Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2)(8)
Sugar Falls would look like it had for generations: picturesque, in a forgotten, hard-working New England way with blocky brick woolen mill buildings along the river and grand Federal and charming Victorian homes around the common. Everything would be just as she—
“Hey! When did you get a Walmart?” Liz sat up in her seat.
Trish gave her a sidelong look. “Five years ago.”
The van swerved suddenly into the passing lane, and Liz grabbed at a baby rattle and half-eaten granola bar as they skittered across the dash. “Um, Trish? The speed limit’s only forty here.”
Her sister threw a wary glance at her daughter in the back seat... and floored it. “Screw the speed limit. The sun is setting. There’s no time to lose…”
LIZ STOOD ON THE UNEVEN cement walk outside her parents’ house, the cool, moist, evening air seeping through her clothes. Ten minutes earlier, Trish had handed her a key to the front door, unloaded Eddie’s crate and Liz’s luggage on the drive and roared away in a cloud of gravel dust.
Liz had been standing there ever since.
She tugged her blazer closed and stared at the old, rambling farmhouse she used to call home. The passing years had not been friendly. Paint cracked and peeled. Shingles curled. The holly bushes, once compact and orderly, now jutted awkwardly toward their neighbors as if fighting for space. A broken branch on a large rhododendron lay brittle and brown against a window sill.
Liz tried not to remember the crisp fall Saturday she and her father had planted the glossy-leaved holly bushes along the drive, or the way each Mother’s Day the rhododendrons by the house would hum like hives from all the bees attracted to their abundant flowers.
Dad had always prided himself on a neat landscape. But now, last year’s golden rod tilted in unruly brown clumps by the side of the garage. And his collection of garden ornaments still sat in the lawn, having never been tucked away for the winter.
When had the place become so… tired? It was like a weary, middle-aged woman who’d given up on herself and taken to wearing elastic-waist pants and sloppy ponytails.
Liz smoothed a hand over her own, sleek, low ponytail, picked up Eddie’s crate and mentally itemized the obvious punch-list items. Trim shrubs. Clean bird bath. Weed walk. Repaint front door.
Rent a bulldozer and raze the place.
She sighed, pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed the one person who never failed to make her feel good about having left Sugar Falls when she had the chance.
“Bailey!”
CHAPTER FOUR
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BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, thanks to Trish, Liz had eaten more Peanut Butter Captain Crunch than her diet allowed in a lifetime, cleaned out all the front gutters and stripped most of the paint off the front door. Which is why, when Bailey pulled into the drive to say hello and drop off a quart of yogurt and a bag of apples late that afternoon, Liz welcomed the diversion like a starving model welcomes an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Bailey flipped the tab on her take-out coffee cup and sipped, her short, blonde ponytails jutting out to the sides. “Sucks being you,” she finally said, balancing the to-go cup on the birdbath and peeling open a Snickers bar.
Liz’s mouth watered. It was the one thing about Bailey she had always envied—her ability to eat anything and not gain an ounce on her pixie-framed figure. The deadbeat father, the crazy mix-up of half-siblings, the trailer-park upbringing—all that made Liz feel gratefully superior, of course, but the super-charged metabolism? That, she envied.
Liz stepped backward down the front walk toward Bailey and squinted to soften the harsher realities the afternoon sun seemed determined to highlight. “I know it’s in tough shape. But, it has good lines. You’ve got to give it that. And old farmhouse charm.”
“Sure. If you can see beyond the peeling paint, ugly aluminum storm windows and shingles that are rolling up like burnt hair.”
Liz looked askance at her friend. “Nice visual.”
Bailey shrugged and toed a clump of grass that was heaving up a chunk of cement on the front walk. She sipped her mocha latte, a drink she’d been addicted to since discovering it in high school. “Just trying to help.”
Liz turned back to the house with a sigh. She had been home all of one day, and already her ‘to do’ list was three pages long. The home she’d always thought of as quaint and picturesque now just looked shabby.
And the town, well, even though most of it felt disturbingly unchanged, there were other parts she didn’t even recognize. For instance, when had they redone the intersection of Route 6 and Miller Brook? If Trish hadn’t been driving, she’d have been half way across Vermont before she figured out her mistake.
All in all, Liz felt like a stranger in her own hometown which only made her feel childish knowing she’d half-expected the world to stand still in her absence.
“Snarky comments aren’t helpful,” she finally said aloud. “I’m shooting for curb appeal. A little fresh paint on the front door, a little pruning out front, maybe a pot or two of flowers and a welcoming chair by the door. Who knows, maybe buyers won’t notice the rest.”
“If you’re looking for distractions, there’s a crazy cat lady in my neighborhood who has an even larger collection of lawn ornaments than your dad. Want me to see if she’ll lend you some more? This yard is just calling out for flamingos. The gnomes look lonely. I think they need pets.”