera daisies, when Alex knocked on my half-opened door.
We’d barely talked since I’d shown her the old IQ tests. Once or twice she’d come out of her room to join me and our parents in front of the television, but she hadn’t engaged anyone in real conversation.
“Are you okay?” I’d asked once when we passed each other in the hallway, me on my way to the bathroom and Alex on her way from it.
She’d nodded. “I just need a little time to think. There’s a lot to process, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was still processing it myself.
“Come in,” I said now, pushing myself up on one elbow. “I’m awake.”
Alex opened the door and entered my room. She was wearing her black sweat pants again today, but earlier in the hallway, I’d noticed she’d painted her fingernails for the first time since the surgery.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Alex didn’t answer my question. Instead she sat down on the corner of my bed and tucked her knees up to her chest.
“I saw you when you were leaving for work this morning,” she said. The moonlight filtering in from my window played across her face, and for a moment, at that angle, I caught a glimpse of the old Alex. Then she turned her head and the mirage disappeared. “You looked good,” she said softly. “Really good.”
I’d met with a new client at lunch, and I’d worn a blue skirt and gauzy white shirt with a deep V-neck. But I’d waited until I was at May’s before putting on my makeup. Somehow I’d felt guilty, as if by letting Alex see me trying to look pretty, I’d be betraying her.
“I always used to wonder why you wore your hair up all the time,” Alex said. She hugged her knees tighter. “And you never dressed to show off your body, either.”
“Why would I want to show it off?” I joked, then I wanted to
knock myself in the forehead. Right now Alex probably had ten pounds on me. How could I joke about being overweight?
“Are you serious?” Alex frowned at me. “Being curvy suits you. Do you honestly think you’re fat?”