Keeping her back to Percival, she straightened her shoulders, and said, “It doesn’t like me looking at it.”
I glanced back at the house. “Percival?”
“Yes. Like I said, it’s very persnickety.”
Before I could comment, a gust of wind blew several sheets of papers out of her hand.
A high-pitch shriek I didn’t know was humanly possible erupted out of her small frame. She bolted forward and chased them down a street dampened with morning dew and fog, all the while screaming, “Oh, God no! Please, God no!”
I did the same, minus the screams. Girl had spunk. Sure she was a mess of frazzled nerves, and it was apparently all Percival’s fault, but she could move when she had to.
We zigzagged down the street, lunging after this page or that, and all I could think about was the fact that I hadn’t run this much since Brad Fitzpatrick chased me into the boy’s locker room in the seventh grade. Also, the fact that we had to look ridiculous.
Mostly the fact that we had to look ridiculous.
Just when I felt a page land between my fingers, it would slip away with the next gust. That was pretty much the process for a good three minutes until the wind started spinning around us. It created a tiny vortex, a whirlwind circling us, and the papers flew inside of it long enough for us to finally grab them. It continued until we had every last one.
My hair would never be the same, but I couldn’t have Mrs. Richter stroking out mere minutes after we met. At our age, that was a real possibility.
By the time we got back to the bug, each of us looking like we’d just come off a drunken bender, I felt so bad for the woman I did the unthinkable. I signed. Every. Single. Page. That is, after she proved there were no liens on the house, no back taxes. Basically, there was no catch.
No catch.
I didn’t get it. There had to be a catch. How could there not be?
I held fast to the knowledge that I would have three days to call all of this off. Wasn’t there a law to that effect? I would have three days to back out of the deal, no questions asked?
Then I could go back to my shambolic, bankrupt, nigh homeless life since I was currently being evicted from my apartment. I could feel confident in the fact that I did not owe a fortune on a money pit that was going to take me for every cent I didn’t have, no matter how alluring said money pit was.
I couldn’t believe that at more than four decades on this earth I was an almost homeless has-been. My ex saw to that. Or, well, his mother saw to it. Erina Julson was the most heartless, conniving woman I’d ever met, and still I married her son.
I thought he was different. I thought she no longer had any influence over him. I thought we were in love. I thought wrong. On all counts. They took me for everything I had and then some.
And Annette, my BFF, wondered why I had trust issues.
Yet here I was, possibly making the second biggest mistake of my life. I only had my honor left. My word. My reputation. If I failed again, I wouldn’t even have that. Yet I signed.
Thankfully, the more I signed, the more the wind calmed around us. By the time I handed her back the stack of papers, the neighborhood was as serene as a glass lake.
After replacing the documents in the envelope, she shoved her card toward me with a shaking hand. “Here’s my information if you need anything.”
I studied it with a mixture of confusion and skepticism. “The number is blacked out.”
“Yes, that’s right. Please don’t call.” She stuffed the envelope into her oversized purse, then added, “Ever.” She started backing toward her car.
“What if I have questions? Do I just go by your office?”
“No!” She cleared her throat and began again. “I mean, of course. Though I really have no further information on the house itself. I can’t imagine why you’d need to.”
Damn it. There was a catch. There had to be. “Wait!” I called out to her as she sprinted to a parked purple crossover down the street.
She waved a hand. “My assistant will bring by a copy of the paperwork this afternoon!” Then she dove inside her car and floored it, spinning the front tires in her effort to leave Percival—and me—in her rearview as quickly as possible.
I didn’t even know they made purple crossovers.
I glanced at the zippered bag she’d handed me somewhere between the tornado and her nickel-slick getaway, wondering once again if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
She’d had no answers for me over the phone and apparently that hadn’t changed.
“I don’t understand,” I’d told her when she called three days ago. “Someone left me a house?”
“Yes. Free and clear. It’s all yours. Mrs. Goode left explicit instructions in her will and I promised her—”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know a Ruthie Goode. There must be a mistake.”
“She said you’d say that.”
“Mrs. Richter, people don’t just leave strangers houses.”
“She said you’d say that, too.”
“Not to mention the fact that I live in Arizona. I’ve never even been to Massachusetts.”
“And that. I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Mrs. Goode left very detailed instructions. You must accept the house in person within the next seventy-two hours to take possession. Either way, it cannot be sold to anyone else for a year. If you don’t take it, it’ll just sit there, abandoned and vulnerable.”
Abandoned and vulnerable. No words in the English language made me more uncomfortable.
Three days.
Well, maybe syphilis.
I had three days to decide.
And moist.
I turned to the abode known as Percival, took another good look at what a woman I’d never met named Ruthie Goode left me, then climbed back into the bug and pulled her into Percival’s driveway.
My life had been punctuated by the strange and unexplained. I was flypaper for what others called the weird. Countless friends and coworkers had remarked on the fact that if there was an unstable sentient being within a ten-mile radius, it would find its way to me eventually. Dog. Cat. Woman. Man. Iguana.
I once had to track down the parents of a toddler who thought I was her dead aunt Lucille. An aunt she’d never met, according to the aforementioned procreators.
Everyone called these admirers, for lack of a better term, weird. I called them charming. Quirky. Eccentric.
This, however, took the raspberry covered chocolate cheesecake. I’d only been bequeathed one other item from a departed member of society, and that was when Greg Sanchez handed me his half-eaten ice cream cone seconds before falling into a volcano.
That field trip did not end well.
I grabbed my overnight bag and paused again to get a better look at Percival.
He was already growing on me, damn him. I had a thing for the broody ones. The dark ones with deep, invisible scars who looked like they’d fought a thousand battles. Percival definitely fit the bill.
Filling my lungs with crisp New England air, air that held the smoky scent of wood burning from hearths nearby, I stepped to Percy’s front door, took the key out of the zippered bag Mrs. Richter had given me, and entered.
I stopped just inside the foyer so Percy and I could chat. “Okay, Percy,” I said aloud, only feeling a little silly. “Do you mind if I call you Percy?” I let my eyes adjust to the dimness inside the house. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”