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This week has been impressively productive. I finalised the designs on two projects and landed a new client, thanks to word-of-mouth from a job I did a couple years ago. And I’m down to the last of Gran’s junk drawers to go through.
I pull the last drawer open in the kitchen—that ubiquitous drawer in every house that collects coupons and business cards and pads of paper from real estate agents. I upend its contents into a massive pile on the kitchen table, then drag the garbage bin behind me and sit to start the sorting process, which isn’t hard, as most of it is easily trashed without thought. There are, however, business cards from one company that pique my interest. Black Ladder Developments, Custom Home Builders. After all the grandstanding, could Gran have been considering selling?
Each one has a date written in Gran’s curly script. The cards from the bottom of the drawer, which ended up on top of the pile as I dumped it, are dated from a little over two years ago. The logo looks familiar, but I can’t place where I’ve seen it before. With the number of builders I work with or have met in passing, that doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the sheer number of them.
Fifteen.
The only reason to have this many interactions with the same builder was if she was seriously considering selling. Which she wasn’t. She promised me this place would be mine, and I promised her never to sell it.
Unless . . .
This is the reason she thought people were trying to steal her home. Fifteen times, Black Ladder came knocking on her door.
Her rants about being heckled were more than her opinionated and sharp-tongued way of communicating. This was harassment. I should have put more stock into what Gran said about the house thieves. Why didn’t she show me these when I visited? If I had seen the evidence, I would have done something about it.
Angry tears prick at the corner of my eyes. I’m furious with Black Ladder, but I’m mostly disappointed in myself for ignoring her fears. All the times she said that she was worried someone was going saw her house off the foundation and put it on a flatbed truck then haul it away to a farm in Northern Alberta while she slept in the bedroom upstairs, I brushed off as her being her usual, derisive self. I put it up there with blaming Glynnis for the syphilis outbreak at her seniors’ residence, and the certainty of a lurking hearse every time she got a flyer from a funeral home in her mailbox.
With this, though, she wasn’t joking. Black Ladder legitimately scared her.
I blink several times to clear my sight and focus on the business cards and dates again, flipping them from Gran’s writing over to read the employee names. Iain MacLeod is the primary culprit, there’s also one from a project manager, Scott Preston, and finally, a letter from Black Ladder, according to the stationary. I don’t read the contents, instead, I scan right to the bottom to know who signed it.
That can’t be.
I pull up the website, disbelieving of the name I see and the logo I now recognise. My hand shakes so violently that the letter flies free and lands on the floor, skittering to a halt at the base of the cabinets.
Owen MacLeod.
The logo that graces the lawn next-door.
Gran told me that the builder who wanted to buy her house lived on her street. She also told me he went to the community association meetings to update everyone on his projects. She never told me his name, but it has to be the same guy. Carhartts. Works from home. Unhappy that I’m renovating.
Owen made it sound like he was watching out for Gran. What did he say to me? I close my eyes and picture where we were standing when he came to the funeral reception. Beside the couch, Kelsey to his left, Asher on my arm. I hear his voice, his short sentences, his flat tone. “Keeping an eye on her.” My misinterpretation couldn’t be wilder. He wasn’t looking out for her; he was looking out for himself.
It all makes sense now. Helping me move in, boosting the truck. Same approach, different target. The things I thought I was imagining—the judgemental grimaces he gave me about my appearance, the frustration that I was moving Gran’s stuff to storage—were real after all. He’s shifted his focus from Gran to me while staying the course to get what he wants: my home.
I double over, putting my head between my knees to catch my breath. I should have paid better attention to his attitude and less to his appearance. I was attracted to him. I had sinful dreams about his calloused fingers running across my bare skin. I’ve given myself countless orgasms in the past few days, thinking of him taking me in every one of these rooms before I knock down the walls.
On shaky legs, I retrieve the paper from the floor. It’s dated three weeks before Gran went into the hospital. My eyes mist over again. Until her last moment, he was bothering her.
My jaw aches from the tension building in my bones. I let him into my house. Into Gran’s house. I tried being friendly to him when he did nothing but harass my grandmother.
I swipe away the tears and read the letter from his company. I scan the offer to purchase, then read it for a second time with more purpose. I know what this place is worth. I’ve worked in many homes in this old neighbourhood. It pains me that the offer is a good one. It’s above what Gran would get if it went on the open market. And the terms are fair; no inspection—obviously since it’s a teardown—and a 90-day possession with moving assistance.
I call Kelsey. Someone needs to help decide where to go from here. Gran was just as much her family as mine, and she should have a say.
“The balls on that guy. What are you thinking?” she asks after I give her the rundown on what I found.
I lean back in my chair, tapping the folded letter against the table. “I could tell him to fuck off.” From the little I know of him, I doubt this would have any effect, as I’m sure people do that multiple times a day. “I could counter his offer with one of my own.” After all these years of effort, I bet he’d pay more than what he offered only to claim victory. “I could sell to someone else.” I say this one with a chuckle—it’s my favoured option, if solely for spite value. “Or I could ignore him and go about my life. Just like Gran did.” Soon enough, he’ll sell his current project and move to another street, departing from my life for good.
