“Come to visit a perfectly restored house,” Kyle muttered. He hated being stabbed with his own pitchfork. Was Herbert right? Was Kyle just going soft because of the pull he felt toward Allison? “I know. I know. I guess I am letting my emotions get in the way. But I feel as though maybe we have one shot here, that Belle Paix is as close as it will ever be to getting those repairs it needs.”
“If there’s just one shot, then we’d better hold their feet to the fire. Because they’re not going to be a bit interested in putting money into a proper paint job if they’ve spent half the amount they’d need on a bad one. Sure, a proper paint job will cost, what? Well, my house is almost as big as theirs, and mine cost me eight grand.”
“Yours didn’t have the complicated paint scheme, Herb. You know that. Adding those extra colors—plus the fact that Belle Paix is a freaking big house—that doubles the cost right there. She’s talked about trying to do it herself—”
“Ha! I tried that. You can’t do that with these big old barns. Better to bring the professionals in here with a full crew and get ’er done.”
“I agree,” Kyle said. “But what if we gave them some time? Say, they put the main color on this year, and then next year, when they’d saved up some money, they could do the trim?” Now Kyle felt as desperate as he had when he’d asked his dad, “It followed me home, so can we keep it?” about the stray dog he’d wanted to adopt as a kid.
And just like his dad, Herbert came back with a reasoned, logical answer he couldn’t refute. “You know why we put a time limit in place, Kyle. Heck, you were the one who suggested it as a means to keep people from saying they were going to do a proper paint job and then not ever finishing it. And it would cost more money in the long run if somebody was doing a piecemeal job. You know that.”
“Yeah. Yeah, Herbert, you’re right. I’ve just got to—”
“Do your job. Let us all do our jobs. And the best advice you could give Allison—or Mrs. Lillian—is to not submit that variance request. Because all we can do as a committee is turn it down. And then we won’t be able to hear another request on that project for a year.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Herbert. I’ve already—”
“Well, then, I’m glad to hear it. Would you listen to that? That’s my grandkids coming in! Gotta go, Kyle. Don’t worry. They’ll figure it out.”
Kyle put the phone back in his pocket and groaned. He’d been hoping, even though Herbert would be the toughest nut to crack, that since the man was closer to Gran’s age than anybody on the committee, he would bend a little.
But maybe Herbert was right. Maybe Kyle was letting his emotions sidetrack him from what was best for the community.
No, what he needed to do was what he’d planned this morning after he’d read that email: persuade Allison that she couldn’t afford not to do proper renovations on Belle Paix’s exterior.
He could do it. He could sell her on it. After all, hadn’t he and Jerry convinced her to do the more in-depth renovations on Belle Paix’s interiors?
Yeah, right. You conned her into doing renovations where she had flexibility, and now she’s got no money to do the ones she has no wiggle room on.
But this was Belle Paix. Herbert was right. Belle Paix didn’t deserve anything less than to be properly renovated and restored, and neither did Lombard’s historic neighborhood. So Allison would just have to be more open to looking at grants and tax credits and other sources of funding. Maybe Gran could deed the house to her, so she’d have the collateral to borrow against it.
And Kyle? He’d have to dig just as deep to convince her to borrow the money in the first place, especially since he knew what dreams she’d already given up to come home to Belle Paix.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ALLISON WATCHED THE mixer shake the can of paint, with bleary eyes. How many gallons of ceiling white did that make? Ten? Twenty? Her neck felt as though she were working on her millionth gallon.
The machine shuddered to a stop and Curtis, the clerk she’d gotten to know really, really well over her thousand gallons of paint, released the can. With a quick, practiced hand, he opened the lid, swiped a smear on the top and pounded the lid back on with a rubber mallet.
“You need any more tarps? More rollers?” he asked her, handing her the can. “How about some more stirrers?”
“Toss me a handful of those sticks. And, yeah, what’s another pack of rollers, huh?” she asked bleakly.
“Okay!” He slapped a stack of stirrers and a three-pack of rollers down on the counter. “On the house, ‘cause, hey, you’re my best customer here lately. How much more painting you got left to do?”
“Oh, just a few million square miles to go.”
“Now, I’ve been thinking, when you get started on the outside, I can see it—a nice yellow, right? With a deep burgundy, and hunter green for the main trim—those complementary colors will make it pop, right? Can you see it? And then to tie it all together, for the relief trim, how about, say, black and a shade darker yellow—almost a beige, but not quite? See? I’ve been pulling some swatches for ya.”
He yanked out a piece of paper with the five color swatches taped on it. “Looks good, no? That old house will be making the cover of Southern Living next year, you wait and see.”
Curtis appeared so pleased with himself. She stared down at his work with dismay. The colors looked great...honestly, it was almost as if he’d read Davinia’s journal about what the house’s original paint scheme had been. How long had he worked on this? Did he maybe get a commission from all the paint he’d sold her?
