For the first time all day, Brad appeared to relax. “I do what I can.”
For the next two days they taped, tarped, and primed the walls. It took some effort for Brad to dig up “old clothes” to wear to work. “You say you’re on a student budget,” she teased, “but you don’t dress like it!”
“Sale racks,” he said, matter-of-factly dusting the front of his button-down. “Conscious consumerism.”
Between paint coats drying, they measured and planned the store layout, hit salvage stores and trolled yard sale listings. Up in the attic they discovered an old oil painting in a gilded frame and hauled it downstairs. When they dusted it off, the faces of five young women appeared, each one dressed in period clothing. All had matching auburn hair.
“Creepy,” Brad said.
“These must be the captain’s daughters!” Leah said. She was ecstatic. “It’s an old family portrait. It’s been buried under all that garbage. We should hang it up.”
Brad shivered. “Or bury it in the backyard.” He stepped left, then right. “Look! Their spooky eyes follow you.”
“I’m going to hang it up.”
They stored the painting, along with their salvage finds, in a back room with beautiful tray ceilings and faded damask wallpaper that had probably once been the dining room. “We should think about a use for this space,” Leah said, her imagination already pumping.
“Focus,” Brad cautioned.
Despite the headway they made, it became clear that the old house still had problems that paint and furniture could not fix.
“We need more help,” Brad said on a lunch break one day. They were sitting on the front steps, eating chicken salad sandwiches and drinking iced coffee from Chatham Perk.
Leah appreciated Brad’s directness: it was as reliable as the starch in his shirt collars. “I have you. What more do I need?”
“Professional help.” He smiled. “Of the contracting variety. I feel like we’re kind of friends, so I can speak frankly,” he added for good measure. It was true. Crawling into the bowels of an old fireplace together to clean out racoon poop was undeniably bonding.
“Take these steps,” Brad said, pushing down on a board that was curling up and away from its nails.
Leah considered the squishy section of wood rot. “Wecould make a trip to the lumberyard and replace a few of the boards.”
Brad made a face. “You can slap a painting smock on me or send me up a ladder after cobwebs, but I’m no builder. If someone steps in the wrong spot on these steps, game over.”
“I know, but funds are tight.” Stefan, the house owner, had made it clear in his last email that he was done funding improvements. Leah glanced across the street, between the tidy cottages on the other side, and at the cerulean blue stretch of Chatham Harbor beyond them.Breathe, she told herself.
“Surely you have investors you can turn to?” Brad asked hopefully.
Leah almost choked on her chicken salad.
“No?” Brad’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Is this all on you?”
Somehow she managed to swallow the chicken along with the fresh lump in her throat. “Go big or go home?”
“Oh dear,” Brad exhaled. “You already came home.”
“I have a small severance from work. And my wedding money.”
“Wedding money.” Thankfully, Brad knew better than to ask. “Is it enough?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Brad said nothing.
“Look, I know this must seem crazy, especially to an economics student. But I know books and readers. I also know this town. There’s no bookstore in a ten-mile radius. And hundreds of tourists stroll these sidewalks every day.”
“I get it. Tourist season is only so long, so you need to open fast.”
“That’s not even it,” Leah said. Brad was proving a good sport and a huge help, but she needed him to understand her vision. Or maybe she still needed to convince herself. “It’s also this place. This old house is one of the last remaining of its kind. She was built by a sea captain for his family. And when they fell on hard times, the daughters united and turned it into an inn to keep it going.”
