Chapter 17

 

Enrico on his doorstep first thing in the morning was like starting his day with ten cups of coffee. He gave Mitch a jolt, made his heart speed up and his body feel more alive. Mitch kept waiting for the effect to wear off, but the more he saw of Enrico, the more powerful the jolt became.

Today they were going to be tackling all the stuff that was stored in the basement. Mrs. Del Rio planned to have a charity yard sale, and it all had to be sorted and brought up. She would be by later, but for now Enrico was getting what they needed ready. He assembled some boxes and took them down to the basement.

Standing at the top of the stairs, Sammy anxiously waited for him to come up. When he did, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Now that your dad put in more lights down there, it's not so scary. You can come down too, and we can go exploring," Enrico told her. "You want to find some more pretty junk?"

Seeing that he was ready to go right now, Mitch asked him, "Shouldn't we wait for your grandmother?"

"We can start without her. What do you say, Sammy?" Enrico asked her.

"Can Daddy come too?" she asked, still unsure about going down there.

"Is he brave enough?" Enrico asked.

"Daddy is brave," Sammy assured him. "He's brave and big and strong."

"OK then. You, me and your dad," Enrico said to her and offered her his hand.

"OK. I'm brave too," she said. "Hold my hand, Daddy."

With all of them holding hands like that, going down the narrow stairs was kind of a challenge, but they made it. The extra lights made the place less scary, but Sammy was still uneasy at first.

"How about if I carry you so you can have a look around from up high?" Mitch asked her.

Sammy liked that idea a lot and hung around his neck, feeling safe while peering around at everything. Soon enough her curiosity got the better of her, and she scrambled down to explore. She was finding all sorts of treasures with Enrico.

While she was looking at an old sepia photo of a group of ladies all wearing feathered hats, Mitch asked Enrico, "So is there a method to this madness?"

"There's some stuff here that's obviously just trash. I'm going to trash the trash and let my grandmother and Sammy decide about the rest," he said.

"Sammy is making decisions?" Mitch said.

"Sure. She knows what's what." Enrico's phone chimed with a text. "Grandma is on her way," Enrico announced and Sammy celebrated.

Mitch took a trash bag to that room that might have been a bomb shelter. As he got all the ancient cans of food out of there, he could hear Enrico asking Sammy's expert opinion on various stuff he discovered. To think she had been scared to come down here, and now she couldn't get enough of the treasure hunt.

 

Not long after, Mrs. Del Rio's high-heeled shoes could be heard clicking down the basement stairs.

"Everything is coming along real nice up there and soon we'll have this basement cleaned up too," she said.

Sammy ran over to show her the picture she found of the ladies with hats, and Mrs. Del Rio told her she could keep it.

"Just don't let her keep everything she finds," Mitch implored her.

"She's a good kid and you do good work," she said to him. "Just today someone asked me to see this place and the house isn't even on the market. Not that seeing it would have done him much good. I saw his suit, his shoes and his car, and he couldn't afford it."

"But you'll be putting it on the market soon, right?" Mitch said and felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of leaving.

"I'm in no rush. I'll give you plenty of time to fix it up right," Mrs. Del Rio assured him, though when they had first talked about the renovation, she made it seem like she was in a hurry.

Right now she was more interested in joining Enrico and Sammy as they picked through the jumble of stuff down there. Mitch hauled up one box of old books and came back to find them digging up old clothes and magazines to fill two more boxes.

"I found a treasure," Sammy said in an awed whisper. In her cupped hands, she held a teacup with a handle in the shape of a butterfly.

"That was made for you," Enrico said then turned to his grandmother while glancing up at Mitch. "It's all hers, right?"

"That sweet baby girl can have anything she wants in the whole wide world," Mrs. Del Rio said.

"That means she can have the teacup," Enrico translated for Mitch.

But there was no end to the treasures Sammy found. She held up a small, vintage, oilcan. It had a spout and a picture of a shepherd girl and a sheep on it.

"Is it for watering flowers?" Sammy asked.

"I guess it can be for that," Enrico said. "Grandma wants to plant lots of flowers in the garden. That will come in handy."

Next was a brass lamp in the shape of an elephant. Sammy liked that too. Then a ceramic box decorated with lilies and a matching bowl.

"She can't have everything here," Mitch said then he got down on one knee in front of Sammy. "When Mrs. Del Rio sells this stuff, the money is going to charity, to help people."

"We're going to sell pretty junk to help people?" Sammy said.

"That's right."

"OK," she said and she was ready to give it all up, but Mrs. Del Rio insisted she keep a few of the things she really liked.

That reminded Mitch about the silver egg. "What about that nest egg?" he asked Mrs. Del Rio.

"Oh that's hers now," she said.

"Rico gave it to me and the blue flower," Sammy said. It seemed that the things Enrico gave her were too special to give up.

"She probably won't want this," Enrico said as he handed Mitch a saltshaker in the shape of an acorn. Feeling their hands brush, Mitch almost dropped it. Catching it just in time, he noticed it still had salt in it and made the mental note to empty it upstairs.

He then noticed that Enrico was acting odd. Making sure that Sammy wasn't looking, Enrico quickly shoved something inside the trash bag. Curious, Mitch opened the bag and saw four rows of faded butterflies pinned inside a yellowed acrylic display case.

Enrico must have thought it might upset Sammy and didn't want her to see it. Mitch smiled and shoved the butterfly display even deeper inside the trash bag just as Sammy came over.

"What's this, Rico?" Sammy asked and showed Enrico what she had found.

He looked over the little wooden thing then made a guess. "A clam."

His grandmother huffed like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Your own grandmother is a dancer and you don't know what these are. These are castanets," she said as she took them from him.

"Those things flamenco dancers use to go click, click," Enrico realized.

"Yes," she confirmed and demonstrated how they worked a few times. Then she went all out. She spun around slowly one arm raised high above her head the other one behind her back while her heels hit the floor and the castanets clicked in a complementary rhythm.

Sammy clapped, but Mrs. Del Rio didn't just want her in the audience. She told Sammy, "You do it too." She even had the nerve to look at Mitch and Enrico as if she expected them to join. "You used to love dancing with me when you were little," she reminded Enrico.

"I still do, but look at the pile of stuff we have to get through," Enrico said. He nudged Mitch with his elbow and hissed. "Look busy."

Mitch was glad for any excuse not to make a fool of himself. But once the thought of dancing with Enrico flashed through his head, he couldn't help but wonder what that would feel like.

"Listen to you being responsible. You didn't get that from me," his grandmother told him while she and Sammy twirled and stomped their feet all over the basement.

Mitch told himself he was happy just to watch his Sammy dancing, but he didn't dare look over at Enrico or he might just grab him, hold him in his arms and start spinning all around with him.