“Oh, no, no, I’m sorry, Curtis, but I won’t be going with such an ambitious color scheme. I’ve got a variance request submitted to the historical society. But, hey, I like the yellow. And the historical society will probably nix my request for vinyl siding or Hardie Board—I kept that in there so they’d have something to say no to, and they’d feel like saying yes to going with a two-color paint scheme. So maybe we could do something with that...and the green. The green for the trim?”
Curtis blinked, his confusion evident. “But he said...”
“What? Who said something?” Allison felt her skin prickle with awareness, and the wire of the paint can’s handle bit into her fingers as she clenched it. “Did Kyle Mitchell put you up to this?”
She’d thought Kyle had been up to something. He’d been way too generous with his labor, entirely too willing to hang around and let her natter on. Even as she’d appreciated all the help, she’d felt sucked in, as if he was trying to charm her into doing things his way.
“Kyle? Nah. It wasn’t him. Shoot, I haven’t seen him in ages. No, it was something Herbert told me. He said he’d seen your proposed variance request and that you were going to withdraw it because it wasn’t historically accurate and didn’t have a prayer getting passed.”
“He what?” She set the can down with a thud. “You mean they’ve already had the hearing on it? Without me there?”
Now Curtis looked as though he’d stepped on a land mine and didn’t quite know how to get off. He threw up his hands. “No, no. Believe me, they do up a variance request hearing right—you’d be there, of course. What I thought was—well, I must have misunderstood Herbert, that’s all.”
“He’s seen my variance request?”
“Yeah, informally. You know, a lot of times they do it like the Supreme Court does their big cases—they circulate it around among themselves until they get a consensus. Before it’s all official.”
“That doesn’t seem particularly legal.”
“Well, h... Most people don’t even bother with the hearing, truth be told. They just do what the historical committee tells ’em. Not much point trying anything otherwise.”
Fury rattled through Allison. “Someone needs to show this blasted committee that they can’t just order people
around to their liking. They shouldn’t be able to bully home owners into going into heaps of debt just so that the neighborhood will meet their impossibly high standards,” she fumed.
“I dunno. I really couldn’t complain. It’s been great for our business,” Curtis pointed out sheepishly.
“I’ll say.” She didn’t bother to keep the sour note out of her voice. “And for the contractors and the subcontractors and the bankers, too. But what about normal, everyday folks? I mean, my grandmother’s eighty-nine years old, and this is the only home she’s ever known. She didn’t choose this house—it was the one thing her parents left her when they passed away. So why should she be penalized because it sits in a certain square mile of the city?”
“You’re not the first person I’ve heard say all that—and more,” Curtis allowed.
“Well, I must be the first one who’s willing to take on that committee. I’m not going to let them intimidate me.” Or, she thought grimly, sweet-talk me into something I know better than to do, and that’s what Kyle’s been up to. Debt is debt, and I can’t afford it.
“No, plenty of people have complained—a few have even shown up at city council meetings. But, Miss Allison, you got to understand, these are official laws on the books—they have been for years. It would take the majority of members of the city council to repeal those laws. And with the historical society such an influential organization—I mean, nobody wants to upset little old ladies, you know? Well, you got a goose-egg’s chance of getting those laws repealed.”
She let his words sink in. “What did you just say?”
“You got a goose egg’s—”
“No, before that.”
“The historical society. It’s made up of a bunch of little old ladies who really know how to work the city council—”
“Nobody wants to upset little old ladies. That’s what you said.” She smiled grimly, feeling a calm purpose sluice over her. “And you’re right. So let’s just see how the committee reacts when people hear how they’re trying to force a little old lady out of the last of her savings, hmm? Is the newspaper office still on Douglas Avenue? Because I need to know where to send a letter to the editor.”
* * *
EN ROUTE TO the newspaper office, Allison tried Kyle’s cell phone twice and got voice mail. When she dialed his office number, she reached the department’s administrative assistant, who told her that Kyle was in class and had two meetings back to back after he finished up with his last lecture.
“I can put you through to his voice mail or I can take a message,” the woman suggested.
Allison debated over the choice and decided she didn’t want to leave a long and rambling voice mail, or try to explain why she was so angry to someone who had nothing to do with the historic preservation committee. No, Kyle’s assistant wasn’t the louse, he was.
Allison discarded both options. “I’ll call him later,” she told the assistant.
“Can I get your name again for our phone log? And I will certainly let him know you called.”
Allison grudgingly gave the information, then clicked off and stepped out of her car. The newspaper was in the heart of the downtown business district, housed in a two-story brick building on a corner, imposing pilasters flanking the doors and Greek friezes over the tall windows giving the structure a serious, intimidating look. She pushed through the heavy glass door into the lobby.
Behind the counter, a woman in her early twenties with a bored, put-upon expression, hot-pink streaks in her short blond hair and a nose ring in her left nostril glanced up from her cell phone. “If you have a subscription complaint, I can’t help you. I’m just covering the desk for someone who’s grabbing lunch.”
“No, no subscription complaint. Why did you think that?” Allison asked.
“You look as mad as a wet settin’ hen, as my granny used to say. If it’s not that, then what is it?” The woman set down her phone and propped a hip against the granite counter, her eyes alight with a sudden curiosity.
