Choosing Home, page 2
part #2 of Family Bonds Series
Despite what Arthur did to her granddaughter.
Sophie took Ben by the arm and ushered him inside. “Though I can’t imagine what she would want with such a big house.”
Ben couldn’t, either, but that was none of his business. “So where should I put my stuff?” he asked, shifting the increasingly heavy box in his arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” his mother said with a quick clap of her hands. “Let me show you where you’ll be staying. I don’t know if you remember this house, but it will be the same room you were in when…” His mother let the words fade away and Ben knew she referred to Arthur’s nonwedding. She fluttered her fingers as if erasing the memory. “Well, never mind that. You’ll know where it is.”
She ambled down the hallway toward the back of the house past a wall holding various pictures of Ben and Arthur over time.
Ben’s steps slowed as he walked past a picture of his graduation from medical school. Such dreams he’d held then. Such plans to save the world.
Such a crock.
He followed his mother into the room she had prepared for him and looked around. “Looks good, Mom,” he said, dropping his books on the bed. He walked to the window and gazed out over the expanse of the yard and the work that lay ahead of him.
Downed trees lay in a crisscrossed mess at the back of the large property. The grass was overgrown, and the hedge between his mother’s house and the property beside hers looked like something out of a frightening fairy tale. The pond was a sludge of green overgrown with lillies and weeds.
When his mother first moved here, Arthur had promised he would get it shipshape. He was living in town after all. Then Arthur shipped out and Ben hadn’t had the time to come help.
“I know it looks like a lot of work, but you did say you’d be here a month,” his mother said from behind him.
“That’s the plan,” Ben said, giving her a reassuring smile.
“And you’ll be going back to Ottawa after that?”
Ben felt the steady beam of his mother’s gaze and the weight of expectation behind it. His parents had invested heavily in his education. Not just monetarily but in terms of support and encouragement. He had been their shining star. The son who had made good and had become a doctor.
As opposed to Arthur, who, last he heard, was still working as a car salesman at a second-hand car dealership. His fourth job in three years.
Ben’s gaze slid away from his mother’s questioning one, and the sigh he released was heavy and ragged around the edges. “I’m not sure what’s happening after this, Mother. I’m here to help you out and that’s all I want to think of for now.”
His mother laid her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve taken too much on,” she said quietly. “You are a good doctor. You were doing your job. Saskia always asked too much of you.”
Ben stretched out his clenched hands as if releasing the burdens he’d repeatedly picked up.
“I should have been there for her, Mother. She called me and I couldn’t come. She was my wife.” He struggled to keep the anguish and regret out of his voice. He thought he had dealt with it, and despite time and counseling the regret could still rise up and choke him.
“She was your wife,” his mother reiterated. “You were divorced. She had no right to ask you to leave your work to go get her. You were busy. You were doing an important job.”
He had to fight down an angry retort, knowing that his mother was only voicing thoughts that had slipped back and forth in his own mind.
“I was setting the broken arm of a murderer, Mother,” he said, his voice bitter with regret and anger. “And because of that, my wife, my ex-wife, died.”
Ben rested his hand against the cool glass of the window, the memories rising to the surface.
“She made her own choices,” his mother was saying, a hurt note entering her voice.
He immediately felt a flicker of regret. “I’m sorry, Mom. You’re right.” He said the words more to mollify her than to admit anything.
As he spoke, he saw Shannon leaving the house with her grandmother. The sun caught auburn highlights in her hair, making it shimmer.
Despite his own emotional moment he couldn’t stop the beat of attraction as he watched her. She was as beautiful as he remembered.
He checked his admiration.
Shannon was off-limits to him. Even if she and her grandmother did move next door, Shannon might as well be living on Mars.
He was a worn-out divorcee who had blown his chance at a relationship and she was his brother’s ex-fiancée.
No way was anything ever possible between them.
Two
“Here we go,” Shannon said, turning off her car and glancing over at her grandmother. “Do you have the keys?”
Nana held them up, her smile wide. “Haven’t lost them yet.”
“So proud of you,” Shannon teased.
She looked over at the house her grandmother had just purchased, still feeling like things had moved too quickly. Nana had made up her mind and was immoveable. Shannon wished, once again, that they had worked with a real-estate agent on another house rather than deal with the owners on this one.
And because her nana was in a hurry, she had foregone a house inspection which would normally be one of the conditions of the sale. And because she could buy it outright, she didn’t need a mortgage.
Too many shortcuts. But Nana was determined to get this house. Especially when she found out that three other people, not from Rockyview, were interested. Who also were purchasing without conditions.
“Let’s go then,” Shannon said, getting out of the car.
Yesterday Hailey, Dan, Sabine, and Tanner had moved Nana’s furniture into the house. Shannon had told them just to do the basics, they would finish up today.
Because she had rented her apartment as furnished, the only thing she needed to do was move her personal belongings in. Which would happen over the next day or so.
She waited for her grandmother and together they walked up the cracked and broken sidewalk to the porch. Nana fitted the key in the lock and glanced over at her granddaughter. “I feel like I should make some kind of pronouncement.”
