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“I’ve been thinking.” He drove them back to her house, and she was getting out when he stopped to talk to her. “I want to sell the house. Or better yet, I’d like for you to take it from me so that I don’t have to mess with it anymore.”

“I thought you loved that old house.” She said she’d outgrown it. Or it had outgrown her. “How do you outgrow a house? Don’t you like living there because of the memories of dad?”

“I think I’m ready to move on. I need to get out and see the world again. I’ve been coming here monthly for no reason other than to go and see a man who’s been dead longer than we were married.” He didn’t say anything. He really wasn’t sure what to say about that. But he’d do what she wanted. “You take the family home, and I’ll find me a nice home that’s smaller and more manageable for me.”

“What do I do with a big house? I have no life other than to work every day. Why don’t we sell it?” She said that it had been his father’s. “I’m sure Dad would have wanted to move out before now. He was forever saying that it was too big for the three of us.”

“I do want out of it, but selling it, I don’t know. You live in it for a while, and we’ll decide then if it’s something that you want or not.” He said that he’d do that for her. “Thank you, son. I knew that you’d not give me a hard time about moving out of the family home.”

“I moved out a long time ago. There is no reason whatsoever that you should have to live there when you’re not happy. It would be nice if you were to find yourself something smaller than you have now.” He looked at the mammoth of a house and shook his head. “They don’t build these kinds of houses nowadays for a reason. They’re just too hard to maintain.”

“Since I don’t use any utilities, I’ve saved money that way. But if I were a human, I’d have moved out long ago because of the cost of it.” She got out of the car, and he joined her. There was no point in putting it off if they didn’t have to. If she’d decided to move out, then he’d help her find someplace else to love. “What will your brothers say?”

“They would wonder why it took you so long to get out from under the weight of the house in the first place. If you want, I’ll call them when I get back home. I’m sure they’ll have some opinion about the house in your favor.” She said that she had good boys. “Mom, we’re older than the town. Don’t you think you could start calling us men?”

“I don’t. You will forever be my boys.” She kissed him on the cheek again. “Come inside and tell me what you think of the house that I’ve been thinking about. It’s small enough for me and you if you were to come and visit. The others have their own homes, and you just have that condo. I don’t know how you live in that thing that’s so small.”

“It has four bedrooms, and I like it. It’s only for a place to sleep and rest during the day.” She told him that even with four bedrooms, he must be crowded. “I’m not. I promise. I’ve never used the kitchen, and I have no intentions of using it. There is plenty of room for me to have an office there if I want, and I have a nice-sized bed in there that I use when I need a break. I don’t even need that as often as I used to when I was younger.”

“You’ll come and stay with me sometimes.” He didn’t know why he was agreeing, but he did. He’d go to her house to rest if that would make her happy. York loved his mom and would do anything she wanted just to keep her happy.

He put an offer in on the home that she wanted when he read over all the details about it. She seemed pleased with the house and had even been to two open houses to make sure it was something that she wanted. As he was going through the things that she had to do in order to sell their family home, he reached out to all his brothers and asked them if they wanted the big mansion of a place as their own.

None of them were surprised that she was sick of living in the house that they’d grown up in and was glad that she was going to be selling it. He himself didn’t want the house either, but he did find himself looking at it with a new eye. If he took the house from his mom, he’d be able to hire the staff that was needed to run the place.

Not to mention knowing everything that was wrong with the house, and that was very little; he also knew the places that would need work, like the kitchen. If she was going to sell it or he took it, it would do better with a whole new kitchen. He decided to have the house upgraded before they put it on the market, and Mom was pleased with that. His brothers were as well. The Malone Mansion would be worked on starting Monday, and he was as excited as he’d ever been about a new project.

~*~

“Let me get this straight. We have to spend a great deal of money on renovations in order to sell the house we don’t owe money on. Is that about right?” Baxter shook his head when York told him that was the way that it worked. “Are you going to sell the house then, or are you planning on living in it? Mom said that you didn’t know if you wanted it or not.”

“I don’t know. If you’d rather have it then that’s all right with me too. I decided just yesterday, like Mom said, that the condo is too small for me. I know you all have houses, but this one has been in the family for a long time. It’s up to you, and not the reason that I’m working on the house. After everything is done, then I’ll decide if I want to move into it or not.”

“In the meantime, you’re going to be spending a great deal of money to get it looking good again.” York asked if he’d seen the outdoors of the place in the last few years. “I have. It looks like a wild weedy place that needs to be cut all back and start over.”

