“I wish I could have seen it before you put the money down, and I mean, it is a joint account, and I was thinking maybe we had to talk about what to do with that.”
“What’s to talk about? Real estate is where it’s at for our future. I mean, the dealership is okay, but we’re going to buy this house, fix it up, and then sell it, and do it again and again. It’s called flipping.”
“Flipping?”
“Yeah, I signed up for a day-long class on how to do it. That wasn’t cheap either, but it is an investment too.”
“Oh.”
Archie explained how they were going to become rich flipping houses. And yet…Hope had done every upgrade they’d made to their apartment by herself. She had hung the wallpaper, got approval from the landlord to paint, and she’d scrubbed the stove until the skin on her knuckles cracked so it would be clean and workable for them.
But somehow, Archie was going to flip houses?
“Don’t you have to be good at home improvement stuff and do it fast to be profitable?”
“I’ll figure it out. Rick, you remember him, he works in the service department. He just made thirty grand on a flip. This is the ticket.”
“How much was it, the down payment?” Maybe it wasn’t their whole nest egg?
“Ha, oh yeah, don’t write a check. We’re down to two hundred bucks in the checking.”
The money they’d saved, it wasn’t much. But it was a lot for them. And it was gone. Archie had decided what to spend it on.
Hope had worried herself sick about broaching the subject of spending money on her degree, and Archie hadn’t thought twice about doing it without even telling her.
“Wow, so you put twelve thousand to the house. Okay.” She knew her voice was wavering.
Archie caught it. He stood up and came over to her at the sink. He put his arms around her waist and buried his head in her neck. “Look, babe, I had to move fast. And this is just the beginning. We’re going to turn this into a huge windfall.”
“Okay.”
He squeezed her tight.
He was right. The girls were getting bigger. They’d need to start kindergarten in a good school district. A house was a good investment. Archie had got the house for them. It was a family decision versus the one she’d made for herself.
Hope didn’t even mention culinary school. She could wait.
She put the acceptance letter in the garbage, and for good measure, she scraped Archie’s plate on top of it when she was doing the dishes.
ChapterSeventeen
Hope, Present Day
Hope saw the reply in her inbox. The commercial oven and range combo unit was still available!
Once she had that installed, she’d be ready to cook, test, and experiment with all her ideas for the menu.
She used her phone’s GPS to navigate to the Irish Hills Country Club, despite the fact she’d worked at the club as a beer cart girl. It had been good for extra cash back in the day. But dodging passes from drunk golfers had been more challenging than dodging errant golf balls.
The smell of cut grass and the sound of the massive sprinklers shooting water into the fairways brought back memories of her time working here. She kept the windows rolled down as she made her way up the winding drive to the clubhouse.
She realized she had a smile on her face; both the memory of the past and the future of her business had put it there.
This was the last big piece of equipment she’d need for the restaurant. Once this was in place, she’d focus on staff and the menu. Right now, though, she needed to make a good deal.
The club was doing renovations, apparently, and they had listed their commercial stove and oven for sale. Hope thought it looked perfect in the photos.
Someday, maybe, she’d upgrade to something French, but this looked like the perfect way to start her kitchen for now.
