“I will, Mummy,” she answers, sounding annoyed at my reminder.
This is followed by a loud crashing sound and a tiny, “Uh oh.”
My shoulders drop and I get up to investigate, only to find Isabelle sitting on her tricycle next to a floor lamp that is now sideways on the plywood floor. “Come on out of there, silly beans.”
She cycles past me and out into the yard. A second later, I hear Dolores say, “Come have a bacon chocolate chip cookie, love.”
“Yum!”
I pick up the floor lamp, move it to the side, and struggle with a twin mattress that someone has managed to lodge in here. Once I’ve lugged it outside, I let out a big breath. “That’s the last of it.”
“You won’t get much for that mattress. It’s got a big yellow stain on it,” Dolores says.
“What does that mean?” Isabelle asks.
“It means someone peed the bed,” Dolores answers, wrinkling up her nose.
Isabelle’s eyes grow wide, and she starts giggling. Shaking my head, I go back inside to see what the mattress was hiding. Huh, an old porcelain sink that looks like it’s actually been installed. “Dolores, did you know there’s a sink in here?”
“Yup.”
“Does it work?” I call over my shoulder.
“Why? You want to wash up after touching the pee mattress?” Her voice grows louder, and her shadow fills the entrance. “As far as I know it works.”
I make a slow turn around the shed, which seems much larger now that it’s empty. It’s dark and dingy, but there are two picture windows that have been covered with cardboard sheets Dolores put up so that no one would be able to see all hertreasures. “You know, we could probably rent this out.”
“Rent it out? Like for someone to store their stuff in it?”
“No. For someone to live in.”
“Nobody’s going to want to live in an old shed in our yard,” Dolores says, popping a large chunk of cookie into her mouth.
“Not right now, but if I scrub it up, put down an area rug, add a small table and chairs, maybe a hot plate…” My mind spins with possibilities.
“There’s no biffy. Where will they shower?”
“They can come inside to shower and use the toilet on the main floor.”
“You seriously think you’ll find someone desperate enough to rent out a shed?”
“Yup. And if I make it cute enough, we could get a few hundred a month even,” I say with a big grin.
Dolores opens her mouth to protest, but I silence her with a shake of my head. “This is going to work. They manage this type of reno in a few hours on those HGTV shows. I bet I can have it done by the time I go back to work on Tuesday.”
I beam, excitement flowing through me for the first time in a long time.
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Dolores says.
“Nah, this’ll be easy!”
***
So, ‘easy’ may have been the wrong word. I should have gone with “worth the massive amount of trouble” or “possible for people with a base knowledge of building and proper power tools.” It took me almost five hours of scrubbing to find out that the floors are indeed rotted plywood, and the windowsills need to be scraped, sanded, and repainted. Also, there’s something wrong with the sink, because when I finally managed to get the water turned on, it sprayed everywhere—mostly on my shirt and face.
But no problem. I can and will do this. I have exactly twenty-eight hours to get this done before my next shift. It’s not leaving me any time to study, which means I’ll be two full days behind in my plan, but if I can’t pay for the bloody exams, all the studying in the world will be for naught.
I’m almost finished mopping up the water when I hear my dad’s voice greeting Isabelle. “Hey, Sonny, did you shave off your mustache?”
