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Pulling in behind a contractor’s truck, I hopped out and was greeted by a smiling man a little older than me. He was slightly heavy and had a trucker’s cap pulled down over his head, but his smile was disarmingly charming. He held his hand out for a shake before he even said a word.
“Charlie,” he said. “I presume you’re Mark?”
“I am,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.”
“Nice to meet you too,” he said. “Come on in, I have some things to show you.”
I followed him into the house and felt my gut tighten when I looked at the disrepair and the way that things had been broken in order to repair the bones of the house.
“Wow,” I said.
Charlie nodded and turned to me as I surveyed the scene in what was once an immaculate living room.
“As you can see, we have been rather busy,” he said. “We were going to lay down some vinyl flooring here, as we discussed a few weeks ago, but as we got the boards pulled up, we discovered some rot down there. It’s something you’re going to want to address now rather than later since we already have everything pulled up.”
“I see,” I said.
“Then, over here, you’ve got some leakage from the plumbing in the walls behind the sink. Now, I could do a patchwork job over it and probably get it up to code and whatnot, but you would want to fix it before you sell it, if that’s your aim. Is that your aim?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered honestly. “It’s a lot of house for one person.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, looking around at the three thousand square foot house. “Just you?”
“Just me,” I said, sighing.
“Well, at any rate, if you’re looking to get in here quickly, a patchwork job would save some time and would be good for at least a year or two. Otherwise, we’re looking at a couple extra days at least. Probably more, since I’ll have to take out part of the wall to find the leak and have the plumber replace the piping.”
“Do it,” I said. “I don’t want anything half-assed. Do what you need to do. Just get it done right.”
“Fair enough,” he said, grinning. “That’s what I like to hear.”
The rest of our meeting was a bit of a haze. Like driving through the neighborhoods, I could see my old life playing out in each room as we went through them. I was agreeing to pretty much anything Charlie suggested they do, which I was sure he was thrilled with, and when we were done, I shook his hand and signed off on the repair changes.
I didn’t know how I felt as I left, but I did know I wanted something else to think about. I had the doctor who was filling in for my dad staying on at the clinic for a few weeks while I got things handled with the house and got my feet under me, so I needed to come up with distractions. I thought about Carmela and the lies we needed to tell to convince Jade that she and I were a couple.
I kept it up over the next couple of weeks, occasionally calling or visiting Carmela at her office. Sometimes she would drop by the ranch house and hang out with me there, piecing together our fake relationship and peppering it with stories we both agreed on. It turned out that she needed the escape too. Jade had been spending a bunch of time on the ranch and was specifically looking for Carmela to teach her. And to brag about the wedding that was coming.
As the weeks went by, I also started seeing patients, taking advantage of the fact that the business remained open, even while we debated the ownership with my aunt. Some of the clients that had been with my father were reluctant to come to me, but most of them came around after a week or two.
One afternoon, as I was happily signing a medication order for one of the elderly patients that had just come to see me for the first time that afternoon, I looked up at the sound of the bell in the lobby. From my place in the back near my desk, I could see the front door clearly, and was shocked to see Carmela coming in. Limping.
Worried, I signed the slip and handed it to my assistant and ran out to the lobby. Carmela was sitting just past the sign-in desk, with a clipboard in one hand, filling out paperwork.
“What happened?” I asked as I came out. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Hey, Mark.”
“Hey,” I said. “Can you walk? Do you want to go in the back?”
“I’ll wait my turn,” she said, motioning toward an old man asleep in a chair on the other side of the lobby.
