Page 10 of If I Didn’t Have You

“You should just hire Randy,” Liam grunted.

“See, that’s exactly what your mother said. As if I can’t do the job myself.”

“Of course you can,” he retorted.

“I know!”

“But why should you have to?”

“There is no reason in the world I have to, but I will not allow another man to build my house. Do you know why?”

He shook his head slowly. “Because your mother is trying to prove a point. She thinks I sit around too much.”

“Well, you sort of do,” Michael chuckled.

“And she thinks that since I sit around too much, I should have to rebuild the whole goddamn house.”

“Just tell her you can’t do it,” Michael shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

I sucked in a breath at his words. “Tell her I can’t do it?”

“Yeah, what’s the problem with that?”

I gritted my teeth in annoyance. He was so cute in his youth. Give him a few more years, and he would understand. “I already told her I could do it.”

“And now you say I can’t.”

“There is no way on God’s green earth that I’ll allow your mother to look at me and say I told you so. I would rather die.”

Michael huffed out a laugh. “That’s taking things a little far.”

“Again, not to point out the obvious, but you’ve been through a window multiple times.”

He walked over to the wall, clasping his hand around the edge. “Okay, let’s say we do tear down this wall…what exactly does she have planned for the kitchen?”

“She drew me a diagram,” I grumbled. “Which isn’t a lot of help unless you want a refrigerator in the middle of the kitchen and the oven about ten feet outside the house.”

“So…you need to build an addition,” Liam surmised.

“And not just any addition.” Pulling out her drawing, I showed the boys how their mother had redesigned our house.

“Wait, this is twice the size it is now,” Liam said, pointing to the brand new fireplace she wanted in the living room.

“And she wants a sunroom off the front of the house.” As I traced my finger along her plans, I could see how it would transform the house, making it more spacious and comfortable than it already was. I just wasn’t sure what the point of all of it was.

“How the hell are you gonna afford all this? It’s like building another house.”

“It’s two rooms,” Michael corrected.

“Yeah, but the price of building those two rooms is the same as building a house back in the 80s.”

I already knew how she planned to pay for it, and because of that, there wasn’t a lot I could say to deny her. “She has her trust fund.”

“Her what?” Liam asked, his eyes squinted in confusion.

“Her grandparents left her a trust fund.”

Both of my boys were shocked. It wasn’t exactly something we discussed, mostly because it was their mother’s money, and I wanted nothing to do with it.