The Little White House Next Door

Half

I went to work on Friday the way I always do.

I counted my drawer, I opened my window, and I took deposits from the co-op and from the Methodist church and from old Mr. Bauer, who still brings his checks in a coffee can.

On my lunch break I walked down to the post office, and on the way back I passed the little white house next door to Mama’s.

There was a For Sale sign in the yard. Mrs. Hadley had gone to the nursing home in Sterling in April, and her daughter in Salina wanted it gone.

I knew that house. I had looked at it out of Mama’s kitchen window my whole life.

It was a two-bedroom with one bath, a front porch with a swing hook and no swing, a single garage, and a chain-link fence between its backyard and Mama’s.

Her daughter was asking forty-five thousand. In Lyons, Kansas, for a two-bedroom that needed paint and a new water heater, that was about right.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of it longer than I meant to, and Mama’s kitchen curtain moved.

That night I asked Dennis again, at the table, plainly. “Will you take the car back? Will you put the money back where we said it would go?”

“I can’t take it back, Angie. That’s not how it works. I signed for it.”

He put down his fork. “And I don’t want to. I’ve wanted one my whole life. Just let me have this one thing.”

“All right,” I said. And I meant that I had heard him. He thought I meant something else, and his shoulders came down, and he picked his fork back up.

On Monday morning I went to my own bank as a customer.

I waited in line like anyone else, and when I got to Kim’s window, I asked for a cashier’s check for forty-two thousand dollars out of our joint savings.

Kim looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at the screen. “Angie,” she said softly. “Are you sure, honey?”

“Half of eighty-four is forty-two,” I said. “That’s my half. He told me himself it was half his. So this is half mine.”

She printed it and signed it, and she slid it across the counter, and she put her hand on top of mine for one second before she let go.

That left twelve thousand dollars in the account. I want to be honest about that. I could have taken it all, and I did not.

I called Mrs. Hadley’s daughter on my break. I offered forty-two thousand cash with no inspection and a closing as soon as the title company could do it.

She called back in an hour and said yes, because a cash buyer in a town of three thousand people does not come along every week.

Telling them

I told Dennis that Wednesday night, after I had signed. I did not do it to surprise him.

I did it because I needed it to be finished before I said it out loud, so I would not lose my nerve.

We were on the back step of the rental and the cicadas were so loud we had to lean close.

I said, “I bought Mrs. Hadley’s house. Next to Mama’s. I paid for it with my half.”

He stared at me like I had spoken in another language. “You did what?”

“I paid cash. Forty-two thousand. It’s in my name and the kids’ fund is going to be that house. Whatever it’s worth when they’re grown, that’s theirs. That’s what our money was for, Dennis. I just put my half where we said.”

“You bought a house.” He stood up. He sat back down. “Without asking me. You bought a whole house without even asking me, Angie.”

I did not say anything. I let him hear it himself. He sat there a long time with his elbows on his knees, and then he said very quietly, “Okay. Okay, I hear it.”

“I’m going to move in for the summer,” I said. “Me and the kids, if they want to come. I’m not divorcing you. I’m not running off. I just can’t live in this rental and watch that car in the driveway every night and act like nothing happened.”

“And if I don’t want you to go?”

“Then you know where to find me,” I said. “It’s the house next to my mother’s. You’ve known the address for twenty-two years.”

We told the kids together the next morning at breakfast.

That was the one thing Dennis and I agreed on without a word, that they would hear it from both of us and that nobody would make them choose anything that day.

Brooke said she was coming with me before I finished the sentence. Cody looked at his cereal for a long time. Then he said, “Can I still see Dad?”

“Every Saturday,” Dennis said, before I could answer. His voice broke on it. “Every Saturday, bud. And any other day you want. I’m not going anywhere.”