Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 111400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
I couldn’t help laughing as she walked to her car, but Moretti was seething. “See what I mean?”
“Oh, relax. She was kidding,” I said, wondering if I’d just met the one woman on earth who was immune to Enzo Moretti’s smoldering good looks and charismatic charm.
Joy Frankel appeared in the doorway. “Hello,” she said. “Have you been waiting long? I’m so sorry—I was on the phone. Chuckie just called asking about lunch. I swear, the man is fifty-seven years old and still doesn’t know how to make himself a sandwich. Please come in.”
We entered the front hall, and she held out her hand to me. “Cole, right? Or should I call you Officer Mitchell?”
“Cole is fine,” I said, shaking her hand.
“Enzo Moretti. We spoke on the phone.” Moretti held out his hand. “Cole and I are just friends,” he added quickly.
“How nice.” Joy shook Moretti’s hand and turned to Mariah. “And who’s this young lady?”
“This is my daughter, Mariah,” I said. “We’re the ones looking at the house.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “Let’s have a look around.”
Straight ahead was a staircase; to the left, the living room. It was empty of furniture, and the floor was carpeted in a matted, ugly brown. But there was something about the room I liked—maybe it was the high ceilings or the original wood paneling. Maybe it was the fireplace or the arched entryway into the dining room. This house had character. I could feel it.
“Sorry about the carpet,” Joy said. “But I promise, beneath it is a gorgeous original wood floor just dying to be polished. You can see it if you pull back the carpet a little. Go on, take a look.”
Moretti wandered over to the corner of the room as Joy handed me a spec sheet. “It’s four bedrooms, two full baths upstairs,” she said. “But there’s plenty of room to expand on the first level. You could build a fabulous master suite.”
“Cole. Take a look at this.”
I walked over to where Moretti had peeled back the musty old carpet to reveal the original wood floor. “Oh. Wow.”
“This floor will refinish like a dream,” Moretti said with confidence.
“I agree,” said Joy. “The same floor is in the dining room, but at some point it was covered with linoleum.”
Moretti groaned. “What is wrong with people?”
Joy laughed. “Wait ’til you see the wallpaper in the bedrooms.”
Joy was right—the wallpaper in the bedrooms was ridiculous, and the upstairs carpeting was in the same sad shape as the downstairs. But the rooms were spacious, with high ceilings, big windows, and fairly big closets for an old house.
The master bedroom had a fireplace and its own bathroom, and there was a second full bath off the second-floor hallway. Both baths had black-and-white tiled floors, white tiles halfway up the walls, pedestal sinks, and clawfoot tubs. It was a bit like stepping into a time machine.
“As you can see, the bathrooms need a bit of updating,” Joy said sheepishly.
“No, I like this tub,” said Mariah, climbing into it.
Eventually, we made our way back downstairs to look at the kitchen, which had been updated at some point, but would still need a fairly big remodel. I was ready to tell Moretti and Joy that this was just too much of a project, when we went into the backyard.
That’s when I got it—the feeling I would live there.
The property, blanketed with snow, seemed magical and endless, stretching all the way back to the woods. It was quiet and peaceful. “The creek runs right through the trees back there,” said Joy. “It’s frozen now, but I bet in the spring, you could hear it.”
There was plenty of room for a beautiful deck or stone patio, maybe even a pool if I could ever afford it. I imagined ball games on the lawn in summer and building a whole family of snowmen in the winter. Maybe we could even put in an ice rink.
It would take a ton of work, lots of money, and all my spare time. But what else did I have to spend it on?
“Daddy, look!” Mariah pointed to the dilapidated doghouse over to one side. She turned to Joy. “Does a dog live in there?”
“Not anymore,” Joy said with a smile.
“But it comes with the house, right?”
Joy laughed. “Definitely.”
Mariah came over and slipped her hand into mine. “I like this one, Daddy. Can we live here please? Just you and me?”
“Maybe we can, peanut. We’ll see.”
After saying goodbye to Joy and telling her we’d be in touch, we took Mariah home. My mother said she had no plans to go anywhere, and she didn’t mind at all if I went out for a beer with Moretti. I promised to be back in time for dinner and headed back out.
“So what’s with you?” he asked, once we were seated at the bar of the Bulldog Pub, our favorite watering hole and the sponsor of our baseball team in the Allegan County Senior Men’s league.