“He’s yours now,” Cass had said gruffly. “A rescue. I already paid for his shots, so you can’t take him back.”
Hattie closed her eyes and willed the tension to leave her body. But it seemed to Hattie that every muscle in her body was clenched tight. She looked over at the dog, who was now flopped down on the floor, blissfully unaware of the situation she’d placed them both in.
“Oh Ribsy.” It came out in one long breath, a cross between an exhale and a sigh. “We are so screwed.”
They had an offer on the Tattnall Street house from one of the investors Tug knew. It would leave them in the red, but her father-in-law was adamant that they get out from under the financial burden. Hattie had begged him to wait. Just a week. Let her finish painting the exterior, get the roof finished, get the house polished enough to beckon a buyer just as na?ve as she’d been, who’d pay something close to retail.
“Not one more penny,” Tug had vowed. “We sell it as is and count ourselves lucky.”
“Lucky” was not a word Hattie would use to describe her current financial status. Unbeknownst to Tug, she’d staked everything on Tattnall Street. And not just her savings.
The knot in her stomach felt like a boulder right now. She could lose the house. This house, the wood-frame bungalow in Thunderbolt, a former fishing village just east of the Savannah city limits, had been a bank foreclosure that she and Hank had bought for $32,000, right before their wedding. They’d fixed it up over two years, using leftover lumber and materials scrounged from the company’s job sites, working nights and weekends, sleeping on pallets on the floor. She’d paid off the mortgage with the insurance settlement from Hank’s accident.
It’s what he would have wanted, she knew. But she hadn’t had the time, or so Hattie told herself, to finish any of the projects they’d started together. The wooden shingles on the front of the house still bore a dozen different swatches of paint, because she couldn’t decide which was the right color. The kitchen countertops were still plywood, even though the granite slabs were right there in her backyard. And the lumber for the second bathroom they’d planned to build was still stacked beside the driveway, where it had been sitting for seven years.
Hattie stared out at the street, tears blurring her vision. One by one, the other houses on this block had been bought up and rehabbed over the past few years. She’d been terrified when Hank found the derelict house on Bonaventure Road hiding behind massive overgrown azaleas. The seller had run an unlicensed tattoo parlor here and rented out rooms by the week.
What would Hank think of the mess she’d gotten herself into? Of the very real possibility that she would lose this house because she’d gotten, as he would have put it, “so far out over your own skis.”
The streetlights were blinking on now. She should go in, shower, and eat something. Maybe, standing in the claw-foot tub they’d rescued from the dumping ground of the backyard, the cool water sluicing over her body, she’d come up with some realistic solution to her predicament. Or maybe she’d just wash her hair, put on clean clothes, and fall into bed. Maybe she’d finally get some sleep.
She glanced over at the dog and scratched his ears again. “Come on, buddy,” she said softly. “Let’s go inside.”
* * *
“Hattie?” Cass cleared her throat.
They were sitting at their usual table at Foxy Loxy.
“Hmm?” Hattie was jotting down numbers on a legal pad, scratching through them, consulting her phone, and reading incoming text messages.
Cass gently removed the phone from Hattie’s hand.
“Hey! I’m in the middle of something here. I might have found a buyer for all those damn kitchen cabinets.”
“Great. That can wait for a minute. Something I need to talk to you about. And I need your full attention.”
“Please don’t tell me any more bad news. I really can’t take one more thing right now.”
“It’s not bad news. In fact, I think it’s a way we can come out of this whole Tattnall Street deal smelling like a rose. But you gotta promise to hear me out.”
“Oh-kay.” Hattie sat back in her chair. “Hit me.”
“It’s about that television producer. The one who fell through the floor?”
“Mauricio?” Hattie rolled the name off her tongue. “Mo-reese-ee-oh? Please. Like I’m gonna believe some dude who walks in off the street and tells me he wants to make me a star.”