Page 14 of My Favorite Lost Cause
“We still have no idea what it’ll cost.”
There’s a polite cough from behind us. Elijah stands there, looking somewhat uncertain. Perhaps because I’m sitting herecuddlingwith the girl who introduced herself as my sister.
Maren lifts her head and smiles at him, sunny and untroubled, because she’s affectionate with everyone and has never noticed thatI’monly affectionate with her. “How was it?”
“So, from a structural standpoint, it’s salvageable,” Elijah says, “but there’s pretty significant water damage in the basement—you’ll need to underpin the back left corner, and there’s some necessary remediation to keep it dry going forward. There’s also a fair amount of water damage in the attic because that roof has been in bad shape for a while. We’re talking replacing joists and redoing the upstairs ceiling. Plus the roof, obviously.”
“That’s not that bad,” Maren says cheerfully.
Fuck my life.
“Maren,” I growl, “that’s a lot. And none of that makes this a house anyone wants tolivein.”
Elijah runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, it’s far fromlivable. You’ve got radiant heat, which is pretty standard for the time it was built, but you’ll need to replace the copper pipes to get it up and running—not that heat tends to be a big issue here. HVAC is shot, however, and a house of this size really needs two systems, not one. The bathrooms are in bad shape; a lot of the wiring isn’t up to code. I’ll write it all up tonight.”
“Ballpark?” I ask.
“Basement—forty-five grand. Rest of the structural stuff, maybe another four hundred. Soup to nuts with high-end finishes, somewhere around a million. I can get you a quote if you’re interested.”
“But it sounds like it’s safe for us to sleep here,” Maren urges.
Elijah and I both gawk at her.
“You’re planning tosleephere?” Elijah asks, his voice stained by incredulity, and why wouldn’t it be? Maren’s got thirty thousand dollars in jewelry on a single wrist alone. Even if Elijah doesn’t know that the bracelet is Cartier, that the watch is Chopard, that the purse she casually tossed on the porch floor probably costs more than his truck…privilege comes off her in waves.
She’s not someone who sleeps in a house like this.
“No,” I say.
At the same moment, she says, “Absolutely.”
I turn to face her. “Maren, he just said theroofcould cave in.”
She hitches a shoulder. “Then we’ll sleep on the first floor.”
I groan. I already know there’s no arguing with her, so I’m not sure why I’m continuing to try. “There’s only one decent mattress upstairs.”
“Then we’ll drag it down here.”
“You seem to be ignoring the part about there only being one mattress. Though if you’d like to sleep here alone and let me go to a hotel, I can be persuaded.”
She shivers. As much as she loves the idea of this house being possessed by the spirit of a very happy family who threw lavish parties, she doesn’t love its dead inhabitantsthatmuch.
“We can share a mattress for tonight and go get some kind of blow-up thing tomorrow,” she argues. “It’s just one night. We’ll see if we can get blankets and pillows in town.”
Elijah glances away, as if he feels he shouldn’t be listening in. Probably because the incredibly hot girl who claimed to be my sister is now talking about sharing a bed with me.
“Come on,” she says, “it’ll be like a campout.”
“Spoken by someone I guarantee has never camped.”
She grins as if she already knows she’s won, and that makes sense.
Of course she’s fucking won.
And if I don’t get her ass out of here, I’ll be playing croquet on this lawn alone next summer, trying to figure out how I just blew a million dollars on a house I never wanted in the first place.
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