Welcome to the Neighorhood
“And so, as you can see…”
Amelia ignored the real estate agent’s droning voice and stared around at the perfect white-cabinet-and-stainless-steel kitchen. She took in the Instagram-worthy family room, the warm, walnut wood floors, and the gorgeous artichoke greens and heather grays that graced the walls. Her throat closed up. Her vision went blurry, all of which she could blame on her hormones doing their haywire dance.
Well, that and the extreme stress that this whole house-buying project had become.
“Ma!”
She blinked when her son called for her from somewhere then sighed and pressed her hands to her boobs, willing herself not to stain the pretty red polo shirt she’d put on that morning.
“In the kitchen,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. She ran her palm along the length of cold granite. It wasn’t the typical spec-house special. It was unique—black with irregular flashes of blue and silver that set off the stark-white designer cabinets so perfectly it made her back teeth ache.
It was the perfect kitchen. Exactly what she’d dreamed about when she started her social media mood board called The Ross Family Home. The process of researching different styles—craftsman, mid-century modern, faux farmhouse, generic suburbia—had forced her to admit she was firmly in the Venn diagram spot between craftsman and suburbia. Modern embellishments like cathedral ceilings, second-floor laundries, giant mudrooms that kept the clutter and dirt from the outdoors away from the living spaces, were all on her must have list. As were charm, coziness, a large main bedroom suite, and a finish-able basement, all at a minimum twenty-eight hundred square feet.
She was also firm in her desire not to have to renovate a kitchen or bathrooms. The last three houses they’d bid on had been, in some way or another, compromises on these requirements. It was probably why she’d managed to torpedo every deal, either based on a marginal inspector’s report or the fact that known pedophiles lived within a quarter mile. A hard no for her, regardless of anything else.
“Ames?”
The sound of her husband’s deep voice dragged her back to the here and now. She’d been busy staring out the French doors that led from the high-ceilinged den onto the expansive wooden deck overlooking the perfectly sized swath of green that would serve as play space for her children. She put a hand to her neck, ran her fingers along the thin necklace she wore. It calmed her, as it usually did.
“I love it. I want it.”
Michael, her beloved spouse of the past four-and-a-half years blinked and shifted their little boy to his other hip. “You haven’t checked out the upst—”
“I don’t care. I love it and I want it. I know I haven’t seen the upstairs yet. But unless there’s a ghost in the attic or the basement is covered in black mold, I’m not going to change my mind.”
She whirled to face their agent, a woman who’d stuck with them through all three fall-throughs Amelia had initiated with her dogged insistence that everything about her family’s future home be perfect. Not for the first time, Amelia acknowledged her respect for the woman’s sleek, pencil-skirted, form-fitting-blouse good looks. She was forty if she was a day but took care of herself. Something Amelia always admired. Letting herself go once she had kids and was past her thirties was something she had zero intention of doing.
“Melissa, how fast can you get our offer in front of the seller?”
“Ma!” her son squawked again. She held up a hand to keep Michael from relinquishing him. The timing was crucial. This was going to be her damn house, and nothing and no person was going to keep her from it.
“Well, as you know, you’re seeing it before anyone else does. I haven’t put a sign in the yard yet or entered it into the multi list system.” The woman’s business-like, elegant blondeness had intimidated Amelia a little at first, but she’d done her due diligence and knew that Melissa Murphy was the best when it came to residential real estate. Amelia always went for the best and got it, if it was within her power to do so. Now that they’d spent so much time together, between hours of showings, negotiations, and three different house inspections, Amelia felt pretty close to the woman, in an odd way.
“Good. What’s the price?”
“Wait, Amelia…” Michael said from somewhere to her left. She kept her hand up.
“Four-twenty-five,” Melissa said.
The air whooshed out of her lungs. The room went dim as if a thundercloud had passed over the two massive skylights centered above her future kitchen island. “Are you joking? On this street? In this condition? What’s wrong with it? It’s worth five-ninety-five, minimum.”
