“You do that, now.” The locksmith went back to work.
It took a lot of calls, but by the time the locksmith had finished, Elizabeth had arranged for the grateful band boosters to bring their trucks and their teenagers over that afternoon and empty the place. The principal had been delighted, offering to store everything at the gym till they could advertise the sale.
“How’d it go?” the locksmith asked as she came back from her bedroom.
“They’re picking it all up this afternoon.”
He let out a low whistle, handing her his bill, which was half what it would have cost in Whittington. “I hate to be nosy, ma’am, but what’ll you do with an empty house?”
“Buy an air mattress, then start shopping for furniture,” she said briskly. She wrote his check, then handed it to him. “There you go. Thanks so much.”
He handed her four keys. “Pleasure doin’ business with you, ma’am.”
After he left, Elizabeth bleached the bathroom from top to bottom, then called the caretaker and arranged for him and his wife to scour the whole place the next day.
Then she decided to make a run down to Town Center for the air mattress, linens, some decorating magazines, and a few basic necessities. Then she would sit with the empty house for a while—days if necessary—and decide exactly how to make the place feminine Zen.
Regardless of the house’s past, it was hers, and she meant to make her mark there.
And hell would freeze over before Howe Whittington ever set foot in it again.
After three days of eating out and contemplating
Architectural Digest
,
Better Homes & Gardens,
and
Southern Living,
she still wasn’t sure what she wanted, so she booked a room at the Ritz in Buckhead, then spent a week scouring the furniture stores and the Design Arts Center. But besides two king-sized Dux beds and frames, nothing spoke to her soul.
Maybe she didn’t have any taste of her own.
Discouraged, she stocked up on fresh, hooker-free bed linens and beach robes at Macy’s, then bought simple stainless silverware, glassware, and moss-green square dishes before heading back to Blue Ridge. She was almost there when a large freestanding store caught her attention with a huge sign advertising antiques and used furniture. On impulse, she pulled into the gravel parking lot and got out to browse the store’s crowded interior, hoping for inspiration.
An immensely fat man behind the register didn’t look up from doing a crossword puzzle when she came in. “Look around all you want,” he mumbled. “Any questions, just ask.”
So much for customer service. “Thanks.”
Most of the so-called antiques were poor quality that probably only dated back to the twenties or thirties, and the used furniture ran toward heavy Mediterranean or massive Ethan Allen seventies
bedroom sets. There were lots of ponderous overstuffed sofas, chairs, and recliners. Nothing that interested her. But just when she decided to leave, she spotted the top of a hutch in the far back of the room, almost obscured by stacked dressers.
Elizabeth threaded through the piled-up furniture for a better look. What she found when she got there made her heart beat fast. The tall hutch looked like native cherry, free of even the smallest imperfection, its doors, sides, and top so artfully fitted they looked like single planks. Only age and TLC could produce a finish like that, the same rich, reddish brown as the shingles on her house.
Clearly, the clean lines and perfect proportions had been produced by a skilled but naïve craftsman. Each shelf above the base cabinet was hand-beaded, and each plank of the tongue-and-groove back had been perfectly sanded and fitted.
Elizabeth hadn’t considered using anything rustic, but the piece looked like it had been made for the big wall facing the fireplace, and suddenly she could see the room furnished with comfortable white sofas with clean lines, and soft, sculptured white rugs on the floors, the final effect finished off by minimal accents she could change with the seasons.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
She couldn’t find a price tag, but knew it wouldn’t come cheap. Not that it mattered.
Concealing her enthusiasm, she went back up to the register and said to the proprietor, “I noticed that cherry hutch in the back, but it didn’t have a price.”
The man looked up, almost resentful. “That one’s consignment. Been here forever because the owner wants so much for it.
It’s a good piece, I’ll grant you. Owner said her umpty-great-granddaddy from Charleston made it way back before the Revolution, and it got rescued from a fire during the Civil War. ’Course, there’s no way to verify that.”
Elizabeth frowned, wondering if he was playing her or telling the truth.
The man went on with, “The lady who owns it had to sell her place and move to assisted living. She made me put a real high reserve on it. Frankly, I think she’s senile. I’da made her take it back, but she’s got no place to put it anymore.”
“Just for curiosity, how much is it, anyway?” Elizabeth asked.
He sized her up, and Elizabeth was glad she had on casual clothes. Then he looked back down to his crossword puzzle. “Fifteen thousand, and not a penny less. Take it or leave it.”
Elizabeth laughed. The piece might very well fetch that at some high-end antiques store in Atlanta, but without provenance, he had some nerve asking that much. And she certainly didn’t want to be branded a patsy by the locals. “Never mind, then.” She started to leave.
“Wait.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Lady, I’d like nothing better than to sell you that hutch, but . . . Just hang on a second.” He picked up the phone, then flipped through a roller file on the desk behind him. “Let me call the owner and see if I can do any good.” He punched in the number, then turned back to ask her, “How much would you be willin’ to pay?”
“Twelve,” she said off the top of her head.
He lifted a finger and said into the phone, “Hello, Miz Berry? It’s Hal down at the furniture store.” He spoke louder, “Hal! At
the store! I got somebody interested in that hutch! How much do you want for it?”
He frowned, then yelled, “That cherry hutch you wanted me to sell!” He rolled his eyes, covering the mouthpiece to whisper to Elizabeth, “Now she doesn’t even remember it.” He hollered into the receiver again, “Is your granddaughter there?”
