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It’s why I found myself on the quiet bay with a binder of all the paperwork from the lawyer and about a dozen more pages of information that I’d been able to get from Charlotte during my weeklong absence.
This wasn’t going to be easy. And it wasn’t going to be cheap. Not only that, but if this was something I was going to do, I could no longer justify any sort of prolonged absence from the property.
There was no way I’d be able to off-load all the responsibility onto Charlotte.
I had too many choices ahead of me, and I didn’t feel like I could settle my feet into any of them.
My peace and quiet were being kicked out from underneath me, and I couldn’t help but imagine Charlotte’s tightfisted grip on them as she yanked them away.
I stood from the chair and slid the binder underneath my arm as I walked back toward the house.
After two tours, listening to her show off bits and pieces that she loved about the house to the builders, listening to their gushing in return, I could begrudgingly admit that when it was finished, it would be incredible.
But the process to get there was unlike anything I’d ever attempted. Even though the responsibility of someone else’s dream was a familiar weight on my shoulders, this one didn’t necessarily sit any easier than the last one had. At least with my dad’s dream, I’d had an undeniable talent for playing football. That had made it easy to pursue. My talent had also enabled me to support my family.
This was different. I was the extra weight. The guy who needed all the details spelled out for him, the obvious issues broken down in layman’s terms.
I didn’t like it.
In fact, I fucking hated it.
And that unsure footing had my mood in a precarious position when I saw a glimpse of Charlotte through the upstairs windows.
I let myself in through the back door and called her name.
“Up here,” she yelled. “In the primary bedroom.”
I made my way up the stairs, keeping to the left of the treads, and studied the peeling, faded wallpaper on the walls as I walked down the second-floor landing. Now all I could see in those holes in the plaster was dollar signs. So many dollar signs.
The furniture that remained was gathered into the bedrooms in the west wing of the house, ghostly shapes covered in sheets until Charlotte knew what would happen with them.
And as I picked my way past each open doorway, I started tallying up in my head how many large items there were.
A bed frame stood in the middle of each bedroom I passed—tall and heavy, each with four posters that had somehow withstood the abuse done to the house in the last handful of years. It was a miracle, really, that no one had bashed in windows to clean the entire place out.
By the time I got to the primary bedroom, I’d lost count of how much furniture still remained.
“Why don’t you sell all this shit?” I asked.
Charlotte’s head snapped in my direction, her pen frozen over the notebook she was writing in. “Sell all what shit?” Her nose wrinkled at the last word, as if it were beneath her to say it.
I gestured into the room. It was a big room, with two massive windows overlooking the back of the property. Beyond the line of the trees, you could see the water. There was another towering four-poster bed without a mattress. A rolled-arm couch in a truly hideous shade ofgreen. Another settee by the foot of the bed with a flower pattern that made my eyes water. A dozen end tables and gilded mirrors and another chair-couch-chaise thing that was so ugly I could hardly look at it.
“This.” I pointed at the ugliest one. “It’s horrible. We could probably have a yard sale and earn all the money you need for your roof with this stuff.”
She gasped. “Are you insane? That’s a Swan mahogany settee from the 1870s. Even in horrible condition, it’s worth well over a thousand dollars, and this is not in horrible condition.”
“It’s pink.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Lord save me from men who fear pastels.”
My face felt warm. “I’m not afraid of the color. I’m trying to figure out a creative solution to the fact that you’re telling me our proposed budget is all but worthless. Extra money for all of this won’t magically fall from the sky.”
“And you think a garage sale is going to do it?”
“Probably not, because if anyone out there wants to buy this horrible thing, I’ll eat my hat.”
She whipped the beat-up hat off her head. “Please, feel free to choke on mine.”
