The Homewreckers(10)

“I guess it’s okay,” Mo admitted.

She tossed the folder onto the desktop. “I told him I’d think about it. So. My sizzle reel? When can you have it ready for me? Tony is already breathing down my neck about a replacement for Krystee and Will.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ll need a couple weeks.”

The door opened and Asha stepped inside. “Rebecca? Your car’s here.”

Rebecca jumped up and grabbed her jacket. “Talk soon. Ciao, Mo.”





5

Hattie Hears Him Out




Ribsy met her at the door of the bungalow. Hattie collapsed onto one of the Adirondack chairs on the front porch. Hank had built the chair as a birthday gift for her from plans she’d showed him on Pinterest.

It was just the one chair. He’d had the pieces for its mate all cut and laid out on his work bench in the garage. And then one muggy August night, right after dinner, he’d decided to take his vintage Kawasaki out for a ride, after a long day working on a remodel at Isle of Hope. The client was a wealthy lawyer, and every morning, the lawyer’s wife met him at the job site with a long, frustrating list of change orders.

Hattie was at the kitchen sink washing up the dinner dishes when Hank came in, his helmet under his arm. “Just gonna take a ride out to Tybee,” he’d told her. “Maybe watch the sunset over the Back River.”

“Let’s drive out there,” Hattie had suggested. “Let me finish the dishes and I’ll…”

“Nah. I just wanna feel the wind in my face. I’ll be back in an hour.” He’d kissed her on the cheek. And then he was gone. The pieces of the second Adirondack chair were still on the work bench, just as he’d left them, but now covered with cobwebs.



* * *



Hattie unlaced her boots and peeled off her socks. An early evening quiet had settled over the street. She reached around, unsnapped her bra, and slithered her arms out of it, pulling it off from beneath her grimy T-shirt. She dropped the bra to the weathered floorboards, stretched her legs out, and sat back in the chair.

Ribsy sat down beside her, putting his muzzle on her lap. She scratched his silky ears and heard his feathery tail thump enthusiastically on the wooden floor. In those awful, endless months following Hank’s death, Cass had insisted she needed something in her life to care about. One day, she showed up at Hattie’s front door with a small, wriggling brown-and-white ball of fur in her arms. A pound puppy, she’d called him.

“He’s yours now,” Cass had said gruffly. “A rescue. I already paid for his shots, so you can’t take him back.”

Hattie closed her eyes and willed the tension to leave her body. But it seemed to Hattie that every muscle in her body was clenched tight. She looked over at the dog, who was now flopped down on the floor, blissfully unaware of the situation she’d placed them both in.

“Oh Ribsy.” It came out in one long breath, a cross between an exhale and a sigh. “We are so screwed.”

They had an offer on the Tattnall Street house from one of the investors Tug knew. It would leave them in the red, but her father-in-law was adamant that they get out from under the financial burden. Hattie had begged him to wait. Just a week. Let her finish painting the exterior, get the roof finished, get the house polished enough to beckon a buyer just as na?ve as she’d been, who’d pay something close to retail.

“Not one more penny,” Tug had vowed. “We sell it as is and count ourselves lucky.”

“Lucky” was not a word Hattie would use to describe her current financial status. Unbeknownst to Tug, she’d staked everything on Tattnall Street. And not just her savings.

The knot in her stomach felt like a boulder right now. She could lose the house. This house, the wood-frame bungalow in Thunderbolt, a former fishing village just east of the Savannah city limits, had been a bank foreclosure that she and Hank had bought for $32,000, right before their wedding. They’d fixed it up over two years, using leftover lumber and materials scrounged from the company’s job sites, working nights and weekends, sleeping on pallets on the floor. She’d paid off the mortgage with the insurance settlement from Hank’s accident.

It’s what he would have wanted, she knew. But she hadn’t had the time, or so Hattie told herself, to finish any of the projects they’d started together. The wooden shingles on the front of the house still bore a dozen different swatches of paint, because she couldn’t decide which was the right color. The kitchen countertops were still plywood, even though the granite slabs were right there in her backyard. And the lumber for the second bathroom they’d planned to build was still stacked beside the driveway, where it had been sitting for seven years.

Hattie stared out at the street, tears blurring her vision. One by one, the other houses on this block had been bought up and rehabbed over the past few years. She’d been terrified when Hank found the derelict house on Bonaventure Road hiding behind massive overgrown azaleas. The seller had run an unlicensed tattoo parlor here and rented out rooms by the week.

What would Hank think of the mess she’d gotten herself into? Of the very real possibility that she would lose this house because she’d gotten, as he would have put it, “so far out over your own skis.”

The streetlights were blinking on now. She should go in, shower, and eat something. Maybe, standing in the claw-foot tub they’d rescued from the dumping ground of the backyard, the cool water sluicing over her body, she’d come up with some realistic solution to her predicament. Or maybe she’d just wash her hair, put on clean clothes, and fall into bed. Maybe she’d finally get some sleep.