sure. I was just, um, remembering my great-grandmother’s garden and I—well I guess I got a little carried away here.” She stood up and brushed at her knees, but it did no good.
He smiled down at her. “Must have been quite the garden. Hope gardened like a wild woman every summer. She gave away almost all of her produce and complained about the wildlife giving her hell. But she must’a loved it, the way she went after it.” He tilted his head. “You miss your grandma or something?”
“Huh?”
“Well, if you’ll pardon me, seems like maybe you’re crying. Or something.”
“Oh!” she said, wiping at her eyes again. “Yes, I was missing her!”
“That isn’t going to help much, with your hands all dirty,” he said. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here. Come on out of the mud. Wipe off your face before you get that dirt in your eyes.”
She sniffed and took the clean, white handkerchief. “This your house now?” she asked, wiping off her face, amazed by the amount of dirt that came off on the cloth.
He laughed. “Nah. I worked on it, that’s all.” He stuck out his hand, then lifted his eyebrows—her hand was caked in mud. He reconsidered and withdrew his hand. “Paul Haggerty. General Contractor. I build and rebuild and restore around here.”
“Jillian Matlock,” she said, looking down at what had happened to her perfectly manicured, executive businesswoman’s hands. Destroyed. She pulled her hand back and wiped it on her jeans. “Whose house is it then?” she asked.
“The town’s. Hope left the house, land and her trust to the town.”
“Ah, that’s right! I was here last fall. I came to the estate sale and someone told me about that. So what’s going to happen to it?”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, rolled back on his heels and looked skyward. “Been a lot of talk about that. They could make it a museum, an inn, a town hall. Or just sit on it awhile. Or sell it—but with the economy down, it probably won’t pull a good sale price just now.”
“So no one really owns it?” Jillian asked.
“The town does. The guy in charge is Jack Sheridan. He has a bar in town.”
“No new owner?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Gee, I’d love to see what you did inside.”
He grinned. “And gee, I’d love for you to, but you’re a mess!”
She looked down at herself. “Yeah. I lost my head. Got a little caught up in clearing her garden and getting it ready. For what, God knows.”
“It’s not locked,” Paul said. “But I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d wipe your feet before going in.”
She was shocked; her eyes were round and amazed. “Not locked?”
“Nope,” he said with a shrug.
“So … no Realtor has the listing yet?” Jill asked.
“Not as far as I know, but then I barely finished with the redo. Jack would be the one to talk to.”
“Tell you what, this will make you happy. I’m going to go home …. Um, I’m staying in a cabin out by the river ….”
“Riordans’,” he said with a smile.
Boy, this was a tight group, she thought. “Right. If it’s all right with you, I’ll come back out here tomorrow morning and give myself a little tour. I’ll be all clean and won’t track dirt in your house.”
His grin was huge. “And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I painted and waxed those floors.” Then he blushed a little. “Well, I got it done.”
She smiled right back at him. “I know what a general contractor does. So, what does a place like this usually go for?”
“Who knows?” he said. “Put it in Fortuna, maybe seven hundred and fifty thousand. Restored, maybe a million. Lot of rooms in that house but only a couple of baths—I added one small one with a shower to make it three. Put it in a place like Menlo Park or San Jose—three million. Problem with real estate right now—it’s worth whatever you can get.”
“I hear that,” she said. “Listen, I’m going to take off.” She looked at the handkerchief. “I’ll, um, launder this for you.”
“Not to worry. I have a few.”
“I’m going to clean up and come back tomorrow, look through the house, if you’re sure it’s okay.”
“It’s okay. Half the town’s been through the house. They’re real nice about not leaving marks or tracks and that’s appreciated.”
“Gotcha,” she said with a laugh.
“Maybe I’ll swing by, in case you have questions,” he said. “About what time you want to do that?”
She lifted her eyebrows in question. “Nine?”
“Works for me,” he said. “I thought I’d stop by Jack’s Bar and get some eggs out of Preacher first.”
“Oh yeah, I remember him. He’s the cook! Maybe I’ll join you for breakfast.”
“You’d be more than welcome.”
The next morning Jillian got up and put on some of her city clothes, as opposed to the new jeans and sweats she’d been wearing for her days on the river. Even she had to admit the difference, sans mud and tears, was pretty remarkable. She chose pleated slacks, silk tee and linen jacket along with some low heels. From what she knew of this little town, it wasn’t necessary to dress up, but she primped anyway.
And a part of her, a large part, couldn’t wait to get back to work where looking good was as much a part of the job as performing well. She smiled at her reflection and thought, Not bad. Not bad at all.
Over breakfast Paul explained to her that there were still a few things to finish in Hope’s old house, but it had come a long way in the past six months. “We found it stacked to the ceiling with junk and collectibles, but it was in amazingly sound condition for its age. It didn’t take too much restoration—mostly cosmetic work. That’s one big house. Wish I’d had stock in the paint company.”
“What’s your interest in that old house?” Jack asked as he refilled their coffee cups. “Wanna open a bed-and-breakfast?”
“God, no!” she said with a laugh. “Clean up after people? Cook for them? Nah, never! I’m just kind of curious. I grew up in an old house with a big garden out back—though the house was much smaller. But it had porches, a big yard, big kitchen …. When my great-grandmother died my sister and I sold it. It wasn’t near where either of us lived and worked. It made absolutely no sense to keep it, but I always regretted that it was gone. My great-grandmother had lived in that house since she was a teenager who was brought from France to marry a man she’d never met! She was half-French, half-Russian, and that was the way things were done then. Then she and her husband—who died long before I was born—lived there. It was her one-and-only home in this country and she nurtured it.”
They chatted for a few more minutes and then when it was time to leave, Jack decided he wanted to tag along; he hadn’t checked on the house in a good week.
Even though the house was immense from the outside, it didn’t quite prepare Jillian for the inside, which was huge and beautiful. This was the second time she’d actually been in the house; for the first time it was void of furniture and people.
Right inside the front door was what they used to refer to as a front room. Past it was the dining room; to the left a staircase and farther left on the other side of the staircase, a sitting room. The walls were textured and painted pale yellow, trimmed in white.