Amelia understood house values. Thanks to Zillow and Realtor.com, plus a year’s worth of input from Melissa, she fully grasped what was what and where in the college town where she’d chosen to raise her family. She’d gone to university here. Had met Michael Ross, the love of her life, at a fraternity-sorority mixer her sophomore year. They’d agreed to come back after he finished law school in Chicago.
Or rather, she’d said that would be the only way she’d agree to push her baby plan up a year—if they moved back to Ann Arbor once he was hired by Taylor Thompson, one of the largest corporate law firms in Southeast Michigan. Amelia Stanhope Ross was a planner, a list-maker, a checker-offer of tasks. She’d mapped out her personal life in minute detail from the time she was old enough to write in her first journal—a sweet little purple notebook with an attached, sparkly pencil her mother had given her on her tenth birthday.
She’d ticked off all the before I’m twenty-five bucket-list items one by one. She’d backpacked around Europe. Spent two weeks on a yoga retreat in India. Had sex with a woman. And graduated cum laude from the university with a degree in business, emphasis: marketing. In the interim, she’d served as president of her sorority, organized a massive fundraising event for a local homeless shelter at the business school that had garnered her a bit of local celebrity bona fides, and met her future husband.
It was all going to plan so far, for the most part. She’d told Michael from the beginning that she expected them to own a house or at least a condo right after they got married. Her father would provide both the down payment and the co-signature on a loan if it were required, which it had been, which was fine with her because she’d chosen wisely. Michael Ross had graduated alongside her from the U with a business degree and had been accepted to four excellent law schools, including the one they’d chosen together. He was going to be, as her father liked say, “an earner.” He’d take care of her and their future two children without any trouble whatsoever.
When he’d been offered the job back in Michigan, she’d been beside-herself ecstatic. A return to the idyllic, beautiful town where they’d met and always said they’d like to live as nonstudents—another tick off her list.
They hit the first major snag of their young marriage right after that when Michael suggested that instead of Ann Arbor, they live in one of the random Detroit suburbs, or even—horrors—Detroit itself. She’d balked. Michael took a firm stance that the house prices in Ann Arbor were ridiculous to the point of hysterical. They’d get a lot more house in, say, Ferndale or Allendale, or perhaps someplace farther to the north. They’d get a hell of a place if she’d allow herself to consider one of Detroit’s downtown neighborhoods, many of which were reviving so fast residents would go to sleep looking at blight only to wake and find a shiny condo building in its place the next day.
Well, not literally but almost.
She’d agreed to consider it. Northwestern had really been her choice for his law school since it had put her close to her parents and her childhood home in Lake Forest—all forty-five-hundred square feet, water-side mansion of it. He’d also taken her father’s down payment and co-signature on a loan so that she didn’t get behind on her “to do by thirty” list. Their condo within walking and biking distance of campus wasn’t fancy, but it was classy and a lot nicer than what almost anyone else had in his graduating class. They’d also lucked out when it came time to sell it, with a market devoid of anything decent within walking distance to campus. Her father had insisted they keep all the proceeds, as she knew he would.
But Detroit? Seriously. She couldn’t even consider Grosse Pointe. Not if Ann Arbor were on the table. No way. Yes, his commute would be a pain. But that wasn’t her problem and it definitely wasn’t the point. Having a happy wife and family to come home to was.
Hence her life timeline adjustment—unbeknownst to him, of course—which involved her getting pregnant earlier than they’d planned.
Twenty-nine had been her target age for becoming a mother for the first time. It seemed respectable to her. Not too early, and yet not so late that she’d have to worry about dried-up eggs or birth defects or anything else that might put a kink in things. The night they’d had a serious blowout argument, both sides digging in heels on the location of the Ross family’s future homestead. She’d slammed the bedroom door in his face and sobbed for an hour, after which she consulted with her mom, ever the calm, collected giver of marital wisdom.
