Page 161 of Hell Bent

Sebastian

We looked at two houses where the people had moved out and we could get in easily. They both seemed fine to me, but Alix’s mother said that she was sure the first one had dry rot, and in the second one, she said that renovating the kitchen would be “a major project. And you know best, of course, Sebastian, but really—two bathrooms? And this street is quite busy. Will you be riding your bicycle to school, Ben?”

He looked past her. “I don’t have a bike.”

“Wait,” I said. “OK, I should have noticed that. Why not?”

“You couldn’t really ride where we were,” he said. “And—” He stopped.

Alix said, “Ben. Do you know how to ride a bike?”

He turned red.

I said, “Your mom didn’t have time to teach you.”

“She was busy, OK?” The words burst out of him. “And I told you, I didn’t need one!”

“Fine,” I said. “Here’s what I think. We’re going to live somewhere that you can ride a bike, and I’m going to teach you to do it.”

Ben said, “What—” and stopped.

I didn’t worry about Alix’s parents. I didn’t worry about the realtor. I steered Ben into the next room and said, “Whatever it is, tell me. Nobody’s had a perfect life. Everybody has something.”

“What if I can’t learn how?” he asked. “People learn when they’re kids. And OK, I tried once on Kyle’s bike, and I kept falling off. What if we get a bike, and I’m not coordinated enough?”

“You’re plenty coordinated enough,” I said. “How coordinatedare six-year-old kids? It’s going to be fine. We’ll practice in an anonymous parking lot until you get the hang of it, and then we’ll all get bikes and do some riding, now that it’s not pouring every day. You know Alix will be all about that. I’d say ‘mountain biking,’ but she’d just want to do it with us, and?—”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “If she fell off, she could get really messed up, and she probably wouldn’t want to do just the easy stuff.”

“You’ve got it. We’ll save the mountain biking for when it’s just you and me.” I put a hand on his shoulder for a moment, then said, “Now let’s see if this lady can scare us up a real house.”

When we got back into the not-big-enough kitchen, she had. Well, kind of. She said, “There’s a house that hasn’t come onto the market yet, but I got wind of it. I haven’t seen it myself, so I can’t promise, but it’s being offered by a realtor I know, and she’s said good things. It’s walking distance to both the Hollywood and Beaumont Village neighborhoods, which sounds like what you want. Let me see if there’s any way we can take a look.”

That was why, an hour and a somewhat grumpy café stop later—Ben was flagging, and as for Alix, she was not the most patient woman in the world—we were pulling up outside our seventh house of the day. We’d driven through the Rose City Golf Course on the way, too. Alix had studiously looked away and drummed her fingers on the armrest, and I’d thought,As omens go, I like this one.

The house looked like the setting for a family sitcom.Exactlylike that. A second realtor, presumably representing the sellers, got out of her car and said, “You’re getting the very first viewing. We haven’t staged it yet or done photos, but it’s such a charming house.”

Alix and I looked at each other. From what I’d learned about real estate so far, “charming” seemed to mean “dark and with tiny rooms” and “needs work.” But the front porch …

Ben said, “Wow. See,thislooks like a house. Look at the porch!”

It was wide, it was covered, it had hanging baskets full of flowers, and it even had a sort of swinging gate at the front that you could latch if, for example, you were out there with your dog. There were two rocking chairs. There was a porch swing. It was the Golden Ideal of porches.

“OK,” I said, “but that’s just the porch.”

When we went inside, though, Ben’s mouth fell open. What came out of it was, “Wow.”

“Classic Craftsman,” the new realtor said brightly.“Withthe original woodwork and built-ins. Look at the shape it’s in. I do think this house has one of the best layouts I’ve seen, too. You can really take it in with it unfurnished like this.”

Our realtor said, “Of course, it’s only forty-three hundred square feet, with just three bedrooms.”

“But with so many bonus rooms,” the new realtor said.

“What do you think, Alix?” I asked. “Could we squeeze into forty-three hundred square feet?”

It was, in fact, a perfect house. The kitchen had wood cabinets with glass fronts, French doors, and a deck. The yard had a huge old tree and a firepit. The house had a sun porch. It had a study. The bedrooms were huge, the floors were hardwood, and the windows in the master looked out on that big tree. And in the basement …

“Space for a game room here,” the realtor said. “They did a family room, but there’s so much space upstairs already, isn’t there? And through here …”