This place is a piece of shit.” Kevin Vandemeer stood in the front yard of the two-bedroom home he’d purchased sight unseen, running his hand over his head.
“Well, of course it is,” his sister, Megan, said.
He turned to her, his mouth dropping open. “You purposely found me a piece-of-shit house? I know I was an asshole when we were kids, but this seems excessive for payback.”
She shook her head in annoyance. “Stop being a drama queen. You said you wanted a flip house. This is a house to flip.”
“That I could live in.” He punctuated the last two words with his hand.
“Noooo, you said to find you a house that would make a good investment.”
He swung his hand toward the two-story bungalow. The bright blue paint had peeled off in massive chunks. The covered front porch ran the length of the front of the house, although the right side dipped down, probably because the right pillar was missing. It had been replaced with several concrete blocks, then a few bricks, and finally, on top, a canned good. He took a step closer. “Is that a can of pork and beans?”
A grin spread across her face. “See? Your first dinner in your new home.”
His gaze swung back to her. “Megan…”
She put her left hand on her small, rounded belly. He hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and he’d had a hard enough time dealing with the wedding ring on her finger, much less the fact that she was pregnant.
“Kevin, look.” The teasing tone was gone, seriousness replacing the merriment in her eyes. “I know it seems daunting, but you needed a project after everything…and this seemed like it would take up a lot of your time.”
He ignored the after everything lead-in. He was starting to regret telling his sister about his latest breakup. “My new job is going to take up plenty of my time. This place is going to take the rest of my life. How did this even pass inspection?”
“Well…” She sounded insulted. “It didn’t.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Megan?”
“It’s a flip house, Kevin. You take what you get and make the best of it.”
“It looks like the whole place is about to fall into a sinkhole.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Let me be the judge of that. I want to see inside.” He paused, horror washing through him. “Tell me you’ve been inside.”
“Of course I’ve been inside.” But she sounded unconvincing.
Well, shit. There was no telling what kind of mess he was going to find in there. Might as well find out what twenty-two thousand dollars in cash had bought him. Although in hindsight, that should have been a major clue. He’d chalked it up to the cheaper cost of living in the Midwest. Now he felt like an idiot.
Buying the house had seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d come back to his hometown because he needed a change. After twelve years in the marines, his second tour in Afghanistan had been enough to convince him he was ready for civilian life. So it had seemed fortuitous when his lifelong best friend practically begged Kevin to come work with him.
Kevin hesitantly took the executive contractor job even though he felt significantly underqualified. He’d protested that he didn’t know the first thing about overseeing a construction project, let alone one as big as the shopping mall Matt had taken on.
“I need someone who can organize the financial end and watch the overspending. You may not have been a drill sergeant, but you sure as hell act like one. You’re perfect,” Matt had said.
Kevin had accepted the job for a variety of reasons. One, it was as different as he could get from trying to root out the Taliban in small Afghan villages. The horrors he had seen would haunt him to his dying day. And, two, he wanted to be part of his niece or nephew’s life as well as have a chance to get closer to his sister.
After seeing the hellhole she’d bought him, he was reconsidering the second part of number two.
“Keys.” He reached out his hand and she placed two keys in his palm.
“I’m not sure you need them, though. The lock on the front door doesn’t exactly work.”
“Then what exactly does it do?”
She gave him a hopeful grin. “Sits there and looks pretty.”
This situation was going from bad to worse. “Am I going to find a homeless man sleeping in my basement?”
She cringed. “More like a family of squirrels in the attic.”
Releasing a groan, he stomped across the front yard, tripping on an exposed tree root and nearly falling on his face.
“Be careful,” she called after him. “The front yard is like a minefield.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
She laughed, and he made his way up the steps. At least they were made of concrete and looked fairly stable.
He paused, taking in the sight of the first house he’d ever owned. What the hell had he been thinking? His life had gone to shit—there was no denying that—but why had he trusted his sister to find him a place to live?
But, after everything, he’d wanted something familiar. Plus, his sister had recently moved back to Blue Springs, Missouri, after living in Seattle for years. After her entire wedding fiasco, he’d realized he barely knew her. Last summer, she’d shown up four days before her wedding with the man everyone presumed to be her fiancé. But he’d turned out to be a guy she’d met on the plane ride home. Kevin had kicked himself for months afterward, telling himself if he’d been more active in his sister’s life he would have known that the first guy was an asshole and the second was an imposter. She seemed happy now, but he planned to be around to see if it was really true.
Megan called after him. “Be careful on the…second board.”
His foot fell through a porch slat and tossed him forward, the front door breaking his fall, until it swung inward and he fell on his face flat on floor.
“Megan.”
“Yeah…the porch has some wood rot. The boards need to be replaced.”
“And my ankle?”
“God, I know men are babies, but you were a marine, Kevin Vandemeer. Isn’t your motto Live free or die?”
“It’s Semper fidelis. Always faithful. And you better be damn glad I’m faithful to not killing my only sister.”
“In case you start to reconsider, just remember I’m giving you a niece or nephew in a few months.”
“In the spirit of this sibling bonding time, I think it’s fair to tell you that’s the only thing saving your ass at the moment.”
“Come on, Kevin. Don’t be so cranky.”
“Cranky?” He rolled to his side and glared back at her. “You think I’m cranky? You just pissed away over twenty thousand of my money!” He realized his voice was rising, but he didn’t give a shit.
“Let’s just go inside and I’ll show you it’s not as bad as you think it is, so stop being so cranky.”
“I’m not cranky!” Somehow he suspected the inside was worse, but he was good and stuck now. And, speaking of stuck, he sat up and jerked his foot out of the hole, pulling off his shoe in the process. “Goddamn it!”
She grinned at him from the bottom of the steps. “Well, if the shoe fits…”
“Not funny.” He crawled over to the hole and pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, shining the flashlight down into the abyss. He found his shoe, but next to it was a pair of black beady eyes that shined back at him before whatever it was scurried for the corner. He jerked backward and pointed to the hole. “What the hell is that?”
She cocked her eyebrows. “It’s a hole. I’m so glad all those years in the marines taught you some valuable discerning skills.”
“There’s something alive down there!”
She leaned back her head and groaned. “You are such a baby. It’s probably a raccoon or a possum.” Then she stomped up the steps and reached for his phone. “Give me that.”
“I don’t think you should be messing around with a wild animal in your condition. What if it attacks you?”
She knelt on the porch next to the hole. “I doubt it’s going to jump out and chew off my face. And even if it does, I don’t need my face to give birth. You’ll just be stuck looking at the grisly scars during the holidays. Now give me your phone.”
He knew that look from when they were kids. She wasn’t budging until he caved, so he saved them both time and handed her his mobile. “Don’t drop it. I’ve heard raccoons are like pack rats.”
“But what if he needs to watch raccoon porn? I wonder what that’s like…do they show lady raccoons doing the nasty in a trash can?” She leaned forward and shined the flashlight on his phone into the space, then she lay down on the porch and reached her arm down into the two-foot-wide space.
“What the hell are you doing, Megan?” he barked out in a panic. “You’re going to get bitten!”
She sat up, holding a tiny gray kitten in her hand. “I think your data plan is safe.” She held the now mewling animal in her hand and lifted it in front of her face. “What do you think, cutie? Do you want Kevin’s phone?”
She cuddled it close to her chest and gave him the phone. “Get your shoe and I’ll give you the grand tour after I pee.”
“Does this place even have running water?”
“Ha. Ha,” she said in dry tone. “People in Africa would call this a palace.”
“Twenty-two-grand money pit is more like it.”
He was totally screwed.