“That’s basically what the house needs. I don’t think it’s been cleaned since the beginning of the last century. I mean, it’s not dirty, but it does need a deep clean. Like all the wallpaper needs to be scrubbed or removed and the hardwood floors need to be sanded down to the original wood and redone. Even the doors in the place could use a nice overhaul.”

“It sounds like a great deal of work.” York told him that it should take about six months to get it all finished. “And Mom has a home of her own so she won’t be stuck there while all this is going on.” He told him that no one would be living there while this was going on. “What about the furniture? Are you planning to have it redone as well?”

“I’ve not decided yet. Some of the things in the house simply need to be removed. There is one bedroom in the place that has broken chairs and bed sets in it that have been gathering dust forever. And don’t get me started on the bathrooms. Mom’s is the only one that is in working shape while the rest of them haven’t been upgraded since the new century came in. I mean, it has pull chains from above.” Baxter might have known that, but it had been so long since he’d been in the house that he didn’t know what needed to be taken care of. “It’s a big project but something that needs to be done. It’s been neglected for too long if you were to ask me.”

“I’m glad that you’re doing it. I might have taken one look at the bathrooms and had the entire house taken down to the ground. I wouldn’t have made time for the renovations for any reason.” York told him that he didn’t mind, as it seemed to make Mom happy. “I bet she is. That’s more than likely the reason that she’s moved out. She just couldn’t stand the dark and gloomy rooms in the place anymore.”

“I don’t know. But she was excited to know that things would be changed around.” Baxter asked if he thought she’d move back into the place. “I’d be fine with that. We have a lot of good memories of the place when we were growing up.”

“I thought so as well. My first thought was just that. To move into the place for the good memories. Then I thought of all the work it would take to get it up to living standards, and I decided to make my own memories in my own house.” York asked if he had any yet. “No. Speaking of good memories? Have you been looking for a mate? I wouldn’t have thought about it, but Mom mentioned it the other day. That we’ve been without a mate for too long for us to be having someone come along and retrain us. I don’t want to be retrained or trained for anyone. I’m happy by myself.”

“Me too. The thought of having someone come into my life for as old as I am, it just gives me the willies. I’m too set in my ways to be changing for some woman this time in my life. Don’t you agree?” Baxter wholeheartedly agreed with his older brother. “I don’t know what I’d do if she came around now anyway. I’m living in a condo and have nothing to do with most of the people in town. If not for Mom and her projects she has us working on, I doubt that I’d have anything to do with them.”

The two of them went over the list of things that had to be done on the house to make it be in this century. Mostly it was the kitchen. There wasn’t even any electricity in the room, much less a working stove and refrigerator. They didn’t have any use for it, so they didn’t see any reason for them to have it in their house. He thought that the only part of the house that did have electrical outlets in it was the living room, and only because they entertained in there on occasion. And that was only because of the magic that York had in being who he was that they had it in that room. He supposed that the entire house could have had the same magic throughout, but no one seemed to mind that it wasn’t there and it hadn’t been done. Just as he was getting ready to leave to go to his own home, Baxter saw the notation on the bottom of the list to have the yard demoed and started again.

He thought that was the only way to make sure that it looked good. It had gone without a gardener for far too long to try and make it into something that it wasn’t going to be again. He remembered a time when the lawns in front of the house were showcases. Now it was nothing more than weeds. He also thought that if anyone could do it, it would be York. He had the most money and knew how to get projects started without causing any trouble with the people surrounding the big house. He’d noticed that there were times when renovations had been made, and the surrounding neighbors had a fit because of the pressure put on them to upgrade their own homes.

Going to his home, he realized that he’d not done much better. While he did have someone to mow his lawns, he didn’t have anyone trimming the bushes or the roses that were surrounding the house. He’d let it go when he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around him. At some point, the gardener just stopped showing up. He wondered then if he was still paying them for work that wasn’t being done.

Making a few phone calls, Baxter got someone to come out and redesign his garden. Then he hired someone to come in and make sure that the bushes that were still there could be trimmed back and made to look good. As soon as he figured out that he was indeed paying a gardener to work around his house, he fired him and hired someone new. Then he began looking at the outside of his house.

His windows were dirty to the point he could barely see into the house with them. The front door was broken in two places, and the glass needed to be replaced. Just looking at the front of his home, he realized that he’d let it go for far too long and decided, like York, he was going to do something about it. It was then that he went inside and had a look at his front hall. There was a vase on a table so covered in dust that it hung on the dead flowers that he was ashamed of himself for his family coming over. Tossing the flowers in the nearest trash can, Baxter went to his office to make even more calls. He needed a staff in the house so that he could look the part of a wealthy man that preferred to live alone. As a vampire, he needed to make things look the part.