Relief eased his expression. “Could I speak to her, please?” he shouted. After a brief pause, he spoke normally. “Hey, it’s Hal at the furniture store. Your grandma left a cherry hutch here on consignment, and I got somebody interested. Would you take twelve thousand for it?” He frowned. “Well, your grandma said that, but we got no proof.” His eyes narrowed. “Eight years, at least. And I only got one other serious offer, a whole lot less than this one.” Pause. “Okay. See what you can do with her. I’ll wait.”
Elizabeth watched as he sat back down behind the counter, his back turned to her.
She really wanted that piece.
“She will?” The man turned a broad smile to Elizabeth. “Then it’s a deal. You can pick the check up next week. ’Bye, now.” He hung up. “Ma’am, you just bought yourself a hutch.”
“Will you take a check?” she asked. “I have plenty of ID.” Seeing his frown, she reached into her wallet and pulled out her platinum Visa. “Or would you rather take a charge?”
He stood and snatched the card with amazing speed for a man of his bulk. “Visa’s fine.”
“When can you deliver it?” she asked as he started writing up her receipt.
“I’ll have to hire at least two people to help me with it.” He shot her a defiant glance. “It’ll cost you.”
“How much?”
“Depends on where you live.”
“I live out on Horse Point at Lake Blue Ridge, number sixty-nine, sixty-nine.”
His assessing look turned to a leer. “Oh.
That
place.”
Elizabeth straightened in indignation. “No, not
that
place anymore. Now it’s
my
place.”
“Delivery’ll be two hundred,” he had the gall to say, probably because she was on the lake.
If she let him gouge her, the whole town would think she was a patsy. “Really? In that case, I think I’ll have to reconsider the whole thing.” She leaned over and plucked her charge card from the counter. “I’ll just take that.”
“Wait,” he said, palms lifted in surrender. “How about a hunnerd? It’ll cost me that for the gas and the muscle, honest to God.”
Elizabeth smiled. “That’s more like it. We have a deal.” She handed him her card. “When can you deliver it?”
“Soon as I can get somebody,” he said. “If you’ll leave me your number, I’ll call.”
“I’d like it as soon as possible.” Once it was in place, she could measure for the sofas.
She whistled the rest of the way home.
Four days later, the beds were delivered and installed, and after sleeping on hers, Elizabeth decided they were worth every penny.
The day after that, her hutch arrived.
“We tried it with just two of us, but that danged thing’s so big and heavy, we had to get two more,” Hal explained as the four movers gingerly unloaded the hutch, now shrouded in dusty packing quilts. They managed to get it to the back door, but it was so tall, they had to take off the quilts to get it through. Elizabeth watched nervously from the living room, holding her breath as they struggled to get it inside without banging the top on the doorjamb. Once they finally made it into the kitchen, they all heaved a sigh of relief.
Then the movers turned the back of the piece toward her to take it into the living room, and Elizabeth gasped.
The back had been burned, some places so deeply that she was surprised it hadn’t come through to the other side. “Wait. This is damaged,” she said. “I never would have bought it if I’d seen this.”
The men shot each other troubled glances. “You’ll have to take that up with Hal, ma’am,” the older one said. “He’s out in the truck.”
Elizabeth couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her about the damage. “Would you please go get him?”
Several minutes passed before a wheezing Hal labored through the back door. “Jake says there’s a problem?” he challenged, clearly not happy.
“I paid for a perfect piece,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take this back. You never told me it had been burned.”
“All respect, Miz Whittington, but I did. I told you about that fire it was saved from.”
“That’s not the same as telling me it was burned,” she argued.
“Ma’am, those planks are almost two inches thick. Even burned, there’s still an inch of good wood in ’em. The piece is sound.” When he saw that she wasn’t convinced, his tone softened. “Nothing that old is perfect. Take it from me, anyway, perfection is boring.”
Her life back in Whittington certainly had been.
Hal gestured toward the breakfront. “Those burns are part of the character of the piece. Makes it interesting. And anyway, who’s going to see them?”
He had a point.
Elizabeth debated making him take it back on principle. But the hutch was still gorgeous.
Maybe she’d been destined to fall in love with the thing, for she, too, had her own hidden scars.
Hal nodded toward the high, blank wall of the dining area. “Just let the men put it where you want it and see what you think,” he proposed, “before you make up your mind, okay?”
It was a reasonable enough request. “Okay.”
They moved the hutch into place, and sure enough, it balanced the fireplace as if it had been custom-made for that exact spot, and the light from the lake warmed the finish, bringing out every detail. There was just enough wall showing above the piece and space for a chair on either side, perfectly framing its placement.
Hal and the perspiring movers turned hopeful expressions her way. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you should have told me it was burned,” she said. “But I’ll keep it.”
That was one decision she
could
make.
As for whether or not to go back to her marriage—and to Whittington—that was another matter. She was still mad at Howe for not telling her the house’s history, but she had enough sense not to let that override all the good things he’d done.
For now, she was content to make the place her own. The rest, she decided not to decide, which, for her, the compulsive fixer of all things, was progress.
Happy with the new focal point of her décor despite its hidden imperfections, she thanked a very relieved Hal, then tipped the movers and saw them out. Alone at last, she settled on the raised hearth and savored this first, impressive evidence of her very own style.
But she wouldn’t have been so happy if she’d known what was going on back in Whittington.
Howe was deep into what he was reading, at last, when the doorbell rang.
Blast. How was he supposed to concentrate?
For the third time that week, he seriously considered hiring a housekeeper.
The problem was, who? All the good ones were hired, even with the economy the way it was, and a lingering bit of his old self didn’t trust opening his life and their home to a complete stranger.
With Elizabeth gone, he’d realized what a huge job it was to keep up the place, even with a cleaning service once a week.