“I guess they sold it,” Gael went on sadly. “There’s no sign anymore.”
“They did,” Erik said with a smile. “But I know the guy who bought it.”
Jenny’s heart skipped a beat.
He wouldn’t have,she thought to herself.He couldn’t have. There hasn’t been time.
But Erik was out of the SUV already, opening her door and offering her his hand.
“Erik,” she murmured, overwhelmed.
But he only squeezed her hand and grinned as he helped her down, before letting go to open Gael’s door.
“Did he invite us over?” Gael asked as he hopped out, for once not being the first one to catch on to what was happening. “The guy who bought it?”
“Something like that,” Erik said with a secret smile.
“He’s really lucky,” Gael said as they headed up the curved path to the porch. “This is the best house ever. Look, there’s a new wreath. And there’s wood in the holder.”
Gael was right, a beautiful pine wreath hung on the door, and the holder for kindling was full, there was even a wooden porch swing that Jenny was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.
When did he have time for all this?
“Here we go,” Erik said, slipping a key out of his pocket. “I think the guy who lives here should open it up.”
He held the key out to Gael, whose eyes got very wide.
For a moment, he only looked at the key. Then he looked up at Erik, who nodded to him. When Gael’sbeautiful dark eyes turned to Jenny, she felt tears prickling her own eyes.
“Really?” he whispered.
“Really, really,” Erik told him. “If you want to live here, then we can live here.”
“Yes,”Gael yelped, already scrambling to the door and fumbling to get the key into the lock.
Jenny had a moment to compose herself as Erik showed the boy how to use the key gently and the trick of pulling up slightly on the heavy wooden door to open it.
“It’s not a new house, so it’s got character,” Erik explained. “And that also means it’s not perfect. But we still love it.”
“Things don’t have to be new for us to love them,” Gael said firmly.
“Exactly,” Erik agreed. “And this is a nice old house. I’ll bet it has stories to tell.”
Jenny followed them inside, cataloguing all the furnishings that had been left behind. It almost looked like they could move right in today.
“They left their stuff,” Gael said.
“Some of it,” Erik said. “But they couldn’t do without their books, so we’ll have to fill up all those bookshelves ourselves.”
Gael took off to the living room to see for himself how much space they now had for books and comics.
“Is this okay?” Erik asked Jenny quietly, taking herhand as light poured into the center hall from the cut glass on the front door, setting rainbows gleaming on the polished oak floor.
“This is… incredible,” she said, shaking her head in wonder.
“If I’d known we would be living here full-time, I never would have bought it without consulting you,” Erik said, his green eyes so serious. “I just thought it would be a nice place to stay when we came here for visits.”
“Oh,” Jenny said, too blown away at the idea of buying a house to use for visiting to think of anything at all to say.
