Starting Over in Maple Bay by Brittney Joy
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It killed Hazel to let Jesse walk away. She’d been on the verge of admitting that she wanted to be with him, that she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Then Bill showed up and dropped a bomb all over her happiness. Why did he have a knack for that? He’d stayed away from Maple Bay for an entire month, but decided to show up just as Jesse kissed her like she was his lifeline? Hazel hadn’t even noticed Bill’s car as it approached the round pen. Her senses had been completely consumed by Jesse.
Now as Hazel walked into the carriage house with her daughter, Bill, and Cynthia, Hazel’s eyes shot to the windows on the backside of the building. She searched for any sign of Jesse, but his truck wasn’t parked by his house. He’d left Frankie’s quickly, and Hazel wondered where he’d gone. She wanted to explain to him why she’d told Bill that she would sell the carriage house, why she would give Bill the listing. She’d done it so that she could stay here in Maple Bay, at least for the summer. And she didn’t want to mess that up now. Ripping the listing away from Bill would only encourage him to make it difficult for her and Grace to stay.
“Wow,” Bill said, his hands on his hips as he slowly spun a circle. “This place has great bones and a beautiful location. You said this is an old carriage house?”
Grace nodded, enthusiastically answering her dad’s question. “They used to keep hay in the loft on the second story. The rooms over here were for tack and feed.” Grace pointed from one door to the next. “And there were even rooms for stable hands to sleep.” She pointed up the narrow staircase that started between the tack and feed rooms and led to the second story.
Bill opened the door to the old feed room and looked inside, making an agreeable sound with his throat. “Converted to a bedroom with a bath?”
Hazel cleared her throat. “All four rooms are. The tack and stable hand rooms are each plumbed for a bath too, though I don’t have those rooms finished.” Hazel had one room complete—the feed room. It had a half-bath and enough space for a king-sized bed and two tufted chairs, which she and Frankie had picked up at a garage sale last week. Hazel had dreamt of decorating each room in a theme. For the feed room, she wanted to use metal buckets to display fresh roses, burlap throw pillows to embellish the bed, and an accent wall made of old barn wood to complete the look. She had themed ideas for the rest of the rooms as well, but now her ideas seemed insignificant. If she wasn’t going to keep the carriage house, she needed to let her decorating ideas slip away like spilled milk.
“I could see a history buff jumping all over this place and converting it into a second-home. Especially because it’s right here on the lake.” Bill closed the feed room door, and Hazel felt a pang in her chest. She didn’t want some stranger buying this place, turning it into a second home that would only be used a few times in the summer; a place that someone showed off to their friends or used to store an expensive, loud boat.
“Or it could be converted into a bed-and-breakfast,” Hazel suggested. She wanted to add that she’d thought of keeping the property and doing that herself. It’s just that logistics and financials kept getting in her way.
Bill scrunched his face in half-agreeance. “Sure, I guess.”
His girlfriend, Cynthia, was on the other side of the carriage house, running her fingers along the stone fireplace. “Is this the original fireplace?” Cynthia asked.
“It is,” Hazel replied.
“It’s beautiful,” Cynthia said. “I can just imagine it with a roaring fire in the winter.”
Hazel had met Cynthia a few times before. She was the daughter of one of Bill’s clients, and even though Hazel thought she was way too young for Bill, Cynthia had always been nice to her and Grace.
“I plan to restore it to its original glory. That’s one of my next projects,” Hazel replied. Cynthia’s expression held pure excitement.
“Mom has been working really hard,” Grace told her dad. “You should see upstairs.” She grabbed Bill’s hand and pulled him to the loft staircase.
Hazel followed, but hoped this tour would end soon. She needed to find Jesse.
“See, Dad?” Grace said when they were all upstairs. “Mom’s been building this place for us to live in. Isn’t it great? She refinished the floors, put in a kitchen where we bake treats, and she’s building a wall back there to make a bedroom and a bathroom. Hasn’t she done such a good job?”
A lump hit Hazel’s throat. “Thank you, baby.” Hazel really didn’t care if Bill thought she’d done a good job. She’d been building this space for her and Grace. She’d learned how to use a sander, nail gun, and a pressure washer—so far. She’d sold her car and budgeted out an entire renovation plan. Now, the loft was nearly ready for her and Grace to move in. The kitchen was complete with shiny, almost-new appliances. The cabinets looked farmhouse chic after Hazel and Frankie painted them using a technique they’d learned on YouTube. The wood floors were refinished and glossy. Jesse and Gene had helped Hazel with her most recent project— framing up walls in the back third of the space, making an area for a bedroom and a bath. Tomorrow, a handy man was coming to complete the framing with drywall.
“I don’t think we should sell it, Mom,” Grace said. “Can’t we keep it and come visit? We could make it our second home?” She repeated Bill’s suggestion from earlier.
Wheels started turning in Hazel’s head. Could she really do that? Could she swing all the expenses of this place without living here fulltime? Would her job as a school secretary be able to pay for property taxes, utilities, gas to drive back and forth from Haven Hills . . . not to mention a new car to put the gas in?
Hazel internally flinched. There was just no way she could swing it. She needed the profits from the sale of the carriage house in order to buy or rent a place for her and Grace in Haven Hills. They couldn’t live in her parents’ basement forever.
