Page 4 of The Treasure House

I often felt trapped, especially at night, trying not to wake my kid as I crept around the apartment, and the feeling only got worse as she grew. Her twelfth birthday was approaching. Twelve years of this life, creeping around. It had flown by, but also dragged. Twelve was the age I’d been when I’d gone to foster with Mr. and Mrs. Bracknell. They were deacons in some church or other and their house was very clean. The thought of Flo being packed up and taken to live with strangers filled me with a big, hot, hurting feeling. As I watched the reels of treasure houses into the night, I reached out and put a hand on her as she slept. I’d die before I let anyone take her away from me, the way I’d been taken away from Tina as a young child.

Flo snored softly, small puppy noises. She’d kicked off her covers, because it was a hot June and we didn’t have air-conditioning. I heard drunken undergrads coming back from the bars, loudly shushing each other and giggling in the hall. I felt a million years old as I listened to them. Had I ever been that free? And would I still be living in this apartment when Flo was their age?

As I lay there in the darkness, I felt something break loose inside me. Hell, I was only thirty-two; I wasn’t that much older than the undergrads in the hall. I should be ordering a cocktail in a sleek little bar, trying to catch a flirty bartender’s eye, giggling with friends. I should be searching for the shimmers of possibility in every dawning day. I should be… doing anything but this.

As I lay watching people clear junk out of dilapidated houses, a wild idea took hold.

I could do that.

I could get out of this place. I could buy a house. Start over.

I could make the life I wanted, instead of living the one I’d inherited. Depending on the state of the place, and the town it was in, the prices of these treasure houses ranged from $30,000 to $100,000. For a whole house. A crappy one-bedroom apartment in my building had recently sold for $160,000 and it was only six hundred square feet. The treasure houses had multiple bedrooms, gardens, and sometimes even views of mountains, or rivers, or, magically, the ocean. Sure, they were wrecks, but I was young and strong. If other people could restore them, why couldn’t I?

“What’s that?” Florence asked the next morning at breakfast, pushing my phone down so she could see the screen.

“It’s a treasure house.”

“A what house?” She perked up, and I could tell she was thinking of pirates. I’d shown her The Goonies on our last movie night.

“Not that kind of treasure,” I told her, heading off any talk of gold doubloons. “These are just houses full of junk that people are selling.”

“They’re selling the houses or the junk?” She bent over my phone, the tail of her braid curling on the kitchen bench. She swiped to the next reel.

“Both. You buy the house, but it comes with all the junk.”

“Oh. Cool.” She looked up at me, grinning.

Flo had big, hooded eyes and round cheeks and a tendency to chew the ends of her braids until they were like wet paintbrushes. She had inherited her father’s thin, mobile mouth and his easy sportiness, but she’d got my darker hair and coloring, and my penchant for books. We were both on the tall side, with chins that were a little too wide, and since we both hated haircuts, we tended to have long, wild hair with too many split ends.

“Look, this one has a swimming pool.” She pointed at the screen with her spoon.

“I don’t think that’s a pool. I think it’s a pit.”

“Why would someone have a pit in their yard?”

I’d listened to enough true crime podcasts to not want to know the answer to that question. I swiped on to the next video.

“How come you’ve replaced Harry Styles reels with junk houses?” Flo upended the cereal box and shook it until a mountain of Cheerios piled up in her bowl.

“Bite your tongue. Harry’s irreplaceable.” I took the box away from her.

“Vanda’s mother lets her have Apple Jacks during summer vacation.”

“Well, good for her.”

“And Pop-Tarts.”

“Pop-Tarts are dessert, not breakfast.” I passed her the milk.

“They’re sold in the breakfast aisle.”

I ignored that.

“Don’t you think it’s depressing that I have to eat Cheerios instead of Apple Jacks while my mom phubs me?”

Sometimes it was like living with a junior prosecutor. “I’m not phubbing you, I’m house hunting.” Flo had introduced me to the term “phubbing” with relish, as she liked to tell me off for snubbing her in favor of my phone.

Flo jerked and milk splashed all over the counter. “You’re what now?”