Page 122 of Save the Date
“How much more?”
He did some quick, painful calculations and named his price.
She sighed loudly. “I wish I had known you were interested, Jack. It would have been nice to sell it to one of my former pupils. I think Mother would have liked that. She always used to say she liked those Finnerty boys.”
This was news to Jack. As far as he knew, Bernice Bradley hated all little boys, especially if they were named Jack or Ryan Finnerty. He’d once made the mistake of leaving his bicycle lying down in the driveway during a piano lesson, and Bernice had run right over it in her dark blue Pontiac.
“I guess you have a legally binding contract with Kane? No way to get out of it?”
Sylvia pursed her lips. “I could tell him I’d changed my mind and decided not to sell.”
“He might make trouble for you,” Jack warned. “From what I hear, Cullen Kane is a pretty astute businessman. He usually gets what he sets out to buy.”
“Maybe not this time,” Sylvia said. “My father taught me more about buying and selling real estate than either of you two will ever know. You leave him to me.”
Jack’s face lit up. “So we have a deal? For the price I named?”
“All cash?” Sylvia asked. “It will make things simpler.”
Now Jack understood that foreboding feeling he’d experienced coming up Sylvia Bradley’s front steps. He’d been a lamb led to slaughter.
“All cash,” he said. He held out his arm and helped her to her feet, and as she was showing him to the door, she stopped suddenly.
“There is one other thing,” she said. “A little leak in the roof over my back mud porch. My laundry room. I’m sure a reputable contractor could take care of that in no time.”
Half an hour later, he slid behind the steering wheel of his truck and looked down at the dark dress pants he’d worn especially for this meeting. They were covered with fine gray cat hair. As he pulled away from the curb, he saw Sylvia Bradley, silhouetted in the doorway. Cullen Kane had gotten off easy with a potted orchid. As for Jack, he and a helper would be returning that afternoon to tear down the termite-infested mud porch and rebuild it. Gratis.
Materials alone would probably cost a couple thousand, but all he could think about was the look on Cara’s face tomorrow when he would tell her what he’d done.
49
“You did what?” Cara had been about to take a bite of her sandwich, but instead she put it down on her paper plate and picked up the sheaf of papers he’d just presented with a flourish.
The look on her face was not anything like what he’d pictured. Her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed as she skimmed the sales contract for West Jones Street. Her face paled when she got to the page with the sales price.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded. “Because if it is, I don’t get the punch line.”
“It’s no joke. I bought it. Sylvia Bradley was my piano teacher when I was a kid. I went to see her yesterday morning, and I bought this building. For you.”
Cara stabbed at the contract with her fingertip. “You paid twice what it’s worth! Are you crazy? Where would you get that kind of money?”
Now Jack put down his own sandwich. He was confused. Where was the jumping up and down? Where were the screams of joy and wild kisses of gratitude he’d been anticipating for the past two days?
***
Earlier that day, Jack and a helper arrived at Forty-fourth Street at dawn. They carted Sylvia’s ancient rusted Kenmore washer and dryer down the crumbling driveway and into the back of Jack’s truck for the trip to the dump. It took only a couple hours to tear down Sylvia Bradley’s mud porch. He was shocked that it hadn’t just fallen off of its own accord.
Even with a cane, the old lady was pretty spry, and she stood in the weedy backyard, in her flower-print blouse and old-school Keds, and supervised as they tossed the rotted timbers into the Dumpster he’d rented.
Late Wednesday morning, after she could see the yellow pine skeleton of her new porch, Sylvia finally called him into the kitchen, offered him a paper cup of warm Hawaiian Punch and the sales contract for West Jones Street.
He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and brought out a white envelope with the cashier’s check for the earnest money inside, just as he’d offered those five-dollar envelopes from his mother every Wednesday the year he was ten. As he handed this one over to Sylvia Bradley, he halfway expected her to ask him if he’d been practicing his finger exercises.
She ripped open the envelope and studied the check, running a swollen forefinger over the embossed bank logo.
“How did you leave things with Cullen Kane?” he asked, signing the contract with a flourish.
“Never you mind,” Sylvia said. She opened a kitchen drawer and rummaged around among the rubber bands, balls of string, and nubs of pencils until she found a set of keys with a white plastic C&S Bank key fob. “Here are the keys. My father bought that building in 1953. He was always partial to West Jones Street.”