“How does a person go about getting a letter to the editor put in the paper?”
For a moment, the curiosity dimmed in the woman’s eyes. She fingered the tattoo of an infinity symbol on the inside of her left wrist. “It should be typed, 250 or less words, and contain no libelous statements or personal attacks. Also, you have to provide your name and address as well as a daytime telephone number and a photo ID for verification purposes. Oh, and it needs to be in by lunchtime forty-eight hours before the date you want it to appear, so that we can verify the identity of the writer.”
Allison scribbled all this down on a notepad from her purse. “And the address? Do I have to mail it, or can I just drop it by?”
“You can drop it off here, or if you don’t mind scanning in your driver’s license as an attachment for proof of identity, you could just email it. Say, what are you so heated up about? Because I’m a writer here, and there could be a story in it. I mean, Wilson—that’s the editor—said I had to stay here for the afternoon unless a hot story came up. So I’m pretty jazzed at anything that might give me a chance to get while the gettin’s good.”
Allison couldn’t believe her good fortune. “There just might be. What would you say if I told you that an eighty-nine-year-old woman on a fixed income and in a rehab facility was being forced to choose between not painting her house or going into debt to paint it the ‘proper’ way?”
“I’d say...hmm...” The reporter tapped a rhinestone-encrusted lavender fingernail against her chin. “I’d say she’s most likely having a run-in with the hysterical society, and that it’s high time those rich old dudes got their comeuppance. Oh, and also—” she extended a hand to Allison “—that my name is Gwen Chapman and I’ll be happy to hear you out if you don’t mind waiting for me to grab a camera and run to a drive-through for some lunch.” And then she picked up the phone on the counter and punched a number. “Hey, Wilson, I got a story, so I’m leaving, okay?”
* * *
GWEN SPUN AROUND in the living room of Belle Paix and took a bite out of her hamburger. “So you actually grew up in this mausoleum? Man. What a bummer. But I’ve got to admit, it must be nice for, like, you know, Halloween parties.”
“Yeah, it’s got atmosphere,” Allison agreed. She saw crumbs gathering like snowflakes on Gran’s old Turkish carpet, and tried to hide an inward cringe. “Uh, can I get you a plate? You know, we could go sit down in the kitchen or dining room for you to eat—”
“Nah, it’s okay.” Gwen waved her off, another flick of hamburger bun floating to the carpet as she did so. “Burns more calories if you eat standing up. Besides, if I eat while I talk, we won’t waste time. And it sounds like your granny doesn’t have much time, does she?”
Allison nodded. “Right. She wants to come home as soon as possible so that she doesn’t run through her long-term health care benefits...you know, in case she needs to use them again.”
“Plus, I mean, like you said, she’s eighty-nine. My granny was about fit to bust a gasket when we had to put her in a swing bed after her hip surgery. Kept talking about never seeing home again.”
Her word choice gave Allison an uneasy pause; Gwen didn’t sound like any writer Allison had ever talked with.
“So how long have you been a reporter?”
“Oh, about six months. Wilson has me doing obits, believe it or not, and me a magna cum laude. I think he just likes seeing Little Miss 4.0 having to do scut work, ya know? But this story...” Gwen’s smile made her face seem a little harder, a little older. “It’s got everything. Well, everything except sex, but you can’t have it all, now can you? It’s David and Goliath, the average Joe against city hall, the—”
“I get the picture.” Allison’s doubts roiled around in her stomach. She had been hoping for any reporter who would listen, but she felt somehow repelled by Gwen’s open, in-y
our-face agenda to launch herself out of the obits.
“And little old ladies. Who can’t help pulling for sweet old grannies, ya know?” Gwen had found the grand piano, where Gran’s collections of photos stood. “This her? With you?”
“Yeah. That was a few years ago at my college graduation, but she hasn’t changed much.”
“She’s cute as a button,” Gwen observed, and set the silver-framed photo back down on the piano with a cringe-inducing thud. “I’ll need to talk to her, and maybe we can get her home to have a picture...I know! In front of those peeling front porch posts!”
“Uh, I’m not sure how Gran will feel about—”
“Or we could just have her at the wrought-iron gate, with the house looming behind her—it would make great lead color! And symbolism, too—the place is an albatross around her neck, kind of, or this huge weight on her shoulders.”
But Gran had never felt that way about Belle Paix, Allison thought with a pang. The house had always been something worth working to protect, to save.
Allison’s cell phone rang. She glanced down, saw that it was Kyle. “Excuse me...I’ve got to take this.”
“No problem. I’m just gonna poke around a little. This is one freaky old house. I mean, can you say time capsule or what?”
Allison stepped back into the hall and answered the phone.
“Hey, Gillian told me that you’d called while I was in class. Something I can help you with?”
His too-innocent greeting reignited her earlier anger. “More like something you could have clued me in on,” she snapped. “How long have you known that the committee had already decided, hearing or not, that I wasn’t getting my variance request?”
What the Heart Wants Page 14
