Chapter 23

It was a lovely spring evening and we were strolling around the big park just down the street from our apartment, holding hands, when Lee surprised me with an off-the-wall question.

"Jackie, do you think these people would let us out of the lease if we asked them?"

It took me a second to track her meaning, and then I realized that by "these people" she meant the absentee owners of the house where we lived.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe, maybe not. But I thought you were happy here, where would you want to go?"

"I don't mean move away," she explained. "I am happy here, I really love Charleston and we have all these friends already and I've got my class"—she'd signed up for an art class just to see how she liked it, and found she had a real talent for drawing—"and I want to stay here. Just not where we are. I want us to start looking for something to buy, a real home of our very own."

It flabbergasted me. I hadn't given it any thought up to now, and this was the first Lee had said about it. My first reaction was that it might be a little early for such a major step.

"Honey, hadn't we ought to wait a little?" I asked. "I mean, we haven't even had a full year here yet. They say the summers are really pretty brutal, hot and humid and mosquitoes and—"

"I grew up in D.C. just like you, Jack," she interrupted. "Remember the inversions?" Atmospheric inversions, when the air is still and hot and heavy for days on end and any view in the distance is obscured by the pervasive smog, are one of the Washington area's most unpleasant features.

"Mmm," I agreed.

"On the coast we won't have that," she continued. "And we'll have breeze and wind if we buy down here near the park. Besides, I'm like you, I can deal with the heat, it's the cold I always hated. Winter was nothing here, no nasty snow and ice and I actually stayed warm. I'm just ready to move out of that apartment and get us a real home."

"It's a lot nicer than your old place," I pointed out.

"I know," she said sheepishly. "I guess I'm getting spoiled already. But we've only got six windows, and whenever I look out any of them I'm looking level with the ground. I'm starting to feel like a squirrel holed up for the winter. Can we find us a realtor and maybe at least look? Please?"

I trotted out my last argument. "Here in hurricane alley?"

"Oh, pooh. The last big one was years ago, and we can just evacuate with everybody else and make an adventure out of it if another one comes. There's always something in every place, earthquakes or tornadoes or floods or droughts or something. Please? Pretty please?"

I gave it up. Yes, we could look, I told her. Just look, I cautioned, it would probably take us a long while to find just the right house—

"There's one two blocks over that just went on the market," she blurted. "It's so pretty, it has this really neat garden with flowers and paths, and when I went in the other day..." She trailed off as she took in the look I was giving her.

"I think I've been had," I said, continuing for a moment to glare into her uncertain smile. Then I did the only thing I could in the circumstances, I burst out laughing. Immediately the uncertainty went out of that smile, and her whole face lit up. I'd never loved her so much as I did right then.

"And when do we see this sterling place you've found?" I asked, still smiling.

"Well ... two-thirty tomorrow afternoon, OK?" I laughed even harder, and now she joined me. People walking by smiled indulgently at the young couple having so much fun together.

The house Lisa had talked about wasn't my dream home. Not quite. The kitchen was pretty out-of-date, for one, even Lee agreed it would need a remodel; and since the place was on the historical society's preservation list we'd have to jump through a bunch of extra hoops for permission.

And it was a lot too big, four big bedrooms and three baths. But when I told her it was "an awful lot of house for the two of us" she just gave me a Mona Lisa smile and murmured something about maybe it wouldn't always be the two of us. When I looked at her sharply she added "well, not yet, but shouldn't we plan ahead?"

I hadn't thought much about kids, this marriage business was too new to me. But I supposed I'd better give it some thought, and maybe pretty soon.

The price was way up there, closing in on two million. I had to shake myself mentally when I heard the number, wasn't it only about six or seven months ago that I'd gone running off with twenty-five bucks in my pocket?