Page 47 of Share with Me

Chapter Seventeen

“You can’t usethat one. It’s broken.”

Upon hearing the embarrassed voice, Brinley stepped back from the powder room door. “When’s the plumber coming?”

“Ivan’s going to take care of it.”

“He’s going to fix it himself?”

“I’m assuming that’s what he meant. Just use mine.” Yun tipped her chin toward a long hallway. There was a bedroom at the end of it.

All that chai tea she drank made Brinley rush toward where Yun had directed her.

The entire hallway was covered with more photographs of Yun and her deceased husband when he had been young and in the service, when they married and fed each other wedding cake, and when they held their children in their arms. The gallery was an extension of what was in the family room though going back further in time.

Yun’s bedroom was another snapshot of the past. Faded curtains, worn bedspread neatly made and tucked into an iron bed frame, a frayed house robe hanging off an antique coat tree. The afternoon sunshine came into the room obliquely today, but Brinley could imagine how bright it must be in the summer time.

She found the bathroom. A small little one off to one side. She wondered how Yun and Otto had made do with this tiny space where a cast-iron tub took up half the floor. A small pedestal sink, chipped and stained, squeezed in between the tub and a small toilet.

Brinley flushed it to see if it worked and immediately regretted it as she had to wait a long time for the water to fill up again. A short while later, she turned off all the lights, went down the hallway and found Yun back in her rocker.

“Yun, I would like to get someone to fix your toilet.” There, she said it.

“Oh, we should let Ivan handle it.”

“How long has the commode been broken?”

“Well, it hasn’t worked right since the last time Ivan tried to fix it.”

Ha. Ivan the violinist and plumber. “And when was that?”

“About a couple of months ago, maybe.”

“Sixty days.”

“Oh, at least, but really, it just broke again two weeks ago. Not long.” Yun shrugged. “I go to my bedroom, and Ivan goes to his in his bedroom upstairs. Don’t worry.”

Ivan lives here? In this dump?

“It’s a long walk for you down the hallway.” Somehow Brinley felt that she had to make it all better for Yun. The poor elderly lady didn’t have to live in a ramshackle house.

Brinley could fix it. She could fix that porch, repaint this whole room, give Yun a new bedroom, renovate the dumpy kitchen, give them a new roof, a new house, and make it all better.

“How about this? I came to your house. I didn’t bring a hostess gift. Let me do this for you.”

“Well…” Yun looked concerned. “Let’s think about this. The toilet’s been having problems on and off for two months and completely broke two weeks ago. Ivan doesn’t have time to fix it, with all his rehearsals. Besides, how expensive could it possibly be?”

“There you go. So let’s get it taken care of, and Ivan needn’t worry.”

“If you give us the bill.”

Without committing to being reimbursed, Brinley was on her iPhone right away, calling the plumber who worked with Brooks Renovations. After getting to the owner, who happened to be Tobias’s younger brother, she was given the runaround.

“What do you mean you can’t send someone right now? Get someone from the job site. Toby’s there. Ask him. He’d understand—What? No one’s available? Seriously, Felipe?”

Brinley raised an index finger to signal to Yun that she needed a minute, then went outside to the front porch.

“Tell you what. I’m going to tell yourolderbrother everything you told me. And I’ll call Always Flush and tell them you’re short of plumbers. I’m sure Adam over there would be glad to send me someone right away—Yes, now.”

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