Page 22 of Once Upon a Fall

But right now, I’ve got a Cinderella room to work on.

Dean

The prince’s kingdom awaited his decision. The prince, meanwhile, had discovered spackle.

“Hello?” I ask, my voice groggy from sleep.

“Dean?” a voice I know well replies.

I let out a tired breath. Had I not been woken from a dead sleep and been completely disoriented, I might not have answered.

“Mom,” I say, wiping the sleep out of my eyes.

I don’t always avoid her calls, but I have a sinking suspicion I know why she’s calling today. In fact, I’d bet every bit of money I have in the bank on it.

“How’s my boy?” she asks in that silky-sweet tone she always uses when she wants something.

“I’m good,” I tell her.

It’s not an exaggeration. Once again, I slept better than I have in a long time, cocooned in the middle of this old mattress. Much better than the sleep I got at the last five-star resort I stayed at.

Which is . . . odd.

I’m also feeling good because I have a project: fixing the wall in my room. Which, I’ll admit, was incredibly frustrating at first—finding another shortcut by Rosie. At least this time I didn’t end up half naked and dripping wet in her entryway.

But also, I sort of enjoyed it? Not the naked part—the hole-fixing part. I’ve been trying to find a hobby for a while now. Golf was too slow—too much standing and waiting. Spanish lasted four hundred days on the app, and I still can’t carry a conversation. There’s an out-of-tune guitar in my storage unit.

Turns out what I like is patching drywall.

It didn’t end up being as cut-and-dried as I thought it would be. After a quick Google search, I realized the holes where the anchors ripped out of the wall were too big for just spackle, and they would need mesh patches. So, I went to Berk’s Hardware, conveniently one street over, grabbed what I needed, and spent the afternoon working on it. Now it should be dry enough to finish.

“That’s good to hear,” my mom replies.

“How are you?” I almost don’t want to ask, because it’s never a simple answer and especially won’t be right now with everything that went down regarding the will.

“Oh, you know,” she says.

Yep. Here we go.

“Have you seen the farm?” She jumps right in.

I rub my forehead. “I did. It’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, the orchard is gone, and the front of the barn is burned down. There are raccoons living in the house.”

“Well, that’s not good,” she says.

Do I detect a slight bit of glee in the way she said that? Good. Maybe if the place sounds like a money pit, she can finally let it go.

“It’s going to be a pain to just get the raccoons out,” I keep going. “It’ll probably cost me quite a bit.”

I honestly hadn’t thought of the cost of animal removal. How much do companies charge to remove a family of raccoons? Maybe I should take Rosie up on asking those brothers to do it.

Right now, though, I need my mom to understand that the property is in bad shape and she’s better off not having to deal with it.

“I still don’t know why she changed the will like that,” my mom says.