The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Yellow Door

"Tell him I'll show it to him myself," I said. "Tomorrow at four."

The realtor hesitated.

"You don't have to be there, Aileen. Sellers usually aren't."

"I'll be there."

On Monday at four, Bria's father stood in my kitchen in a quarter-zip with a country club crest on it.

He was a big pink man with a big gold watch, and he knocked on my cabinets.

Bria drifted through the downstairs touching everything.

The banister. The window seat. The little brass hooks by the back door where Nellie's rain boots lived.

"Oh my God," she kept saying. "Oh my God, Daddy."

Patrick leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

He watched me.

I made coffee.

I made it in my own pot, in my own kitchen, and poured four cups, and nobody stopped me.

"Lovely house," Bria's father said. "Good bones. The kitchen's dated."

"I've cooked in it every day for five years," I said. "It works."

"We'll gut it." He took a cup. "Full asking. Cash. We close in three weeks."

"No," I said.

The room went quiet.

Patrick straightened up off the doorframe.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Both our names are on the deed, Patrick. I sign, or nobody closes." I looked at Bria's father. "Five hundred forty-five."

"That's sixty over asking," he said.

"Yes."

"Nobody pays sixty over asking in this market."

"Then nobody buys this house." I sipped my coffee. "There are three couples coming Saturday. One of them has a baby on the way and wants the porch."

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