“To pumpkin spice, baby,” Ronni said with a grin and held up her glass to cheers with them. She turned to Jenna. “And the world of books?”
“The books are good. I did have a thing happen, though.” She proceeded to tell them about the stupid blog, and whatever calmness her rum and Coke had trickled into her was washed out by a resurgence of that irritation from earlier.
“Ugh. What a bitch,” Ronni said. “And not the good kind of bitches, like you guys. The bad kind.”
“It’s just so infuriating,” Jenna said with a shake of her head. “Like, if you don’t like romance books, then don’t wander into a romance bookstore. And why do you need to trash a little shop like mine?” She took a sip of her cocktail and looked from Ronni to Dakota and back. “Her blog has lots of followers. She could hurt my business if she wanted to. It’s just so not cool.”
Dakota reached across the table and gave her forearm a squeeze. “I’m sorry, boo.”
“Oh!” Jenna held up a finger. “I almost forgot. She’s local.”
“The blogger?” Ronni asked. “Like, she lives here in Northwood?”
“I assume so, since I ran into her on my way to see you yesterday,” Jenna said, pointing at Dakota. “Literally ran into her. I had to grab her to keep her from falling.”
“Shoulda let her tumble,” Dakota said.
“I said that to Shane earlier. If I’d only known…” Jenna gave herself a full body shake. “Okay. Enough of my complaining.” She turned to Veronica. “How were the patients today in therapy world?”
“Well, unsurprisingly, everybody is a mess…”
Carmichael Avenue was quite lovely—tree-lined and quiet with a decent amount of space between houses and alternate side of the street parking. It was Friday afternoon, and Sawyer glided her Honda Accord to a stop in front of the duplex that was labeled number 513.
There was a red pickup truck in the double-wide driveway, and as she looked, the driver’s side door opened and a man with white hair and a matching beard got out.
“Mr. Oliver?” she asked as she exited her own vehicle and crossed to him, hand outstretched. At his nod, she added, “Sawyer Hall.”
“Nice to meet you in person, Ms. Hall,” Oliver said, shaking her hand. He had a gentle smile and reminded her of everybody’s favorite uncle. “Shall we?” He indicated the house in front of them and headed toward the open front porch and the door on the right.
She’d seen the house online, done the virtual tour several times, and it lived up in person. If the smell was any indication, it had been freshly painted, and David Oliver confirmed that when he said, “Painters just finished up yesterday. Everything’s white, but if you want to do a different color on your own, I’m good with that, just try not to paint any rooms super dark, yeah?” He glanced at her with a grin. “Takes a lot of primer to cover black walls.”
She smiled back at him. “I just want to get in and settled. If I paint, it would be down the line.”
“Fair enough.”
The front door opened into a small foyer with a coat closet to her left and a small square of ceramic tile on the floor. The staircase was straight ahead, and to her right was the living room, empty, that featured warm-colored oak hardwood floors, a gas fireplace on the outside wall, and tons of natural light. “This is great,” she said quietly. “It’s hard to tell from photos online whether a place is light or dark, you know?”
“My wife has tons of plants in our house, so she’s all about the sunlight,” David Oliver said. He was respectful and stood back while she wandered, and she appreciated that.
The living room led into a small dining space, with sliding glass doors that led out into what looked to be a shared yard.
“Yard is fenced,” David said. “There’s a divider between patios, but you share the yard. That seemed better than cutting it in half.” He shrugged as if he wasn’t a hundred percent sold on the idea himself.
She nodded. “And who is my neighbor?”Please don’t say a family with teenagers who will blast loud music and bang on the walls…
“Oh, that’d be my niece. Just her and her animals.”
She managed to keep her “Thank God” inside her head and simply nodded instead. The kitchen was small but functional and modern, not that she’d done much cooking lately. Maybe it was time to get back into that…
“Your stove is gas,” David Oliver was saying, pulling her back to the present conversation. “Dishwasher’s over here. It’s new. Fridge is also new.” He pulled the freezer drawer on the bottom open. “Fresh ice,” he commented for no reason, and Sawyer decided she liked him a lot. The path moved in a circle, a hallway leading from the kitchen back out toward the front door to the stairs. “You’ve got your powder room here.” He gestured to a doorway off that hall. “Small but updated.”
He held an arm out for her to head up the stairs first where she checked out the two bedrooms, one bathroom with a new, big tub that Sawyer immediately envisioned herself soaking in, and a sizable linen closet.
Back downstairs, David said, “Welp,” and held out a set of keys and a garage door opener. “One key for the front door and one extra. Your garage space is on the right, just like your half of the house. Easy to remember.”
“Got it.”
“You have all the info about how to pay rent and when, yeah?”
