Page 40 of Manors & Mischief

I guess there’s one thing I have to come to grips with.

Not only is Ember O’Malley here to stay, she might have fixed something in me along the way.

Someday soon, I’ll tell her about the well, and maybe, I don’t know, I can tell her about these feelings, too. As long as I haven’t screwed it up for myself.

“It’s perfect,” Ember says. “I’m still in shock.”

“She just needed a little love,” I agree.

“You two make a good team,” Bea says, then she winks at me with a knowing grin.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe everyone in this town knew it before I did, but Ember is quickly becoming the reason I do anything. In such a short amount of time, she’s wrapped herself around my prickly heart and evened out the edges.

Damnit, but I think I’m falling for her.

15

EMBER

How is this my life?

For whatever reason, now that the outside of the manor is as beautiful as the inside, it’s as if a weight has lifted off my chest. I hadn’t realized how much the outside with all of its gnarly limbs and unkept grass was making the house look so run down.

Now, birds are venturing into the yard. I even saw some butterflies dot the area as if finding new homes in areas that aren’t a mess of tangled branches. Sure, the side and backyards need to be fixed up, too, but what a fresh start for the place.

Taking a break, I sip my coffee and wrap fake, fall-leafed garland around the porch railing. Seeing it almost new again inspires me to decorate the place, and hopefully, even pull the eye toward the decoration and not toward the areas that still need work.

The porch door creaks open, and Devon walks through. He has a clipboard in his hand with the drawing I completed of the Children’s Haunted House. He laughed this morning when I told him it wasn’t to scale. Obviously. It was his job to go into the ballroom to see how much of the space it could occupy and then “spec out” the haunted house according to my direction.

“I’ve got a quote for the PVC,” he relays.

“Excellent.” I tuck the end piece of garland into another so it will stay in place and turn to face him.

“Luckily, your idea is within your budget. PVC is pretty cheap and easy to access.”

He shows me the quote, and I let out a sigh of relief. I don’t know how I could be more grateful that things seem to be coming together. “Wait, did you add in your labor?”

He waves me away. “We’ll talk about that when the time comes.”

I give him a look, but then my phone rings. I pull it out and see my mom’s name on the screen. I’ve sent her a few pictures without any response.

“You should answer it,” Devon says. “I have some floorboards to fix, but it’ll take at least a week for the PVC to get here from the wholesaler.”

It rings again in my hand, and I nod before turning my back. “Hey, Mom.”

“Ember, hi.”

Behind me, the screen door creaks open and closed, then a loneliness rears up. I tell myself it’s because I’m talking to my mom, but more and more, I don’t know that I can keep fooling myself. Yes, Devon was a grumpy jerk, but he’s been different lately.

“Ember?”

“Sorry, Mom, I’m here. Did you get my pictures?”

“I did. It looks very nice.”

The way she says it sounds like a monotone greeting from a doctor’s office. I nearly roll my eyes. My parents were not thrilled about me moving here. Not just for the obvious reasons of me blowing the money I won on a house I hadn’t seen before, but the whole idea of moving here away from everyone else was so foreign to them that they hadn’t grasped the reasoning why.

“You guys should come visit so you can see it for yourself.”