Enrico asked her. "Does that mean you like my grandma?"
"She's nice," Sammy said.
"Yes, she is. You're a good judge of people," Enrico told her then he faced Mitch. "That room with the ivy wallpaper should be Sammy's, right? I can clean that up," he volunteered.
Since it was important to him, Mitch was planning to do that himself, but then Sammy chimed in too.
"Me too. Me too," Sammy said. "I wanna do it."
"I guess we can do it together," Enrico said. Mitch was going to send him off to do something else, but Sammy looked happy, so he didn't.
"I'm going to see what cleaning supplies we have," Enrico said, jumping right into it. He went into the kitchen to look under the sink and then he poked around in a cupboard and pulled out various cleaning supplies.
"No vacuum, but here's what I found," Enrico said.
Sammy went straight for the blue feather duster. "That's your weapon of choice huh?"
Upstairs, Mitch went in first to check over the room more thoroughly now that Sammy would be sleeping there.
It seemed fine. The wood floor would be easy enough to get clean. Otherwise the room was mainly just dusty, nothing that couldn't be spruced up. The mattress was OK, and there were even sheets on the bed.
"Did the people who moved out just leave everything here?" Mitch wondered out loud.
"They..." Enrico started to say then he looked over at Sammy, who was dusting random things.
Mitch could guess what he was going to say before he stopped himself. The owners probably died.
"I bet they just got all new stuff," Enrico said and smiled at Sammy.
"The washer works, right?" Mitch said as he eyed the sheets. They looked clean, but they had been sitting there a while, no doubt.
"The washer is in the basement. I'll go check," Enrico said and he was off, clomping down the stairs. He certainly was energetic.
He was back in no time to report. "It's an old one, but it works. I have it filling up, but no luck with detergent."
"I saw a box of baking soda in the fridge. Throw some of that into the washer," Mitch said.
"Baking soda? You must be super dad to know something like that," Enrico said and went off again with an armful of sheets and a few towels too. The place certainly was stocked with a lot of what they needed.
"He said you're super dad," Sammy said looking up at him with a proud smile.
Soon Enrico was back and huffing from running up and down the stairs. "Why didn't we bring beverages?" he complained.
"We have drinks in the car," Mitch told him. Then he reached in his pocket for the keys. "There is a cooler in front if you want to get it." As he handed Enrico the keys, their hands touched briefly and Mitch felt a weird jolt.
A few minutes later, Enrico was back with drinks, still huffing. "I brought the cooler in and stuck the drinks in the fridge."
"Thanks," Mitch said as Enrico handed him a sports drink and gave Sammy an orange juice.
They got to it, cleaning the room until Mitch felt it would be OK for Sammy to stay there. With Enrico helping, the work went fast. He didn't seem serious, but he was working hard to make Sammy's room nice for her, and that earned him a ton of points from Mitch.
The sheets were still in the dryer, but otherwise the room was pretty much all set. Enrico wasn't done though. Looking around, he frowned critically at the pictures on the wall. "What about these pictures, Sammy? They aren't much fun."
To have a better look at one of the paintings hanging on the wall, Sammy stood on her tiptoes. Mitch picked her up and held her so she could get even closer.
"I see a horse," she said.
There was a horse pulling a cart down a country lane, but honestly, the painting wasn't much fun, just like Enrico said.
