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

I touched the scar on my chin.

“Cyrus Lamar,” she said slowly. “Did you know?”

“Not until right now.” I laughed. “My father rented a boat on this lake the summer after my mother left. I was fourteen. There was a skinny girl who kept swimming out to this dock. I told her she was going to drown.”

“You told me I swam like a cat in a bathtub.”

“You did.”

“You fixed it.”

“I tried.”

She was quiet for a while, watching the water turn gold.

“I came back every summer until I was eighteen,” she said. “Looking for that boat.”

“We never came back. My father couldn’t afford it again.”

She took my hand. Not like a business partner.

“Well,” she said. “You can afford it now.”

I kissed her at the end of that dock, with the cicadas going and the porch light on behind us. I’m fairly sure Lillian was watching through the kitchen window.

We closed the next morning.

Amos and Lillian moved to their daughter’s place in Montgomery, a one-story house with a ramp and a guest room. They come back every other Sunday. Lillian still brings cake. Amos still says Ramona’s backstroke is terrible.

The LLC is still in both our names. Every month, Ramona still pays me back by check, with a sticky note that says “Paid in full by 2036.”

I’ve never cashed a single one.

They’re in a shoebox in the closet of the house we share now. Someday I’ll tell her.

Probably on the dock.