“But it’s been a long stretch without words, so for now at least, I prefer the words to the silence.”
“Fair enough. I’m staring at my land, and I’m wondering why you haven’t built on yours. Do you have plans? Ideas?”
Thirty-One
Mo paused with his hands on his keyboard. “I could ask you the same question. Why do you live at The Haven? Why haven’t you built a sprawling mansion? Why don’t you have the photography studio you wanted? Or the deck with the view for miles?”
She fiddled with the wrapper on her water bottle. “I asked first.”
He closed his laptop. “At first, I was afraid I’d be living here alone. I thought Cal and Meredith would find people to marry and then they’d live somewhere other than Gossamer Falls and the dream of living on this land and having our kids grow up together the way we did didn’t seem likely.”
“Were the tiny houses your idea?” Bronwyn looked at the three houses behind them.
“That is a matter of some debate. Meredith claims it was her idea. Cal and I both contend that she had nothing to do with it and that we came up with it one night while working in his dad’s shop and moaning that grown men need to have their own place and not live with their parents.”
“You did have your own place. So did Cal. And Meredith. You weren’t freeloaders.”
“True, but we didn’t have a place here. When we came home tovisit, we stayed with our parents, and that was fine. But when Cal and Meredith moved home, it made sense for us to each have a place of our own. But we didn’t need or want to build our forever homes without our forever person.”
Bronwyn absorbed that. “What if you didn’t find your forever person?”
“We discussed that at length. We agreed if we weren’t married by the time we turned forty, we’d build the big houses.”
“So, do you have plans?” She was persistent. He’d always liked that about her.
“Not real ones. I have things I know I want. I usually walk through Cal’s houses before he turns them over to their owners, so I’ve seen things I like and things I would never do.”
“Oh, I have to know. Give me one must-have and one never-ever.”
He drummed his fingers on the closed laptop. “Must-have ... Master bedroom on the main floor. That’s more because of what we’ve been through with Mom and Dad than anything I’ve seen. Mom could barely walk up and down the stairs for a while. Sickness and illness are part of life. I want my room on the same level as the living areas of the home.”
“Good point. My home is all one level at the moment. I don’t think I’ve considered what would happen if I broke my leg and my bedroom was upstairs.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. What’s a never-ever?”
“A single-car garage.”
“Is there a story there?”
Mo nodded. “One of Cal’s builds. The lot was fairly small and the guy wanted to maximize his house space. Understandable. But Cal told him not to skimp on the garage. He told him he would want more space, not less. The guy insisted. Said the house wasgreat, decorated beautifully, all that good stuff. But that tiny garage was a mistake. A year later, the guy was back in Cal’s office trying to figure out how to add on to it.”
“Mo.”
“Yeah?”
“I started talking, and you stopped working.”
She was right, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He opened his laptop. “Fine. I’ll work. But that isn’t getting you out of answering my questions.”
She scrunched up her nose at him.
He laughed at her antics. “You didn’t think I’d forget, did you?”
“I hoped.”
“Come on. Let’s hear it.”
