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My phone buzzed again. UR FREAKING OUT. STOP. ITS A SMALL HOUSE. I MAY NEED 2 BORROW UR SLEDGE. AND U.
I texted back: NO ON SLEDGE. U’LL HURT URSELF. That sounded mean, so I texted again: ILL DO THE SLEDGE.
Her text popped up: THATS WHY I NEED TO BORROW U.
You don’t need to borrow me,I thought.You have me.
Then she texted me again: AFTER WORK?
I texted back: SURE.
An address appeared with directions, some place deep in Over-the-Hill. Which meant she could probably afford it. Which meant she wouldn’t be coming back to the Big Chef.
From now on, if somebody painted my bedroom blue, I wasn’t going to say a goddamn word.
She texted again: SEE YOU AT FIVE
And I texted YEP and my day officially hit bottom.
CHAPTER 20
Iturned on all the lights, which wasn’t that much help, so I also took down the drapes, which made things a little better. At least I could see Miss Evans’s kind of horrible furniture, a mishmash of chintzy squashy armchairs and Scandinavian modern that probably looked iffy in 1950. Then I checked to see if the fridge worked—yep, kinda, for the moment—and cleaned off the counter—so not the kind of thing I usually did—and unloaded all my new stuff on the clean surface, experiencing a small but decided feeling of accomplishment.
I could do this.
I put the perishables in the undercounter fridge and made myself a sandwich and ate it while I walked around my palatial living room. I had to make several laps to finish my cheese/turkey/ham extravaganza, but it was still a buzz, my first sandwich in my first house. Yes, the house looked like it was going to collapse on me at any minute, and the sandwich would have made Marianne weep, but it would be my house that buried me alive, not somebody else’s. That was important.
I made a note to buy a plate. Maybe two, since Vince would visit. Walking around with a sandwich in my hand did not look like adulthood. A couple of glasses would be good, too. Coffee mugs. God, owning a house was going to be expensive.
I walked over and opened one of the awful tall cabinets that were faking being room dividers. The shelves were loose, just sitting on these little metal ledges, so I pulled them all out and stacked them outside at the bottom of the stairs, feeling very Vince-like as I did my demolition. Quietly. Then I went back inside and looked to see how the cabinets were bolted together, got a screwdriver from my new pink toolkit, and unscrewed them. Which of course meant that I now had four unstable cabinets standing in my living room.
I dragged the first one out the front door, maneuvered it to the top of the steps, and shoved. It slid down nicely, so I followed it down and dragged it away from the bottom of the steps. Forty-five extremely sweaty minutes later, I had all four of the bastards in my driveway and I was feeling like a natural woman. A natural woman who needed a shower badly, but still. I am woman, watch me use a screwdriver.
The thing is, I liked doing that. When I thought about it, the thing I’d been best at doing my whole life was fixing things. And if there ever was a thing that needed fixed, it was this house. No wonder I’d bought it.
Which brought me to my second epiphany: No wonder I couldn’t stay at the Big Chef. Vince was a fixer, too, so he couldn’t let me fix anything, he had to do it all. He was denying me myidentity, for cripe’s sake, while I was threatening his. I’d told him I needed his sledgehammer and then taken the cabinets out with my screwdriver instead. We were clearly incompatible, housing-wise. Weneededto live separately.
I cracked a semi-warm Diet Coke in celebration of my realization, and then realized that I needed him for other things and I loved him, so I should probably not share any of that last epiphany. It could stay a private epiphany. An epiphany of my own.
I looked around my dark, over-furnished, under-windowed new living space and just throbbed with happiness.
This was going to be agreathouse.
CHAPTER 21
At five, I pulled up to the house Liz had bought. There were four cheap cabinets at the bottom of her stairs blocking the way, and her car was parked off to the side. They’d been tumbled down the stairs and were battered so I figured she was throwing them out. I dragged the cabinets and shelves to the Gladiator and put them in the cargo bed. Then I backed up, turned around, and drove to the county road. I deposited them where they could be seen by anyone driving by. I was pretty sure people would pick them up. People in Over-the-Hill had basically nothing, so they were good at picking things up and repurposing them.
Then I drove back but parked short of the house. I got out and walked the terrain and checked the perimeter, as Major Rogers would have insisted on. The house was in what the locals call a ‘holler’ but built on the side of it, so the back of the house was in the air on stilts and the ground below sloped off, way down. It was the only house down a long dirt driveway, definitely isolated. There was, since gravity worked, a stream splashing along the center of the draw. At least Liz had a water source handy, and I suspected it was potable water as there was no one living farther up the draw. But she most likely used well water. Most people out here did since there was no city water. Also, a septic system and field lines. I’d have to buy a test kit and check the well water, but it was probably fine.
I checked my phone, but there was no cell phone service. Which figured. I hiked up the side of the draw and looked down. The small house was pretty much hidden in the trees. It did have the advantage of not being anywhere close to the Ohio River and subject to flooding. But it was really small. I estimated about the square footage of my two Big Chefs. I wondered what I was going to do with all my extra space now. Maybe the weekly poker game to fleece Bartlett. Hell, no.
I noticed movement to my left and froze, my hand drifting toward my pistol. A fuzzy face peered out from behind a bush at me.
“Well, hello, Mister Fox,” I said. “You’ve got a new neighbor. I’m warning you, she’s nobody to mess with.”
The fox didn’t seem impressed, just cocked its head and disappeared.
A good thing? No mosquitos here in the hills; the fast-moving stream negated precluded water where they made their home. Liz would be happy about that.
