“Apple Pie on Apple Hill it is!” Annette declared at the end of their planning session. The idea was bittersweet. On the one hand, it’d be nice to leave the street on a high note.
On the other hand, it’d be hard to leave on a high note.
Of course, that was if they could find a buyer for their house. The odds were against them, anyway. Who knew?
After the meeting, Annette walked home to find Elijah and Roman lounging in front of the television.
“What are your plans for tomorrow, Elijah?” she asked, willing away the nag in her tone.
He shrugged and tugged his phone from his pocket.
“You could come down to the office,” Roman suggested. “Pitch in.”
Annette all but rolled her eyes. There was nothing for a teen boy to do at their real estate office. If they were busy, maybe he could stake signs or remove them. But they weren’t—so…
“What if you go next door?” Annette suggested, falling onto the couch between her boys and stealing the remote from Roman’s thigh.
“Next door?” It wasn’t quite a moan or a groan, but Elijah’s tone was enough to put Annette’s nerves on edge.
“You need to do more than lounge around the house,” she replied.
Roman, as usual, came to his son’s defense. “He’s got a part-time job, Ann.”
Elijah lifeguarded for the community pool. Three days a week. Six-hour shifts. Girls in bikinis. It hardly counted.
“Which leaves another part of his time, right?” she pointed out.
“Mom.” This time, Elijah did groan.
“Are you talking about Judith Carmichael’s?” Roman asked, sliding his gaze from the television to Annette.
She caught his inflection, ignored it, and answered Elijah. “I’m talking about Quinn, obviously. That house is more than she can handle.”
“Or afford,” Roman pointed out. “Just like this house is more than we can afford. What is it with Crabtree Court and people who live above their means?” Roman pushed up from the sofa. This time, he ignored Annette. “I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”
“Tired from what? Sitting at the office staring at the phone?” She had taken it too far. She knew she had. Especially in front of Elijah. But he was a good boy, and he took his cue.
“I’ll go next door tomorrow, Mom.” Then he stood, too, and left the room.
It was now only Roman and Annette, facing each other and their problems alone. A commercial for a tire sale blared behind them.
“Why do you do that?” Roman asked.
“Do what?” Annette shot back. “Point out the obvious?”
“Exactly,” Roman answered.
“Why do you?” She pushed her fingers through her hair then drew them back to massage her temples. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Roman. I just—”
“You don’t want to move. I know. Neither do I.”
“Neither does Elijah,” she added.
“I know.” Her husband sighed and fell back into the sofa, grabbing Annette’s hand and tugging her down with him.
She let him, falling into his side as he wrapped her in his arms and buried his head in her hair. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he whispered.
A single tear formed along her lash line. Humiliation. Disappointment. General sadness. Who knew what else? “Me, too,” she murmured back.
Roman kissed the top of her head and pulled away. “It’s not your fault that our business is failing.”
“It’s as much mine as yours. We’re a team, remember?” Annette swallowed, scared to ask the next logical question. “Roman,” she started, willing away a second tear, the tear that would release the floodgates and turn her from pitiful to pathetic. “Where do we go from here?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed a knuckle into each one. “We don’t give up. We just…we just keep trying.”
But she shook her head. It was a bad answer. Wrong. “When do we give up, Roman?”
Frowning deeply, Roman answered, “Never. We never give up.”
Wrong again.
“We can’t afford our mortgage, Roman.”
“That doesn’t mean we change our business, Annette. This was our dream.”
Now, that was true. Selling houses still was Annette’s dream. Roman’s as well. They both had an interest in sales, for starters. But more than that, they both loved…houses. Big, small, old, new. Before they had Elijah, they’d sometimes drive around looking for For Sale signs, peeking in windows and testing back doors. Sheesh, Roman proposed to Annette in one such empty property. They were traveling—Maine for a realty convention. One day, after five back-to-back sessions, they left the conference center and headed back to their hotel abuzz, wondering if they ought to lay down roots there, in that tiny foreign town. Hamlet Hollow was the name of it. They came across a Short Sale sign on a decrepit Victorian at the end of an otherwise houseless wooded lane.
The front door had no lock—had no doorknob. Whoever was in charge of the place had clearly given it no nevermind. They slipped in, admiring the original parquet floors, the curling banisters and narrow halls; and it was there, as they trespassed, that Roman had dropped to a knee, grabbed Annette’s hand, and asked if she’d sneak into empty houses with him for the rest of their lives.
She said yes, naturally, and she’d say it again now, almost twenty years later.
“Something’s gotta give, Ro,” she whispered, lacing her fingers into his.
“That’s why we’re selling.”
“And then what? What happens next?” She looked up at him. “Assuming we do find a buyer?”
Roman blew air through his lips and avoided eye contact. Annette knew he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.
And he did.
“We downsize.”
“You mean downgrade.” A sour taste pooled in her mouth. Annette was no snob, really. She’d grown up with a tough family—divorced parents who cared more about alimony and child support than ballet class tuition or wholesome suppers. Fast food was the norm. Christmas gifts were knock-off toys. Never the real thing. Not in her childhood home.
With Roman, she’d demanded the real thing. And he’d secured it for her. They’d secured it together. But the last few years were trending in the opposite direction. Could Annette stand to be anything other than what she’d grown to cling to? That perfect working mother who could balance it all and still find time to trim the rosebushes? Hire a team of cleaners for in-home parties? Use her own house for business cocktail parties where no doubt people would steal photographs of her elegant foyer, her tasteful gourmet kitchen—all those trappings of a successful Realtor. A successful woman.
Roman brought her hand to his lips, pressing it there and then looking at her, holding her gaze. “I mean live in a way that allows us to keep doing what we love.”
“Selling houses,” Annette murmured back. “We could go to a different city. Open a new business.”
“Elijah has three more years of school. You want to rip him away from his friends?” Roman shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”
“Okay then. We downgrade.”
“Downsize,” Roman corrected.
Annette smirked. “Whatever.” He always made her feel twenty again. “Anyway, we’re going to need a buyer first.”
“Know of anyone who can afford to live on the best street in Michigan?”