A Conard County Courtship. Rachel Lee
does,” Earl said, climbing out. He might be the last man in town who wore a business suit routinely. Even his own son, the judge, often wore jeans under his judicial robes.
“Let me call inside first,” Tim suggested. “Let her know we’re both here. This can’t be easy for her.”
“It’s not,” Earl said. “Not at all. Bet she hits the road just as quick as she can.”
“Maybe.” He wasn’t about to predict what anyone else would do. Dangerous game, that.
“She didn’t want this place,” Earl mused, pausing on the walk before heading for the porch. “She may change her mind, though. With a little work, this house will become prime real estate. Great location, good size. She should make a pretty penny if she shapes it up.”
“Sure, we sell so much prime real estate around here.” Tim’s tone was dry. Given the kind of work he did, he knew how sluggish the market was locally. Nothing new for this town. Boom or bust. Right now, it was more bust.
“Cut it out, boy,” Earl said. “We’ll get that ski resort and this house would make a good bed-and-breakfast.”
“Now that’s prime optimism,” Tim answered. “That ski resort has been a pipe dream forever. I’d bet the landslide finished the idea, even if Luke is back to checking the geology for a developer.”
“Someone’s paying him,” was Earl’s answer. “So someone is interested in doing it.”
Someone had been interested in the possibility of a resort on the mountainside Tim’s entire adult life. So far nothing had been done beyond clearing a few ski trails, a small investment in downtown improvement with brick sidewalks and Victorian lampposts, and a survey of the hotel site. Then the landslide. Tim just shook his head and wondered if being an eternal optimist was part of how people survived around here. He tended to lean toward optimism himself, despite everything. He had a kid to think about.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “I need to finish work on the heater in time to go pick my son up.”
Earl glanced at him. “He doesn’t walk home?”
“Not when a blizzard is in the forecast.” Tim nodded toward the sky. “Rapid temperature drop this afternoon. Whiteout conditions.”
“You don’t say. I should pay more attention, I guess.”
Tim smiled as they climbed the porch steps and he opened the door. Earl was a gadabout when he wasn’t being a damn good lawyer. Why would he pay attention to the weather report? He could get to his son’s house or Mahoney’s to have beer with friends. Unless court dates had to be postponed, the effects of bad weather on Earl would be minimal.
Opening the door and leaning in, Tim called out, “Ms. Welling? It’s me, Tim, and I’ve brought your lawyer with me. Earl Carter.”
As he and Earl crossed the threshold, he heard hurried footsteps from the back of the house. Still wearing her jacket, with her hands stuffed in her pockets, Vanessa managed a smile.
“So you’re Earl Carter.”
“One and the same.” Earl smiled. “Lots of time on the phone, but nothing like face-to-face.” He stuck out his hand, and Vanessa freed hers to shake it. “Well, what do you think?”
“About the house? Besides the fact I don’t want it? It needs work, Earl. I supposed Mr. Dawson knows how sound it is generally, but paint is sagging on some of the walls. Sagging! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”
“Bad paint job,” Tim remarked. “Old paint. Lack of care. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“This place looks like a headache,” she said frankly. “I wish you could have stopped Bob Higgins from doing this to me.”
Earl shook his head. “He did this all on his own. I never knew about it until he died. Then everything landed on my desk.”
“It landed on me like a ton of bricks,” she said. “I never wanted to come back here. Never.”
Tim decided it might be a good time to step out of the conversation. “I need to go put this valve on the heater so I can get it up and running again. It’s getting cold in here. There’s a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Why don’t you two help yourselves?”
He headed down to the basement, acutely aware that without heat, given the coming cold, this place could suffer a lot of damage now that he’d turned on the plumbing again. Eventually that heater should be replaced, but he had a feeling Vanessa Welling wouldn’t be the one to do it.
* * *
In the chilly kitchen with Earl Carter, Vanessa pulled out a chair and sat at a table she remembered all too well.
“Bet you remember this house,” Earl remarked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She really didn’t. Good memories had been turned into a nightmare by the man who had inflicted this house on her, and she had little desire to look back.
“You used to play with the Higgins kids, didn’t you?”
She looked at him. “I think I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You did,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t want to talk about your memories. That was a lead-in to how you’re sitting here. After Bob Higgins was arrested, his wife took their two kids and left. I got to wondering why she didn’t sell the house at some point, then I learned why. She never owned it. It was his, lock, stock and barrel.”
“That fits,” Vanessa said tautly. The guy didn’t even take care of his family. He’d made sure everything was his, even their house.
“So, anyway, I only looked into it to find out how it had come to you. When you said you didn’t want it, I hunted his ex-wife up and suggested that you might be willing to give it to her. She was as interested as you were. Didn’t want to even think about it. So here we are.”
“So he ruined everyone’s lives.”
“That’s how it looks. She’s remarried. Even changed the last name of the children.”
Vanessa nodded slightly and looked down as Earl put a mug of coffee in front of her. That looked better than anything she’d seen since arriving here. Well, except for Tim Dawson. “I hate this, Earl,” she said, reaching out to grip the mug in both hands for its warmth.
“No better man than Tim Dawson to take care of it for you. He’ll be quick, he won’t overcharge and he won’t do more than you want and need him to do.”
She raised her gaze to his. “But what about selling it?”
“We’ll get that done somehow, too. We haven’t got the busiest real estate market, but a house like this, reasonably priced, should sell. And you can afford to price it reasonably, because your only sunk costs are going to be for basic repairs and taxes.”
She hadn’t thought about that, and it made her feel slightly better. She could sell it for a song, then it wouldn’t be her problem anymore. Or maybe she could even find a place to donate it, once she was sure it was safe. A house left basically abandoned for twenty years might have all kinds of safety problems. No termites, though, according to Earl. That had been the first thing he had checked out.
So...it would be okay, she told herself yet again. Lately that had become a mantra.
Earl let her have some silence, for which she was grateful. She was still trying to deal with the mess of emotions coming back here had awakened in her. She had a lot to be angry about, a lot to be sad about, and feelings she had put away long ago had all surfaced with her return, with having to deal with this house.
The past had become present, through no choice of her own, and for the first time she considered just how much she hadn’t been able to get over. No, it seemed more like she had plastered over all the cracks and the plaster was