Part of Your World(30)

Mom wasn’t really my mom. Not for any practical purposes. She’d had me when she was fifteen. My dad had been a sixteen-year-old tourist whose family had no interest in me. Grandma and Grandpa raised me.

I had only fleeting memories of ever seeing Amber as a kid. She took off as soon as she could drive. We didn’t really have a relationship until after my grandparents died.

They’d left the house to her.

My aunt Andrea, Liz’s mom, and Aunt Justine, my cousin Josh’s mom, didn’t want it. They both lived in South Dakota and had no intention of coming back to Wakan. So my grandparents had left the house to Amber, probably thinking they’d change their will to me when I was old enough, but they’d never gotten around to it. So Amber took all.

I begged her not to sell it. At twenty-three, I hadn’t had the means to buy it. I convinced her to let me run it as a rental, that she’d get a deposit every week, and she could always sell it if it didn’t work out. She’d agreed, and we’d entered into the arrangement that I’d been living under for the last five years.

When she called, she called about money.

“Amber,” I said, answering on the third ring, trying not to sound as moody as I felt.

“Hi, Daniel, it’s Amber.”

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. Sometimes I thought she wasn’t all there.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“So, are you gardening right now?”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

She was making small talk. That was weird. “I’m just sitting here, in the four-season porch. Why?”

She paused.

“So, I don’t know how to say this without just coming right out and saying it? I’m selling the house.”

I froze. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m listing it. Like, today.”

I stood. “Wha—why?”

She was making shuffling noises. She seemed distracted.

“Amber, you can’t.”

“I already have an agent. That Barbara lady? The one from Root River Real Estate or whatever? She says it’s worth five hundred thousand dollars!”

I shook my head. “But…it’s going well as a rental, it’s making money.”

“I’m tired of owning it. It’s too stressful. I have to deal with the taxes—”

“I’ll do it. Let me do the taxes—”

“Nah. It’s just too much work. I don’t have time.”

Bullshit. She didn’t lift a finger, I did everything. She wanted the money.

I went outside and started to pace.

“Why don’t you just buy it?” she asked.

“Amber, I don’t have the money for a down payment on a house like this. It’s going to be tens of thousands of dollars.” My mind was racing. “The house has been in this family a hundred and twenty-five years,” I said. “You can’t do this. Grandpa would—”

“Grandpa would what, Daniel? Roll over in his grave?” I could tell she was rolling her eyes. “It’s being used by strangers. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not like you live there or something.”

“I do live there!”

“You live in the garage. Why don’t you ask whoever buys it if you can just stay there? Like, rent it or something. And anyway, Barbara says it’ll probably just get bought by an investment company who wants to keep it as a B & B. So maybe they’ll keep you. You could have the same job and everything.”

“And if they don’t? If a family buys it to live in? You’d let that happen to the house? I’ll lose my job, apartment, my workshop—”

I stopped at the side of the house and peered up at it. The twisting vines and oak trees on the stained-glass window shone emerald under the hand-wrought eaves that my great-great-great-grandpa carved with his bare hands. My great-great-grandpa had been born in the bedroom with the four-poster bed. My grandpa proposed to my grandma in the living room in front of the fireplace with the green tile mosaic.

I knew every nook and cranny of this house. She couldn’t sell it. I couldn’t let her. This was my home. My entire childhood. Generations of Grants had been born here, raised here, died here.

“Look,” I said. “Give me a few months to get a down payment together. Please. So I have a fighting chance at a loan.”

I had no idea where I’d get the money. I got a percentage of every rental in exchange for managing the property, and I sold my furniture when I completed a piece. But it was a hobby, not a stable source of income, and the house wouldn’t rent again until at least May. I lived modestly. I had a couple thousand saved up, but not nearly enough to put down what I was sure the bank would ask for.

She sighed. “I don’t know—”

“I’ll open it up for the off-season,” I said before even thinking about it. “You’ll get all that added income. Plus, there’s work it needs,” I added quickly. “There’s water damage in the Jack and Jill room, the roof needs to be replaced. If that stuff doesn’t get repaired, it’ll just lower the value, and it’s going to take me a few months to fix anyway.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Amber. I have never asked you for anything. Please. Give me this.”