“Or you could just unlock it and step inside.”
“So unromantic,” Nana said with a chiding note.
“So realistic,” Shannon returned.
They stepped inside the house and Shannon was relieved to see that, for the most part, it was tidier and cleaner than when they did their first walk-through. Her cousins had laid out the furniture much like it had been in the house on the ranch. It looked like her house now, Shannon thought with a feeling of relief.
“Oh look, the previous owners left me a house-warming gift,” Nana said, pointing to a large, poster-sized velvet painting of a rose that still hung on the wall.
“Some gift,” Shannon said, shaking her head, glancing around to see if anything else was left behind.
Then she screamed as a mouse skittered from under the table, across the kitchen floor and, ducking behind the stove.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Sorry.” Shannon shook her head, her hand on her chest. “I just saw a mouse.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear, indeed,” Shannon said, looking around once more. Then she walked over to the painting. “Can I take this down?” she asked, wondering why the previous owner had left it behind.
And as she pulled it off and set it down, she knew why.
The enormous picture had been hiding a two-foot-wide gap in the wall. The insulation had been torn or eaten away, Shannon thought, remembering the mouse with a shiver. Even worse, she could see the edges of the shiplap which covered the outside of the house.
“I want to check behind the stove,” Shannon said, marching over to the kitchen, looking around for more evidence of wear. Without waiting for her grandmother, she pulled it back and felt a clutch of dismay.
There was another hole in the wall behind the stove.
Looked like Shannon would be the one to do the house inspection that her grandmother had foregone and that no one else really had time to do.
She walked through the house and was thankful to find out that, on the surface, there wasn’t a whole lot else wrong. The railing going up the stairs was a bit wobbly, but she knew that. Tanner had said he would come in the next few days to tighten that up. The toilet had been plugged but that had been an easy fix.
She came back downstairs feeling marginally better but the covered up holes still nagged at her.
“You’ll have to get Tanner to have a look at the house more closely,” Shannon said, not sure what else they might find.
“He’s too busy.” Nana Bond’s frown deepened as she tapped her manicured fingers against her lips. “He and Sabine are planning their wedding and getting their own house ready.”
“Okay, then let’s try Connor LaCroix. He might be available.” She pulled out her phone and set her purse on the table.
“Do you need to do this now? I was hoping to go get some groceries.”
“That will have to wait just a few moments,” Shannon said. They needed to get someone to come in soon. While she was still here.
But to her dismay, though Connor answered his phone right away, he didn’t have time to come and help. He gave Shannon a few other numbers and while her grandmother puttered away in her bedroom, putting her clothes away, Shannon tried calling the other contractors.
But they were all busy or not able to come for at least four months.
“Any luck?” Nana asked as she came down the stairs again.
“Unfortunately, no.” Shannon blew out her breath, rubbing her forehead. She didn’t have time for this. She shouldn’t have canceled the lease on her apartment. She and her grandmother could have moved into there.
And then what?
“What about Hailey’s Dan? He sells building supplies, surely he would know something about fixing holes in walls?” Nana asked, sounding hopeful.
“I don’t know how much of a carpenter he is. I don’t even know how much work this would be. I wish you’d gotten an inspector to at least go over the house. He would have found these holes and the loose railing at the top of the stairs.” And who knows what else.
“Thank goodness it’s still spring and we don’t have to worry too much about the cold weather for a while,” Nana said, brightening, surprisingly upbeat about the whole debacle.
“We do have to worry about rain,” Shannon grumbled, wondering, if there were huge holes in the wall, what the roof would be like.
Nana gave Shannon a reassuring pat on her shoulder. “I’m sure it will all work out,” she said. “Now let’s get you moved into your room.”
Shannon knew it was pointless to argue. So she picked up one of her boxes and followed her grandmother, who carried some of Shannon’s clothes, up the stairs. Nana opened the door and stepped into the room.
“I love how the sunshine comes in here,” Nana said as she made a half turn in the beam of light spilling through the fly-specked window onto the wooden floor. “I think you’ll be happy here,” she said with a note of satisfaction. Shannon smiled at her grandmother’s optimism as she ripped open the box she’d taped up only a couple of days ago.
“Even with the holes in the walls?”
“Those can be fixed,” Nana said, her voice muffled as she hung Shannon’s clothes up in the huge closet. She emerged, still smiling. “Even with the holes I still think this is better than you having to live in some stuffy apartment.”
“Well, there wasn’t a single stuffy apartment I can rent right now, anyway.” This was Shannon’s best choice, which had seemed reasonable enough until she’d run into Ben.
Shannon pulled her duvet out of the box and tossed it on the bed that had already been moved into the house.
For the most part, all her stuff was here. Only a few more boxes and she’d be done. It seemed pointless knowing she was moving in a couple of months again, but Shannon preferred to think of this move as a stopover in the process. A way to spend some time with her grandmother and ease her way out of Rockyview.
