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“I’m so sorry. This is totally unprofessional, but Wilda had a job interview this morning in White City, so…” He glanced back at Caleb in the truck. “She’ll come get him as soon as she’s done.”
“Hey, it’s no problem. He can hang out with me until she comes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“He was pretty excited to see the dog.”
“Hmm. Frenchie isn’t here. Hopefully that won’t be too much of a disappointment.”
“Is he alright?”
“Yeah. He’s, ah…it’s a weird co-pet-parenting sort of thing.”
“Okay. I’ll get him out of the truck and get to work.”
Mathias helped Caleb out of the truck, then the boy walked over to Milo.
“Hey, Caleb. Is it okay if we hang out a little bit until your mom gets here?”
Caleb nodded.
“I’m sorry Frenchie isn’t here. But would you like to explore my big old house?” Caleb looked up at the house. “Some of the older kids in town think it’s haunted. It’s not. But I let them think that. It’s kind of cool to live in a pretend haunted house.”
Caleb took Milo’s hand, and they went up the steps and through the front door. Caleb stopped inside the door and gasped as he looked up the staircase to the second floor.
“Should we go upstairs first?” Caleb let go of his hand and ran for the stairs, the sound of his tennis shoes on the wooden floor echoing off the walls. “Hold on. Don’t crash and burn.” Milo caught up to Caleb and took his hand. “Nice and slow.”
Once they reached the top of the stairs, Milo let go, and Caleb ran off to explore. Only one of the six bedrooms had been worked on, and the other smelled musty. They were all in various stages of renovation and would need a good airing out once spring arrived.
The two bathrooms had ornate tile on the floors and behind the clawfoot bathtubs. The brass faucets had darkened with age. A little polish would bring them back to their original shine. The bathrooms also smelled a little dank from sitting unused for five decades.
Milo was using the master bedroom. He was still working on it, and it currently had only his bed and a dresser. The private bath was finished, though. It had bright brass fixtures and sparkling white tile along with a gravity-fed toilet. The only modern convenience he’d added was a shower to the tub.
Milo had a bad habit of starting a project, then getting distracted by something else and moving on before he finished. He’d been trying to break that habit, and the plan was to finish the parlor completely before moving on to another room.
They spent thirty minutes upstairs, then went down to the first floor and explored the living room, kitchen, and bedroom suite. When they reached the parlor, Caleb ran to the oak frame around the fireplace and picked up a piece of sandpaper.
“Do you want to help?” Caleb nodded. “Okay, let’s do some sanding.” They’d been at it for twenty minutes when the doorbell chimed, echoing through the empty house. “That must be your mom.”
Milo left Caleb in the parlor and went to the front door. Wilda had taken a few steps back from the door. “Oh my gosh, that was really loud.”
Milo laughed. “Yeah, it does its job, I guess.”
“I can’t believe you live here. Mathias has been trying to describe it to me, but this is…wow, Milo. How did you get this place?”
He waved her in. “Come inside.”
She went through the door and looked around the huge, nearly empty living room. “Amazing.”
“I’m pretty sure at some point I might regret taking this on, but so far, I’m having fun.”
She walked over to the fireplace, which was even bigger than the one in the parlor, taking up most of the wall. It was built from stones hauled up from the Smith River, or so the story went. Milo had spent countless hours researching the place. The hearth was a huge slab of oak, six feet long and four inches thick.
“This is totally none of my business, but how can you afford this place on a teacher’s salary?”
“Well, it was about to be torn down. So when I convinced the town council to sell it to me, they couldn’t really put much value on the structure. I basically bought the five acres it’s sitting on.”