“It’s too expensive.” Hazel sighed and her daughter politely nodded, accepting a simple answer for a complicated problem. Why did being an adult have to be so hard?
Bill was fiddling with the cabinets. “I could have my photographer here tomorrow to take pictures. I think you should get this on the market as soon as possible, so potential buyers can start looking at it.”
“I don’t officially own it yet, Bill.”
“But you will, right? After Labor Day?”
“As long as I stay here in Maple Bay until then.”
He looked at her like she was being difficult, but she wanted to remind him of the clause and obligation she intended to keep. “Then I’d suggest you put it on the market sooner than later. Better to get buyers here in the summer when they can see the full potential of a lake house. Maybe you’ll even get a bidding war by the time September rolls around?”
Hazel could see that Bill was getting excited over the possibility of a bidding war and a big commission. “Sure. Call your photographer. Tomorrow works.” Why delay the inevitable? She’d have to rip off the Band-Aid at some point.
As Bill got on his phone, Cynthia meandered over to the hay door. “What’s this?” she asked.
Hazel ignored the disappointment that washed over her. “It’s a hay door. Back when this loft held hay, that’s the door they would’ve used to load the bales through,” Hazel replied. “You can open it if you’d like.”
Cynthia flipped the latch and pushed open the square door. It exposed all the beauty of the glassy lake and bordering trees. Cynthia gasped. “This view is spectacular.”
“It is.” Hazel walked toward Cynthia and the hay door. “I’d like to make this into a window. And add big windows on both sides of it.” She pictured cooking in the kitchen while Grace did her homework at the kitchen table and rays of sunshine beamed across the floor.
“That’s a great idea,” Cynthia said, peering outside.
Hazel’s eyes fell to Jesse’s home, and she searched for one of the major reasons she wanted to stay. When Hazel discovered his truck, she straightened. It was idling in his drive. “Excuse me,” she said to Cynthia. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where you going, Mom?” Grace asked as Hazel headed for the stairs.
“I’ve got to talk to Jesse. Stay with your dad. I’ll be right back.”
Hazel sped down the stairs faster than she probably should’ve, and was amazed she made it downstairs without falling. She lurched out the backdoor just as Jesse was driving past the carriage house. She waved at him, a little frantically. He slowed to a stop. His window was down.
“I just wanted to explain.” She jogged up to the truck, but Jesse didn’t greet her with his usual warm smile. That threw her off kilter. “About what Bill said.”
“You don’t have to explain, Hazel.” Jesse rested an arm on the door. His tone was strange. It wasn’t mad. More disappointed. “You always said you were going back to the city at the end of the summer. I should’ve listened to your words. I chose not to hear them. I thought time here would change your mind. I thought I could change your mind. That you would want to stay.”
Hazel thought the ground shook. “You what?” she asked, not because she didn’t hear him. She just wanted to make sure she understood him. “You thought you could change my mind?”
“You needed to take things slow. With us. I honored that. I even understood it. But that doesn’t mean that was what I wanted.”
Hazel’s heart pounded. “What do you want?”
“You.” His voice was thick. “Us.”
“But how?” All the roadblocks she’d been grinding over rotated through her mind, again. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to be with Jesse. She was just choosing to put her daughter first. Couldn’t he see that? Didn’t he understand that?
“Momma!” Grace called and footsteps pattered across the stone patio. “Can Daddy stay here tonight?”
Hazel closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts and patience before Grace joined her at Jesse’s truck. “Hey, Jesse!”
“Hey.” Jesse managed a soft smile for Grace.
“Can Daddy stay in the carriage house tonight? Then he can watch me ride tomorrow.” Grace clasped her hands together in a plea. Hazel turned to find Bill and Cynthia staring at her from the patio. She could’ve done without Bill’s surprise visit today.
“Sorry, I told Grace we could wait until you were done talking, but she was really excited.” Bill shrugged apologetically and waved his phone in the air. “My photographer can be here tomorrow, and I thought I’d stick around to help him, and then I could watch Grace ride as well. I started checking around for a hotel, but the closest is an hour away.”
“They could stay in the feed room,” Grace said, looking up at Hazel. Then she cocked her head. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
Everything. Hazel shook her head. “Nothing, baby. That’s fine. I’ll grab some pillows and blankets from Frankie’s.”
“Great!” Grace did a little hop. She turned to Jesse. “Hey, where’s Charlie?”
Jesse put his hand back on the steering wheel. “At my parents’. Headed there now.” He glanced at the clock on his dashboard. “I better get going. Promised Charlie we’d have a tea party when I got there. She’s been waiting for twenty minutes and is probably driving my mom crazy. Patience isn’t Charlie’s strong suit.”
“Tell her hi from me,” Grace said, and Hazel swallowed the swirl of emotions spinning through her like acid.
“Can we talk? Tomorrow, after work?” Hazel asked Jesse, and he politely nodded before driving off. His truck rolled away, leaving a cloud of dust in the absence of his presence. Her heart screamed at her to run after him. Her head told her to go find pillows and blankets for an ex-husband she wished would go away. Why couldn’t her head and her heart get on the same page?