Page 96 of The Treasure House

He shook his head vigorously. “Nope. It’s not my house. It’s my mom’s house.”

“But you grew up there.”

“No.” He shook his head. He turned his back on me and started doing dishes. “I spent summers there.”

“Summers that got in your blood,” I said, remembering his poetry that evening on the school swings and putting the pieces together. “You moved here because this is your street.”

“So?” He gave me an irritable look, back to being the grouch I’d met on that first day. “What’s so weird about that? I loved it here as a kid. I wanted to live here forever.”

“But…” I couldn’t quite get my head around the enormity of this. “Why aren’t you living in the house? Why did you sell it?”

Jake kept his back to me, his hands in the dishwater.

“Was that why you didn’t want me to buy it, that first time we met? Because you wanted your family to keep it?”

“You’re going to be late for work,” he said bluntly.

“Can we finish this conversation later?” I asked nervously, unsettled by his stoniness. He couldn’t just drop a bombshell like that and expect to just leave it there.

“Sure.” He was curt.

I gathered my things and approached him warily. “Jake?”

“Yeah.”

I put my hand on his arm, and he stopped scrubbing the roasting pan. “Thanks for telling me.”

His greenish-blue eyes were churning when they met mine. “It wasn’t easy selling it,” he blurted.

I didn’t know what to say. I had too many questions and I was too off balance. So I rose on my toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth.

I felt some of his tension loosen. He closed his eyes and sagged against me. “It’s a long story, Zoe. And it’s not a nice one.”

“I’m familiar with those kinds of stories,” I promised, thinking of Tina. And I kissed him again. As I went down the outside stairs from the balcony, I saw him watching me through the kitchen window, a haunted look on his face.

I knew I should wait to talk to Jake, but I was churning with questions and when I saw Elton, I just blurted out what I’d learned. He was out checking his house for storm damage when I did my walk of shame up the street, dodging the puddles and watching my breath form puffs of cloud in the cold air. I saw him suppress a smile when he saw where I came from.

“Good morning,” he said in his usual gentlemanly way, his brown eyes twinkling. “You’re up early.”

“Jake just told me that this was his mom’s house,” I burst out. I hadn’t meant to, but it was too much to hold inside of me.

“Indeed, it was,” Elton agreed mildly. “And before that his grandmother’s. And before that his great-grandmother’s and her sister’s. And before that their parents. That old house has been in the family a long time.”

I frowned. That didn’t feel good, to be the person who broke the chain.

Although, Jake was the person who broke the chain, I corrected myself. Not me. If I hadn’t bought it, someone else would have.

“And his mother’s not dead?”

“He told you that, did he?” Elton’s gaze drifted tenderly toward Jake’s store. The pale wash of morning light caught the creases in the old man’s cheeks when he smiled.

“He said she had the family curse.” I bit my lip. “Like your Sylvie.”

Elton nodded. “It’s a pretty strong curse. Picks off a lot of apples on that tree.”

I fell silent and we stood in the dripping street, listening to the erratic gusting of the wind and the cries of the loons.

“He said it was a power-of-attorney sale, not an estate sale,” I let slip, unable to stop myself. “Because she’s not dead…”