“In spite of all the other stuff, this house is so perfect for me,” Nana Bond said, clasping her hands in front of her.
Shannon had to admit that much. Though it was large, it was close enough to the hospital to give the family peace of mind. The doctor had warned Nana to be more careful after her heart attack. At the time, Nana Bond had been living out on Shannon’s cousin Tanner’s ranch. Shannon felt that was too far from town and the hospital and had been pushing her to move into Rockyview. Thankfully Nana had agreed.
And now that Shannon’s sister Hailey was settling down in Rockyview, as well, this house could serve as a central meeting place for the family.
For the most part it was a good choice, the only exceptions being the holes and the neighbors who were a visible reminder of Arthur and the past.
Two months after getting Ben to deliver the news about the canceled wedding, Arthur had finally called Shannon. In halting words and incomplete sentences he’d told her their engagement had happened too quickly and had been a mistake. For the last months of their relationship he had felt as if he was going through the motions of love. He didn’t feel like they were in sync anymore. She was always so solemn. So serious. As if she had taken on the weight of the world. He had foolishly thought getting engaged would ignite a spark he thought was missing from their relationship. But it hadn’t. Then the wedding plans created a momentum he couldn’t stop until just before the wedding.
Shannon jerked open the flaps on the top and bottom of the box, pushing away the memory. She folded it down and shoved the box under the bed to join the other boxes she’d already emptied. She’d thought she had put all those old feelings away.
But now Arthur’s brother and mother lived next door and it was as if all the ground she had gained had been swept away.
“Why don’t you throw those moving boxes away?” Nana asked with a frown. “You won’t need them again.”
Shannon tried not to roll her eyes. It was as if her nana thought ignoring the job in Chicago would make it mysteriously disappear.
Instead, Shannon brushed the dust off her pants and walked to the door. “Let’s organize the kitchen and then I can finish unpacking my car.”
Her nana didn’t reply and Shannon glanced over her shoulder to see her grandmother looking out the window down at the street below.
“Nana? What do you think about doing the kitchen? Or are you too tired?”
Nana spun around, then waved her hands at Shannon in a shooing motion. “Oh, no. I’m not too tired at all. You go and get the boxes out of your car. I’ll take care of the kitchen myself.”
“I don’t mind helping you.”
Nana frowned. “I would just as soon do it on my own. Then I know where everything is.” She flapped her hands again in Shannon’s direction. “You run along. Hurry and get those boxes out of your car and then you don’t have to think about that anymore. Just go.”
Shannon nodded, puzzled at her grandmother’s insistence, but shrugged it off as she headed down the hall to the wide stairs. As she had the first time she had toured this house, she paused at the landing halfway down, tracing the intricate lines of the stained-glass window set in the wall.
Naomi would love this, she thought, her heart contracting at the thought of her sister sitting vigil at her dying fiancé’s bedside. Naomi had called a couple of days ago telling them it was a matter of weeks until Billy was gone.
Then she, too, would be returning to Rockyview.
One by one the family was coming together. First Tanner and Hailey. Soon Naomi. Garret? Who knew with her peripatetic cousin. Garret seemed to love working around the world, not establishing a home base other than a few visits to Rockyview now and again.
But she, the one who had always stayed, the one who had never wanted to move away, would be leaving town shortly after Tanner and Sabine’s wedding.
Melancholy brushed her soul as she fingered the necklace Nana had given her after her heart attack. A rough gold nugget in a setting hung from a thin gold chain. The nugget was a visible reminder of her and her cousins’ past and of choices made by their ancestor, August Bond. He had gone looking for gold but found love.
Shannon shook the thoughts and memories aside, then walked the rest of the way down the stairs, trailing her hand over the wide banister of the staircase. The stained-glass panels of the double doors at the end of the front hall were as dusty as the rest of the windows in this house, but they would show their true beauty once they were cleaned.
The living room off to the right side of the wide hallway was nicely set up but the room on the other side held a jumble of boxes belonging to her grandmother. The walls of this room held remnants of crayon marks and numerous dents and scuffs. Shannon guessed it had been, at one time, a playroom.
She cocked her head to one side, as if evoking the voices of the children who might have played here. The thought created a dull ache deep in her soul.
Would she ever have children? She pressed her hand to her abdomen as if imagining a child there. If she and Arthur had gotten married, they might have had a baby by now.
“Aren’t you getting those boxes?” Nana’s voice broke into her depressing thoughts and pulled her back from the brink of self-pity.
“Yeah. Sure,” Shannon called back, puzzled at the urgency in her nana’s voice. “Going right now.”
She stepped out of the cool of the house into the heat of the afternoon. A welcome heat, she thought, looking up at the mountains that still held a generous cap of snow. This year winter had hung around like an unwelcome guest hoping to tell another joke that no one wanted to hear.
But now it was gone and leaves had burst into glorious green, softening the branches of the birch and poplar trees lining the street.
She opened her car and was greeted by a blast of trapped heat. The tape on the largest box had curled away from the top and she carefully pulled it out, hoping it would hold together until she got it up to her bedroom.