Resolved, she took a long hot shower, put on one of her slinkiest nighties, walked through a cloud of Hermes 24 Faubourg perfume, tossed her diaphragm into the trash, and got herself knocked up within two weeks. It was no hardship. Michael Ross had her number, sexually speaking, and could dial it up to a fever pitch with a flash of his dark eyes, a click of the softly padded handcuffs around her wrists. Amelia was addicted to his body and what he did with it, like a junkie needing a pop to make it through the day.
Amelia sometimes felt sorry for all the women in the world who didn’t have Michael as their lover. Because at night—or at various times during the day when he wasn’t studying or writing papers, or doing his never-ending law school group work—his mild, agreeable, ever-positive persona morphed into something that had taken her by surprise at first. Until she realized that it was exactly what her high-strung, borderline obsessive/compulsive, control freak personality required in order to get off.
What had been a buzz that first time, in the dark, candlelit gloom of his somewhat damp-smelling apartment in college, had become something that transformed her into a walking horndog. He’d been the first man to ever satisfy her despite her ongoing efforts with several boyfriends and random hookups through college. Amelia had gone most of her adult life without knowing how an orgasm actually felt, until she’d met Michael.
That one time with the woman in the Dutch hostel didn’t count.
It was a nice arrangement all the way around. A well-balanced relationship and marriage that kept some things under her control; like their social life, shopping, and meals, daily bill paying, vacation planning. While other things including lawn care, long-term financial stuff and taxes, and their sex life, well within his. Of course, she got pregnant and became a mother to Tyler a full two years earlier than she’d wanted. But it had gotten her to Ann Arbor, exactly as she had planned.
She’d bent on her resolve never to live in rented housing again since the whole sell-the-condo, move-for-the-job, and have-a-baby thing had tumbled down over them so fast. The past year had been pleasant enough. She’d found a sweet older house to rent in Burns Park from a professor couple on sabbatical. It was a gentrified neighborhood near the university and downtown. She’d been fine to bring her baby home to that house, with its mix of new money and student neighbors.
But now, it was time to get real about where she’d raise her family. She touched the white gold necklace again—a piece of jewelry Michael had given her years ago—for strength to shove this thing past everyone’s seeming reluctance.
Melissa’s bright-blue gaze flicked over Amelia’s shoulder, meeting Michael’s, she assumed. “What?” She turned and glared at her husband. His expression was pensive. Tyler, their sixteen-month-old, was sound asleep against her shoulder, thumb lodged in his mouth. She reached over and pulled it out with a soft pop. Michael sighed. He was always after her to let the boy gnaw on his own fingers. “What’s wrong with the house, Michael?” She used her I’m dead serious voice, knowing he would understand the gravity it imparted.
He blinked. “Nothing. I mean, nothing that I know of. Right, Melissa?”
Amelia could tell he was hiding something, but for some reason, at that moment, with the sun beaming down through the skylights and glancing off the giant six-burner Wolf stovetop, she didn’t care. She shut her eyes, reopened them, and ran her fingertips down the spotless Sub-Zero stainless fridge door. Something that resembled a thrill of erotic energy ran down her spine, giving her full body chills.
“Great. Let’s offer four fifty.”
“What?”
She didn’t blame him for being shocked. She was a notorious underbidder. But as far as she was concerned, up to this point, she’d been dealing with inferior houses. This house was worth every penny of that and more. They were preapproved for well over six hundred thousand, thanks to the possibility of her father’s co-signature and their condo sale proceeds as down payment plus their stellar credit scores. She did a quick mental calculation of what that translated to in terms of monthly principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, and realized it would be tight. But Michael was due for his first raise in another month. He was moving up the ranks with the exact speed she knew he would. All would be fine.
“Unless you think we should offer more?” She raised one eyebrow at her husband. He shook his head. “I want this one, honey. Real bad.”
