Chapter 17 - Renovations
With Elmwood Ridge vacant, Ethan and Natalie spent their weekends helping me renovate the property.
It was therapeutic work. We stripped the stained carpets, repainted the walls in warm honey and soft linen tones, and replaced the light fixtures. Working side by side with paint rollers and spackle knives, the silence that had once hung between us was replaced by easy, healing laughter.
"You know," Natalie said one afternoon, wiping a speck of white primer from her nose with her forearm, "I used to dread coming home from work. Every single day, my phone would have five voicemails from Denise asking for money, or complaining about Monica, or demanding that Ethan fix her car."
"And now?" I asked, cutting in the ceiling trim with my brush.
Natalie smiled, a genuine, luminous smile that reached all the way to her eyes. "Now, when the phone rings, it's just Ethan asking what we want for dinner. Or you, asking if I want to go to the botanical gardens."
She climbed down from her stepladder and walked over to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders in a fierce, tight hug. "Thank you for saving us, Linda. If you hadn't put your foot down, Ethan and I would have been divorced within five years. You saved our future."
"You saved yourselves, sweetheart," I whispered, kissing her forehead. "I just locked the front door."
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Two weeks later, Elmwood Ridge was leased to a wonderful young couple—a pediatric nurse and an elementary school teacher—for fair market rent. The five hundred dollar "family charity" nightmare was officially closed in my ledger books forever.
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