The Sellers Turned Down My $2.4 Million Cash Offer for Their Lake House. They Wanted to Meet the Other Buyer First

“I’ll fix it,” I said. “All of it. Before closing. And you still come in for half.”

She stared at me.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because the Pettuses are right. I’d have put a hot tub on the porch.”

We formed an LLC with a lawyer in Alexander City who kept asking if we were sure. We split the purchase price down the middle. I paid for the roof and the foundation, and she insisted on a written agreement to pay me back her half of the repairs out of every paycheck for the next eleven years.

“Don’t argue with me,” she said. “I’m a principal.”

All summer, we worked on that house.

My crews did the roof and the foundation. Ramona and I did the rest. She knew which boards were original. I knew how to replace them so nobody could tell. She painted the porch ceiling haint blue, because her grandmother said it keeps wasps and bad spirits away. I didn’t argue. I’ve had enough bad spirits.

Amos and Lillian came every Sunday to supervise. Lillian brought cake. Amos brought opinions.

By August, the new roof and wiring had cut the insurance quote in half, the lender had approved Ramona’s loan, and something had started happening that neither of us mentioned.

We’d stopped arguing about the house.

We’d started arguing about where to watch the sunset.

The night before closing, she came out to the end of the dock, where I was sitting.

“There’s something I left out of my letter,” she said.

“What?”

“The summer I was eleven, there was a boy on a rented fishing boat who taught me a proper backstroke. I never knew his name.”

She looked at me.

“He had a scar on his chin.”