“Well, I’m all for making this happen. For real, this time.” He shot her a pointed look. She smiled serenely. This was her bailiwick. She’d handle it. He was happy to surrender it to her.
Tyler yelped and threw his head back. She knew that face. He wanted to eat. “Here, give him to me.” She was determined to breast feed until he was twenty-four months and, besides, she enjoyed it. It gave her quality, one-on-one time with her baby. It was something only she could do for him, and she wasn’t eager to stop, even though he was big for his age, and sometimes she felt self-conscious doing it in public. Not to mention it sapped every ounce of sexual energy out of her body, leaving her lying around like an empty wineskin, drained and useless. Even when Michael would come to her at night, eager to resume their formerly rambunctious state of affairs.
All the books and her obstetrician had supported her decision about her son’s nutritional needs, however. Once she’d dumped the pediatrician who’d tried to convince her to put Tyler on rice cereal six months ago and found one who agreed with her about the gut-biome-building qualities of breast milk, she’d had all the professionals in her corner on it. And Michael claimed he didn’t mind. His mother on the other hand…
Amelia shook her head, dismissing any negativity.
She had found her dream house.
And she was going to have it
“Can we sign now, electronically?” She took a seat on the home stager’s couch. She’d seen enough real furniture versus this fake stuff in the past year and half to know what she was looking at. She turned away from Melissa, lifted her shirt, shifted her bra aside. Tyler latched on with gusto, making her wince. “Honey? Michael, please?” She let a note of desperation creep into her voice, knowing the affect it would have on him, god bless him.
“Sure,” Melissa said. “I actually thought you might feel this way, Amelia, so I have everything ready to go right here. Michael, go ahead and sign for you both. You know the drill by now I think.”
Amelia stared down at her son’s face. She touched his cheek. His hand reached up as if to bat her away then rested on the top of her breast, the contrast between their skin hues breathtaking in a way that she’d adored from the first moment she’d laid eyes on Michael Ross, across the room from her having a beer with his fraternity brothers.
“We got our house, baby boy,” she said, leaning down to touch her lips to his furrowed forehead.
Her life was perfect. Even though, sometimes, she’d had to deviate from her plans to get what she wanted. Once both sets of their parents had been informed of the engagement and the desired summer outdoor wedding, no amount of BS from either side would change their minds. The fact the Ross and Stanhope families would never participate in warm, multigenerational, Hallmark-channel-quality Thanksgivings or Christmases together was one regret. But she’d made her peace with it.
Besides, she’d already mapped out their holiday visiting plans, splitting them between the two families, who only lived twenty miles apart from each other after all, into the next ten years. No sweat. Planning was her thing.
She felt Michael’s hand on her shoulder. She smiled up at him. Her life was right on track. And now she was about to get her dream house.
“Thanks, honey,” she said, leaning against Michael’s arm. Tyler disengaged and smiled up at his father, his full lips wet and split in a semi-toothy grin. “Da!” he blurted and scrambled off her lap so he could mess with the house stager’s display of fake fruit on the ottoman in front of them.
“Nope, Ty, not that,” Michael said, scooping the boy up and onto his shoulders.
Amelia tucked herself away and stood, smoothing the wrinkle-free fabric of her khaki shorts over her flat stomach. She couldn’t wait to move their stuff in, to fill these rooms with her tasteful things. She’d already ordered three rooms’ worth of furniture, thanks to her father’s housewarming gift of several thousand dollars. Michael had chafed for about three seconds then succumbed to the logic of it. Pretty house equaled happy wife. Happy wife equaled drama-free evenings and weekends. And maybe a return to their former sex life.
“Will we hear back from the seller tonight?” She watched her husband head for the front door—a classy, dark-wood style with arts-and-crafts glass sidelights—and tried not to scream at Melissa to get their offer in front of the seller now, not an hour from now.
