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I nodded. “It’ll be a cash transaction, so as soon as they can get the title cleared, we’re ready to go.”
JulieAnne’s eyes lit up. “A cash offer? Yes, let’s get back to the office right now!”
Hollie tried not to laugh, but did she smile at me and winked. My grandfather had left his house in Boston to me, and I had sold it while Hollie and I were in Ireland. Hollie had also sold her party planning business to Mindy and Joan, her former assistants. With the money we’d made on both, we could purchase the house here in Salem with cash and still make any changes to the house we needed to.
I took Hollie’s hand in mine, and we followed JulieAnne out of the house and to our cars.
“Meet you both at the office,” she said.
Hollie and I both smiled. Once JulieAnne drove off, Hollie slipped into the car and then started to clap her hands.
“Lucas, it’s perfect! The only thing I see that needs updating is that kitchen! It looks like it jumped straight out of the eighties. Plus adding the full bath downstairs and a theater room.”
“That can come later. Do you want to take on a house like this? When would we do the kitchen remodel?”
Hollie smiled. “I think we can do it!”
“What if the remodel isn’t finished before the baby arrives?”
She thought for a moment, and then her eyes lit up. “We can do it while we live at my house. We assumed we wouldn’t be moving out until after the baby came anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal.”
Smiling, I replied, “Then maybe we can even do the theater room as well!”
Hollie laughed. “Maybe!”
“What do you think?” Tripp asked as we stared down at the 17th century archaeological site that had been discovered when the city was digging to make a parking garage.
“It’s a home, no doubt about it. Look at the rock wall here. If we can follow it, we should be able to get the blueprint of the foundation,” I replied.
Tripp nodded and bent down. “Is that…”
His voice trailed off and I joined him, staring down at what looked like part of a doll head.
“A doll,” we both said in unison.
“Fuck, I love my job!” Tripp stated.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text from Hollie.
Hollie: Don’t forget about dinner tonight.
Me: I won’t. Love you and let me know if you need anything.
“Everything alright?” Tripp asked.
“It’s all good. And yeah, you can go ahead and get the team over; let’s find out what this is.”
Tripp looked up at me, confused. “Did I say that out loud?”
“What do you mean?”
Laughing, Tripp shook his head. “It’s like you just read my mind. I was about to suggest getting the team over to start excavating around the doll.”
I forced a smile. “Great minds think alike.”
“I’ll say!” Tripp said before he started off to pull a few of the interns away from the foundation wall.
Frowning, I stared down at the exposed doll that had to be least three hundred years old, if not older. I bent down one more time, pulled out my brush, and moved it around the area of the head a bit more. It felt like a bolt of lightning hit me. An old clapboard home with a red door stood before me. I quickly glanced around to see where in the hell I was, but the sound of a door opening had me facing forward once again. I found myself inside the house, looking at an elaborately carved interior post corbel. Standing next to it was a small girl with blonde hair holding a little doll.
