Sunset Beach(19)
Clamping one hand over her nose, she rushed to a front window, pushing and tugging at the swollen wooden window sash until she’d managed to shove it upward a scant six inches. There were no screens, of course, but those would have to come later. She worked her way around the living and dining rooms, desperate for fresh air. Some of the windows had been painted shut, but she managed to open two of the four picture windows in the front room, and one in the dining room.
Drue followed the abbreviated hallway toward the two bedrooms, which were separated by the cottage’s only bathroom. She poked her head into the bath, breathing through her mouth in anticipation of whatever horrors she would find there.
At least, she thought gloomily, the Hermit Hoarder hadn’t been able to do too much permanent damage here. The black-and-white penny tile floor was filthy, but the tiles were all intact. The ballerina-pink toilet and matching pink sink and bathtub were still standing, though coated with what looked like decades of grime.
The chrome towel bars and toilet paper holders had been wrenched from the walls, and a lone, nearly empty roll of toilet paper stood atop the toilet tank.
“Bleach,” Drue muttered. “Gonna need a lot of bleach.”
Swallowing hard, she stepped into the bathtub and wrenched the aluminum sash of the window there upward, letting in a welcome rush of fresh air.
Drue tiptoed into the larger of the two bedrooms. By current real estate standards Nonni’s room was tiny, hardly the stuff of a real master bedroom suite. The carpet here was a purple red, the walls painted to match. In Nonni’s day, the walls and carpet were baby blue. The picture window opposite the wall where Nonni and Papi’s bed had been was covered with venetian blinds, giving the room the overall effect of a burgundy cave. Without another thought, she went to the window and yanked the blinds free of the wall, flooding the room in welcome sunlight. This window had been painted shut too.
She stood in the center of the room, waiting to see if she could sense her grandparents’ presence here. On the right side of where her grandparents’ bed had been, she imagined the mahogany nightstand, with its ever-present box of tissues, Nonni’s Avon hand cream and, always, her white-leather-covered missalette. She glanced over the door frame and was jolted, and then reassured, by the presence of the hand-carved wooden crucifix. It was still there!
Reluctantly, she moved on to the second bedroom, “her bedroom,” Nonni always called it. She’d furnished Drue’s room with a frilly white-canopied bed and a fussy French provincial dresser and nightstand, which Drue had adored until she turned fourteen and decided she hated everything, including this room.
In the intervening years someone had painted Drue’s room mud brown. Two walls were covered with crudely constructed sagging wooden bookshelves still loaded down with rows of paperback books. Obviously this had been the hoarder’s den. The double window, which had been adorned with ruffled, white dotted-swiss curtains during Drue’s youth, was now covered with a beige woolen blanket, which had been nailed to the wall. Maybe the tenant had been a vampire?
At least this window had screens. After opening the sash, Drue stood at the picture window, which now left the room flooded with light. Outside, she could see what was left of the narrow patch of lawn Papi had seeded and weeded and babied. The tangerine tree she’d climbed to pick fruit to eat out of hand (and to use as ammunition in the never-ending rotten-fruit wars with the Harrell boys), was still there, stunted now and nearly leafless. But beyond it stood the fringe of Australian pines, and beyond that, the dunes. Just barely visible was a sliver of turquoise ocean.
She sucked in her breath. It had never occurred to her until this moment that her grandparents had given her the room with the best view of the water. In fact, they had always lavished her with the best of everything they had to give. She put a hand to the grimy glass. Even now, Nonni and Papi were looking out for her.
Her cell phone rang. She extracted it from the pocket of her jeans and reluctantly answered.
“Hey Dad.”
“How’s the house?”
She walked back toward the front door, mouth-breathing as she went. She stood outside on the abbreviated front porch, gulping in the clean air.
“Pretty grim.”
“Sorry about that, but you’re young. Probably nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix.”
Staring around the corner of the living room, she saw a mound of plaster shards she’d overlooked earlier. Glancing up she saw the source of the problem. A huge brown water stain blossomed over the ceiling, where the raw lath was exposed.
“Yeah, elbow grease and a new roof,” she muttered.
“I meant to ask, what are you doing for furniture?”
“I dunno,” she admitted. “My old garage apartment came furnished. All I brought was my clothes, my kiteboard rig, some books and my coffeemaker.”
“Pretty much what I figured,” Brice said. “After we talked earlier, it occurred to me that we’ve been paying rent at a self-storage place out in Pinellas Park ever since we redecorated our house. I know there’s some of your grandparents’ stuff left from after Nonni died, and of course, the stuff from my ‘bachelor pad’ that Wendy made me get rid of. I don’t remember what all’s there, but you’re welcome to it, if you want.”
Drue ground her back molars. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she didn’t need Wendy’s rejects, but she forced herself to reconsider. The reality was, she needed those hand-me-downs. Spite could wait.