“Yes, you will. She—the seller—is a friend of mine.” Melissa paused, her wall of coolness melting a bit. “In the interest of full disclosure, my house is over there.” She pointed through the front window at a house of similar vintage and style directly across the cul-de-sac.
This wasn’t a fancy neighborhood. But Amelia understood the cache of living on this street, in an area of town with large lots and a variety of styles and vintages, where understated wealth didn’t need to show off with obnoxious, overbuilt McMansions. There were chain-link fences around some of the yards, for heaven’s sake. Talk about pedestrian. But never in a million years had she imagined they could afford to live here now. It was like…fate.
That cool, semi-sexual shiver of anticipation shot up Amelia’s spine again. She swallowed and watched Michael bend over to grab Tyler, admiring the curve of his jeans-clad ass. Yes. She’d get this sorted, get Tyler into his own bedroom and off the breast soon so she’d be ready for her man to come back to her at night.
“Well then, we’ll be neighbors.”
“Yes.” Melissa paused. “These people, the sellers, were good friends of ours. My husband’s construction company did all the upgrades including the family room and deck addition last year. He also did a full reno on the upstairs. You know, in the, um…main suite. Tom, the…husband, was an accountant. He handled my husband’s company’s books.”
Amelia waited, sensing that a shoe was about to drop. “I see. So…were they transferred for his work, or something?”
“No,” Melissa said, meeting her gaze with an expression that was part enthusiasm for a well-earned sale and part…pity. “No. Actually, and you should know this before we go any further.”
Amelia rested her hand on her new granite countertop and tried not to scream. She waited a count of five then said, “I should know what, exactly?”
“Tom, the husband, he was an accountant, like I said. Had his own company. His wife, Laura, was a middle-school teacher and ESL tutor.”
Amelia thought she saw the other woman’s eyes glisten with the onset of tears. She clenched her jaw. “And?”
“Tom killed himself, here, in the house. In the master bedroom tub.”
Amelia’s blood froze. She curled her fingers into a fist, keeping it on the cold, comforting stone surface. “I see.”
“So, if you want to think about it for a night…” Melissa closed her laptop. “I would totally understand. I mean, Ryan, that’s my husband, he and his team demolished the entire suite and rebuilt it, so it’s not even the same floor plan up there, much less the same, ah… you know, tub.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”
“That’s why it’s so cheap,” Amelia said. She felt clammy and weak even as that odd sensation of wanting—needing—this house so badly continued to thrum up and down her spinal column.
“Yes.” Melissa tucked her laptop into her Coach bag. “Seriously Amelia, I would love to have you as neighbors.” Her gaze flicked out onto the lawn where Michael was running around with Tyler. A shiver of something else coated Amelia’s brain. Something not unlike the old-fashioned saying about a goose walking over your grave.
She shook her head. Utter nonsense. She was eager, anxious, and probably horny. All of which she planned to alleviate within the next few weeks, in her new house, her new bedroom, on her new walnut four-poster, with a California king sized Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme Breeze mattress she and her mother had picked out together.
“I want the house, Melissa. I’ll skip the inspection at this point, if there are other offers.”
Melissa smiled at her, the genuine relief pouring out of her nearly visible. “No need for that. I know it will pass. And if anything needs to be worked on, I sleep with the guy who can fix it.” She winked. Amelia frowned at this. Melissa had been all business, rarely joked about anything, super serious from the start. But she guessed now that they’d be neighbors instead of in an agent-client relationship, things would change. She smiled.
“Great.” She stuck out her hand. To Amelia’s complete surprise, Melissa grabbed her and pulled her in for a tight hug. “Okay, then,” she said, disentangling herself.
“I’m on it,” Melissa said with yet another wink as she held the front door open so Amelia could exit. When she gave Michael a similar, out-of-character, full-body hug, he raised an eyebrow at her over Melissa’s shoulder. She shrugged. Things would change now, she supposed. And it would be nice to know someone on the cul-de-sac from the start.
