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“I will, I will.”
“Tell you what, when Evie’s done with school, let’s close the store for an hour and go check out your new place. Does she know about it?”
“What do you think?” I ask.
He laughs. “No, or I’d have heard about it already.”
“Exactly.” Evie has started countless sentences with the words, “Here’s a secret I’m not s’posed to tell you.”
“All right, I’m going to call Lisa to come on over, you’re going to surprise her, then we’ll all surprise Evie together. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect.”
It’s taken a long time to get used to Bill and Lisa being a part of everything we do. It had been Noah, Evie, and me against the world for five years before Grace came along. Now she and Noah are living in South Carolina, but only because Noah trusts the Winters to have our backs.
They definitely do. Evie’s got her “Nana and Poppa Dub,” as she likes to call them, short for the “W” in Winters. That’s Evie’s way of adopting people: nicknaming them as she collects them.
A half hour before Evie’s school lets out, Lisa walks into the store and parks herself in front of the register.
“Hey, sweetie. Bill says you have a surprise for me.”
Bill, who’d been organizing the paint chips, clears his throat and mouths, “Good luck.”
“I do,” I say, smiling at her. She has the same dark hair as Grace’s but hazel eyes like Tabitha. She’s dressed in black slacks and a pale blue blouse. She must have been working with a real estate client today, and if there’s one thing that’s going to keep me out of trouble with her, it’s her job. At least, it will if I play this right.
I swallow hard and announce, “I’m buying a house.”
She blinks at me. “Sorry, what?”
“I’m buying a house. For me and Evie.”
“That can’t be right. Because if you were buying a house, you would have talked to me about it, and I’d have helped you get everything together for your offer.”
“I still need you to do that,” I say. “I wanted to do all the preliminary stuff by myself in case I couldn’t even get loan approval. But I have all that, and now I’m hoping you’ll represent me on this purchase.”
She considers that for a long moment of silence, and then the rapid-fire questions begin. Which house?Thathouse? Am I sure? Am I really,reallysure?
I answer all of it, then she mulls. Finally, she breaks into a smile. “Congratulations, honey. I’m proud of you! How about you move into the house, and we keep Evie?”
“Ha ha,” I say. “Good luck getting rid of her. We’ll only be a block away.”
“Speaking of Evie . . . ” Bill walks over and flips the sign to Closed and sets the hands on the “Back in ___ minutes” sign to show an hour. “We’re going to walk her over to the house and surprise her,” he tells Lisa.
“Let’s go.” She beelines for the door. “But I still have a million more questions for you.”
“I’m counting on it,” I answer, smiling. Lisa’s love language is fussing.
Evie’s face splits with a grin when her second-grade class spills out at dismissal and she spots us waiting on the sidewalk. “Hey, Dubs!” she calls. “Hey, Mama!”
“Hey, baby. We’ve got a surprise for you. Come on!”
She rushes over to meet us, slipping one hand into Bill’s and the other into Lisa’s. “Is it a puppy?”
“NO,” we all say. Grace and Tab gave Lisa a puppy almost two years ago, and he still hasn’t outgrown his wear-everyone-out phase.
“What is it?” Evie asks.
“Have to wait,” I tell her.
