Page 25 of Leave It to Us
“Shit!” she cursed, and grabbed the ends of the denim shirt still hanging partially off her shoulders, thanks to Tami.
Deacon cleared his throat loudly. “Be right back,” he said, and then made his way out of the kitchen.
Jeremiah grabbed one of the dish towels that had been hanging on a drawer handle. “I’ll start cleaning this up.”
And Yvonne promised herself she would die of mortification later. For now, they still had business to tend to.
An hour and a half later, the five of them walked around until they were once again standing at the front of the house. And what a majestic house it was. Even through Yvonne’s newly adjusted lens, the house was still a magnificent structure that had borne so much from behind its walls.
The two-story home stood with the same burst of exuberance and flourish that Grandma Betty used to possess. With five gabled windows jutting from the shingled roof and the elegant sweep of the wide porch and elaborate stairway, it was an attention grabber, regardless of how long Deacon’s to-do list was. A huge live oak tree stood as if it were guarding the house on the left side of the stairs, with shorter shrubbery around it and on the other side of the stairs. The walkway up to thehouse had a smooth gravel path, and a fountain that didn’t work was about twenty feet away.
“The block-stucco construction was a good way to go, so the bones of the house are still good,” Deacon had told them. “It’s not a total demolish job, nor do we need to completely gut it to make the changes. But there are some pretty big fixes that need to be made before you can get optimum value.”
He’d said that a while ago, when they’d been in the house, standing at the top of the stairs. They’d just completed going from room to room on the second level, and after he’d read off all the items on the list, which seemed never-ending, Lana had sighed. “This is going to cost a fortune. We can’t afford to do this.”
“We can’t affordnotto do it,” Tami had countered. “It’s what Grandma Betty wanted.”
“Then she should’ve left us more than fifty thousand to complete this job,” Lana had countered right back. “Or better yet, maybe she should’ve had Deacon get started on some of these jobs before she passed away.”
That question had lurked in the back of Yvonne’s mind as Deacon moved through the rooms, talking as if he’d done this appraisal long before the previous two weeks after Grandma Betty’s death.
“Why didn’t she have you start the renovations sooner?” she had asked him, ignoring her sisters and their dispute for the moment. She could—and would—have this discussion at length with them later; she knew that for certain.
Deacon had released a heavy sigh and glanced over at Jeremiah before answering. Was he asking for permission? Did he and Jeremiah know something they didn’t? Yvonne wasn’t going to like that if that were the case, and she’d known without a doubt that Tami and Lana wouldn’t like it either. But for the moment, she’d wanted to try to get what information she could before either of them could react.
“I don’t know how much you knew about your grandmother’s illness, but she had good days and bad days,” he had told them. “I was hired in late March of this year, but I’d been a fan of your grandmother’s all my life. My mother was a huge fan too and was always bragging about Ms.Betty having fallen in love and married a beenyah.” He had chuckled then, and Yvonne wondered which she liked better: him laughing and using the term for a ’Fuskie native, or giving that solemn look he’d been tossing around during the time they’d been together.
“She had Sallie call my office one day and told me to come over for lunch and to bring my mama with me. I wasn’t totally sure what the lunch was going to be about, since I didn’t usually take my mother on business meetings, but I wasn’t going to question Ms.Betty, nor was I going to pass up the opportunity to get into this beautiful house.”
He hadn’t been lying about the beauty of the house, which stood amid mature palmetto trees and live oaks. It was the biggest and most prestigious home on this lonely stretch of road. The next house was about a half mile down the road in the opposite direction. There, more houses were clumped together—some that had been built in the past ten or twenty years, and others that were the smaller ones that had been on the island for much longer than Yvonne or even Grandma Betty had been living.
“She talked about the three of you for much of the time we were at lunch and how she wanted to leave each of you something that spoke to how much she loved you,” he’d continued. “And to do that, she said she had to get this house in order. I thought she meant we’d start the renovations right then too, so the house would be ready to sell once she passed on, and then the money could go to you. That’s how I figured it would go. But no, that’s not what she wanted. She told me to make this list, and then she gave me that check with the instructions to put it in an escrow account and hold it there until the three of you were backon the island. So that’s what I did.” He’d shrugged after that, as if his words had miraculously explained everything.
They had not.
But one thing was as clear as it ever was: Grandma Betty had wanted them back on Daufuskie for another summer. Well, right now Yvonne wanted to get this walk-around over with. She’d always preferred the ripping-the-Band-Aid-off approach; it was best to get all the bad news at one time so she could then regroup and reconfigure what her next steps would be. This situation was no different—they couldn’t afford for it to be. All three of them had a life to return to in the city, so whatever needed to be done here needed to be done quickly.
“What are we looking at as far as time?” Lana asked, her tone weary and tinged with irritation as they all stood in front of the house now.
Yvonne listened for Deacon’s response but kept her gaze focused on the house, the huge wide-planked porch with four matching rocking chairs and the small table with one plant on top and several others surrounding it in between two of the chairs. The front doors were a dark-oak color, with painted paned windows. Yvonne had always thought it was like walking into the church whenever she came up on the porch and entered through those doors. It had always made her feel like she was special that she not only knew who lived here but knew them well enough to be allowed to sleep in a comfortable bed behind those walls. That the bed had been purchased for her and placed in a room she’d been allowed to assist in designing had filled her heart in a way nothing else had since.
“Ten to twelve weeks at minimum,” he said.
“What?” Lana asked. “That’s all summer.”
Yvonne turned back just in time to see Deacon nod. “Yes, I know. And that’s if all the stars align. Meaning, we’ve got to get the proper permits from Beaufort County and touch base with the Daufuskie Island Historical Foundation to make sure none of what we plan to do disrupts anything historical.”
“Right,” Tami said. “It’s important to not disturb any of the history here. Everything should be preserved for the next generation. I think that’s what Grandma Betty would’ve wanted.”
“I agree,” Deacon said.
Yvonne wondered how he knew that with such certainty. She could deduce how Tami figured she knew, because what she’d said earlier when it was just the three of them in the kitchenwastrue: she had talked to Grandma Betty the most. And not just in the summers when she’d come down here after Yvonne and Lana had stopped. But because even during the times when they were all here together, Tami had stuck close to Grandma Betty the most. She had always climbed into their grandmother’s bed at night instead of falling asleep in her own like the rest of them did. But that had mostly been after Daddy’s death. They’d all felt lonely and afraid to an extent then because their future had been so uncertain. Would Mama continue to let them spend the summers with the grandmother she had deemed flighty and irresponsible? Or would their lazy summers filled with hope, great food, and love be taken away, the same way their loving daddy had been?
“Yvonne? You listening?” Tami asked, pulling on Yvonne’s arm.
Yvonne had to shake her head to get her thoughts back on the present. “Yes ... yes. I hear you,” she said, and then cleared her throat. “Do you think you could print out that list you have so we can go over it in detail together?” She turned away from the house to look at Deacon, who, along with Jeremiah and Lana, was standing behind her.
When exactly she’d walked away from their group to stand closer to the shrubs in front of the porch, she had no clue.
