Stephen Small doesn’t even notice the white panel van driving past his house, let alone the scraggly haired man behind the wheel who is leering covetously at his home. He only pays attention to his boys, who are taking turns running through the sprinkler.
His twins, Barrett and Christopher, are laughing as they dart through the water. His older son, Ramsey, tries to do a cartwheel over the spray, but slips and falls into the grass, howling with laughter.
Stephen chuckles to himself and heads toward the Ferrari parked in the driveway.
“Oh, Stephen,” his wife, Nancy, calls from behind him.
Stephen turns to see his wife holding up a set of keys.
“Forget something?” she asks.
Stephen laughs and heads back toward the porch. His wife of eighteen years has a bright friendly smile that he fell in love with early in their courtship.
“Thanks, hon,” Stephen says, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Where are you going, Dad?” Ramsey calls out to him.
“I’ve got to go to the boat shop and pick up a few things,” he says.
“Then can we go out on the river?”
“You bet,” Stephen says.
He fires up the Ferrari and pulls out of the driveway. The two-hundred-thousand-dollar car has a V8 engine, but Stephen doesn’t push the car too fast, especially in residential areas. He is a careful driver.
He takes a slight detour on his way into town and cruises down Kankakee’s Riverview Historic District. He slows and creeps past a large, unusual-looking house on a spacious lot. There are a handful of workers going into and out of the building.
The twelve-thousand-square-foot house is a historic fixture in the community. Built in 1901, the house was designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It has twelve bedrooms and more than a hundred windows.
Just this month the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In Stephen Small’s view, the house is the jewel of the Riverview Historic District.
But Stephen isn’t just another sightseer slowing down to admire the house.
He owns it.
A year ago, he bought the house with the intention of renovating it and perhaps one day turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. The B. Harley Bradley House, named for the original owner, is Stephen’s passion project.
He doesn’t stop the Ferrari, just slows down, checks to make sure the house is okay, and then speeds along toward his destination.
He has faith in the workers, but he can’t help himself. Stephen keeps an eye on the house whenever he’s in the area.
If anything happened to the house, he isn’t sure what he would do.