a single dwelling with three steps that led to the blue front door.
Matching sets of French doors, one on either side of the main door, opened to the porch, as well. In its original state, the house had been built for one family and the doors led to a pair of sitting rooms and could be opened to catch the summer breeze. Now they provided porch access for each apartment occupant without needing to go through the entry and front door.
They were missing the artful iron vines she was used to seeing on large glass doors and windows in the city, but then security wasn’t such a concern here. Sabrina had been shocked to find her parents still didn’t lock their doors. And not just during the day when they happened to be at home. All the time, day, night, in or out.
Petty crime—or non-petty crime—wasn’t something she needed to worry about in Wheaton. No one was going to snatch her purse off her shoulder or kick in her window to steal her valuables.
Someone had planted shrubs along the sides of the house and in front of the porch. Probably her mother. They were well-tended, with small white flowers starting to bud.
There wasn’t any outdoor furniture, but Sabrina figured she could borrow some from her parents. She’d already requisitioned a coffee table and the floor lamp with a pink shade and ’20s fringe from her mom’s sewing room. What were a couple of outdoor lounge chairs, a small table, maybe some oversized pots of brightly colored flowers added to her tally?
Sabrina had loved her tubs of blooms on her balcony in Yaletown. Well, loved them until the tenant below her complained that they were making a mess on his balcony. One measly bud had fluttered onto his ugly wicker chair, but he’d acted like she’d purposely defaced his property. Her boot heels clacked a little louder. Please, her flower had done more to improve his decor than a mountain of furniture. Which she’d told her landlord, but he’d merely pointed to the clause in the contract that stated she needed permission to put anything on her balcony and she hadn’t bothered to get it.
But there weren’t any balconies here and Sabrina doubted Mr. Mayor would get crabby about flowers. People in Wheaton were friendlier, more agreeable. He would understand that her decor improved his space, as well. Assuming he even noticed.
She tried to peek through his curtain-free French doors while she waited for her dad to finish fiddling with the car and join her, but the glare from the sun prevented her from seeing much. She squinted, but couldn’t make out anything more than a couple of blobby shapes.
There was always the possibility that they’d become friends and he’d actually invite her inside. So far, her old friends had made themselves scarce. She hadn’t even seen Marissa or Kyle. Not that she’d expected to.
Her dad finally finished whatever he was doing and unlocked the front door. The entry was plain but neat. An overhead chandelier, original to the house, sparkled under the afternoon sun. Wood floors were polished to a golden gleam. A well-used Turkish-style rug lay in the center of the room beneath a round oak table that had a bowl of potpourri on it.
Sabrina wrinkled her nose. “Potpourri, Dad? This isn’t the ’80s.” Which was exactly what she’d told her mother when she’d spotted it in the guest bathroom.
He shrugged. “Your mother said it would smell nice.”
Yes, if people wanted their homes to smell like an old lady’s underwear drawer. Sabrina made a mental note to take the bowl and all the dried flowers with her when they left.
Her father walked past the offending decor without a glance and stuck his key into the interior door on the left. Men. Sabrina lingered, noting the cheerful welcome mat in front of the mayor’s door. There was a small nail beneath the peephole. Probably to hang a wreath at Christmas.
“Sabrina?” her father called.
She sent one last look at the door, not that it told her anything, and headed to what would become her new home. She imagined plain white walls, simple wood floors polished to the same gloss as the entry and maybe some architectural features found in older homes that gave them such character. Crystal doorknobs, paneled doors and thick crown molding.
What she found would have caused her mouth to fall open in a gasp of horror had she not trained herself out of the habit years ago when one of her university friends told her it made her look like a rube.
“What do you think?” Her dad was practically rubbing his hands together.
Sabrina wondered if they were seeing the same thing because what she saw was that the bowl of potpourri wasn’t the only thing left from the ’80s. The walls of the duplex were pastel stripes. Yes. Pastel. Stripes. In four colors. Lilac and mint and blush and sunshine shown off in all their glory because there wasn’t any furniture to distract from it.
She prayed it wasn’t wallpaper. Oh, God. She did not relish stripping thirty-year-old paper from the walls. She’d done that in an apartment once. The paper had practically fused to the drywall and it had taken her days of hard labor, one of those scoring tools, fabric softener and finally the rental of a steamer to get it off.
There was one lonely rug that the previous tenant had left behind. A fringed circle of lemon yellow—and not the cute and sexy fringe like her lamp. No, this was the thick yarn type. She didn’t bother to disguise her shudder.
But the wood floors appeared to be in good shape and the fireplace was nice. A simple, traditional wood frame that just needed a fresh coat of white paint to bring it back to life. The kitchen was all right, too, if she avoided looking at the walls, which had been sponge painted.
The appliances were standard white, but clean and carried no leftover odors. She’d once moved into a place where the previous tenant hadn’t bothered cleaning out anything ever. After scrubbing the fridge and scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing some more, Sabrina had insisted her landlord replace it. He’d been irritated and pissy. Apparently, he’d hoped she’d just grow used to the stench. The counters were a neutral beige. Nothing to get excited about but most definitely livable. The pink ruffled curtains, not so much. They would be coming down first thing.
“It needs some upgrades,” she said.
“Now, Sabrina. Don’t go getting any ideas about granite and marble and stainless-steel appliances. I’m already covering the costs of shipping your furniture from Vancouver. Why did you ever put it in storage? Waste of money when we can store it for you in our basement.”
“Because I’m going back.” She’d already explained this, but her father chose not to hear it.
He waved off her statement as he’d done the previous two times she’d told him. “Or you could stay.”
“Now you sound like Mom.” Sabrina sloughed off the idea without another thought because she wasn’t staying any longer than necessary. But until that day arrived, getting the apartment into the new millennium would be a good project for her. Something to fill the long evening hours when Wheaton shut down for the night. Her current obsession of checking email, text and social networking sites was not working for her. At all.
“Don’t you want to come back home?” her dad asked. For the hundredth time, she considered telling him the truth. That she wasn’t back to write a book about her experiences interviewing celebrities, filling the pages with all the tidbits that hadn’t fit into her articles. That she’d been fired and that it wasn’t looking like she’d ever get her job back.
Once again, she swallowed the words and smiled. “It doesn’t feel like
