Page 23 of Thick as Thieves

“My late brother-in-law. He kept a regiment of lawyers on retainer. Now Lisa does.”

“The lawyers had your father declared dead?”

“We waited for ten years before petitioning the court. It’s a process, but at the end of it, his estate was probated. Lisa and I got clear title to the house, which we needed in order to sell it.”

“But you haven’t. How come? Did you always plan to come back?”

“No. Lisa certainly didn’t. But she stalled on selling it for sentimental reasons. I didn’t give it much thought while I was trying to establish myself.”

“As what?”

“As anything,” she said on a light laugh.

“Such as?”

“Well, let’s see. My first job out of college was in public relations. I wrote press releases for a promising new record label in Nashville. It folded. I worked as an assistant to the curator of a New Orleans art gallery. She ran afoul of the IRS. I and a friend invested in a cupcake bakery. It went bankrupt, and so did the friendship.” She stopped ticking off her failed attempts at a career and gave him a wan smile.

“You get the idea. Anyway, every once in a while, Lisa would circle back to the subject of putting the house up for sale, but she never acted on it. It had no priority. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. Anyway, here it’s sat for all this time.”

“Going to seed.” He looked around the kitchen, but eventually his gaze returned to her. “Why now? Why come back and take this on?”

“None of your business.”

He snuffled at her sharp rebuke. “Actually it is. If I start this project for you, and it turns out that the house doesn’t even belong to you, and I get sued by somebody, I’ll be up shit creek. See, I don’t have a regiment of lawyers on retainer.”

“I’ll email you a copy of the deed.”

“Are there any house plans to go with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Blueprints would be helpful.”

“I’ll see that you get copies of everything.” That would take some finagling. She hadn’t yet broached the idea of renovation with Lisa, and she predicted that her reaction would be negative. On steroids.

As though reading her mind, he said, “What about your sister? Is she onboard? The house is half hers. What’s she think of your project?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Mr. Burnet.”

“I’m careful that way. Do you have your sister’s thumbs-up?”

“In all honesty she didn’t warm to the idea of my coming back here, to this town.”

“Why?”

She gave him a pointed look. “I’m sure you know why.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. You’ve got a lot to live down. I admire you for trying. But I gather your sister doesn’t feel the same.”

“No, she doesn’t. After the loss of my baby, she urged me not to stay. I won out.”

He looked at her for so long and with such intensity, she had to will herself not to squirm.

At last, he said, “Tell me what you have in mind.”

“What I had in mind when I came here was to make a home for my daughter and me. Lisa’s former bedroom was to have been the nursery. I was going to turn my parents’ bedroom into a playroom with a built-in mom-office tucked in under the sloped ceiling in the corner.”

“Good use of otherwise wasted space.”