“From the way you said that last one, it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.” Kelsey knows me so well.
“Yeah, but if you want me to go in another direction, I will.” I’ll consider it, at least.
“The house is yours, Iz. Do what you want,” she says sincerely.
The problem is, what I want and what is best rarely line up. I tend to get emotional and can’t see situations clearly—although I’d never admit that to Kelsey. Her icy heart thinks my affective personality is a flaw.
“You think I should sell.” I push her to tell me what she’d do in this circumstance. Kelsey thinks this project is way too big for me.
“I never said that. But I believe you missed an option. What if you hire Owen to do the renos? Less stress on you to be perfect and no headache from him because he’s making money.”
Surely she’s joking. Why would I pay someone—him, no less—when I have access to all the same trades and can use people I trust?
“You’re crazy,” I tell her. Talking to her was useless. “I’m going with my gut.”
***
AFTER A CUP OF TEA in one of Gran’s teacups to calm myself, I busy myself in a blur of sketching plans, making notes and thumbing through paint chips and fabric swatches. Asher’s coming by to discuss my wants versus needs, and I don’t want to waste his time dwelling on my asshole next-door issue.
Gran’s fifteen-hundred square foot house stands short and proud amidst two brand-new, three-storey semi-detached infills. The neighbourhood has undergone many changes since she moved to Calgary in the 1950s. She and Gramps were the first to live in this house. Now it acts as a reminder of what the city was like nearly seventy years ago and is one of the few houses of its kind left on the block.
The interior designer in me understands the desire to modernise and renew. The granddaughter in me, though, wants no one touching these walls but me. The squeaking cabinet doors sound like garbage to a developer, whereas to me, they sound like tea and shortbread cookies in vintage teacups. With my parents having died long before Gran, I’m the last one who can preserve the history and memories that live under this roof.
I have big ideas because it can’t stay this way. Ideas to make it mine while keeping Gran’s and Mom’s memories alive. I’ve been sketching things out and using the crazy finds from around the house to inspire my design elements. Some rooms are hard to picture any differently than they are now, mostly because of sentimentality. Some are easy.
The kitchen, for instance. It’s quintessential 1950s brimming with kitsch. Salmon-coloured walls, worn canary yellow flat-faced cabinets with matching laminate countertops and chipped sky-blue linoleum floors. The upper cabinets are so low they’d likely catch on fire from using the toaster on the counter beneath them. The space-saving fold away kitchen table, while innovative for its time, is not my favourite feature, either.
My most prized thing about the kitchen, and the central aspect of the design I’ve created, has nothing to do with the era at all but rather embodies the essence of Gran. My inspiration is her collection of copper pots. She amassed them one-by-one, so they’re mismatched and a perfect representation of her eclectic personality. She stopped using them many years ago because they got too heavy to lift. Now, like everything in her house, they sit in drawers, buried under mountains of other memories.
The timer goes off on the oven and I jump up from the kitchen-table-come-office-desk to pull out the freshly baked cookies. And by freshly baked I mean fresh out of the tube of pre-made dough and on to the cookie sheet.
I’m not much of a baker. Perhaps once the kitchen is redone, I’ll be inspired to learn.
As I get the final cookie on to the cooling rack, there’s a knock at the front door. I shake the oven mitts from my hands and rush to answer it.
“Izzy.” Ash greets me with a beaming smile and arms wide open for a hug. At easily six foot three, muscled from head to toe and with a face covered by a giant but well-kept blond beard, he is a stereotypical lumberjack-looking man. Who likes to hug.
I wrap my arms around his waist and he pulls me in by the shoulders, where I land against his chest in a little nook under his chin. I nestle myself in for longer than is customary, inhaling his piney scent while he holds me like we’re more than friends.
There’s no doubt that Asher and I are attracted to each other. We hold hands, I call him just to talk, and we go out on weekends, just the two of us. But I’ve never been able to get past the idea of having to work together after seeing each other naked. And since he’s the best contractor I know, I’m not willing to risk ruining things.
He steps into the house, chin tipped, already observing. “So, this is home sweet home, hey?”
“This is it.” I lift my hands in presentation. “I have a lot of changes I’d like to make so that it becomes my home.” But not so many changes that it loses that feeling I love so much.
Ash claps his hands and rubs them together, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m going to get to see a whole new side of you.” I tilt my head and raise my eyebrows. “You’re always designing for other people’s taste. This is all for you. I can’t wait to see what your style is. Unicorns and princesses or leather and chrome?”
I knock my shoulder against his arm. “Neither!” Of the two trends, I’m unsure which is worse.
That’s not true. Unicorns and princesses are way worse.
“Smells like an open house in here. You expecting other contractors to come by and give their opinions?” He tries to sound slighted but he’s way too happy a guy to let something as trivial as someone else’s viewpoint bother him.
“You know yours is the only one that matters to me.”
There’s no one I trust more than Asher, because he would never steer me wrong or let me make a bad choice. It’s another reason we can’t date. How could he be objective and keep me honest if he was emotionally invested in me?
“I baked the cookies for you, but they’re fresh out of the oven, so let’s do the tour while they cool off.” I grab my portfolio. “Where should we start?”