Page 12 of Time For You
“Of course, I drove. I just. . .the excitement. . .you know how I get.”
“What’s going on, Alexandra?” Mother’s voice seemed to calm Alex and she straightened, then immediately headed for the large kitchen island.
We all followed suit.
My nerves were getting the better of me as I watched Alex line up the papers, then rearrange them again. The marble was cold beneath my palms, but it did little to settle me.
“Alex, get on with it,” Aspen said impatiently from her perch on a barstool.
“I wish Rory was here for this. I’m not sure she got my text,” Alex murmured, just as someone called out from the front of the house. “I’m here!”
“Aurora! Get in here. Your sister has something important to tell us.” Mother’s voice carried throughout the large house without the use of an intercom. She was her own personal megaphone.
“Sorry. What’s going on?” Rory asked as she settled on another barstool beside Aspen, placing her large bag at her feet with a plop.
“Ok,” Alex said, as she rearranged two more papers and then stepped back. “Do you see it?” she asked excitedly.
I stepped into her vacated spot, but I saw nothing in the hundreds of articles. “What am I looking for, exactly?”
“Here. Let me help. Rory, do you have a pen?” In a split second, a pen appeared from Rory’s hand as if she called it from thin air and she handed it over to Alex, who circled one of the articles in the first paper.
I moved and leaned over the counter, mouthing the words as I read. Tax lien. State to sell. Fifty acres and property. 130 Easterly Lane.
“OH MY GOSH!” I shouted as I skimmed over each of the Knoxville papers where the article resided. The last three weeks posted the same article.
“Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh,” I repeated as I grabbed the last paper and held it to my chest and turned toward Alex.
“And I checked. It still has a tax lien.”
“Will someone please tell us what’s going on?” Father demanded.
I was too stunned to speak. Luckily, Alex had calmed down enough to explain that the house I’d dreamed of, and used to belong to our family, was now owned by the state because of unpaid taxes for the last few years.
“What does that mean?” Aspen asked, and the rest of us mumbled the same assessment.
“It means that it’s going to be sold at auction.” Alex turned to face me directly and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Autumn, it’s going up at auction on Monday.”
“I. . .I. . .” The words lodged themselves in my throat and I had to pause for a moment to collect myself or I was going to become a sobbing mess on the floor. “I can’t afford it, you guys. I just lost my job. I can’t cash in my savings for something like this. It was always a pipe dream. Something I could bring back to our family. I never thought it would actually happen. I gave up on that fantasy.”
“If you had access to the money, what would your plans be for the house?” my mother asked, as if she hadn’t a clue. I was most certain that she knew exactly what I wanted to do with the property.
“I’d fix it up to how it would have been in its glory days. Restore all the hand-crafted woodwork. Things like that. And I wanted to submit it to the National Register of Historic Places so that it would be protected.
“And I wanted to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. It was always something I thought would be fun.”
“Then we’ll get you the money. That’s our heritage, after all,” my mother said like I was asking for a copy of a recipe.
“What?” my sisters and I asked in unison. My father stood there proudly as if it had been his plan all along. “Why don’t you all just buy it instead of giving the money to Autumn?” Rory chimed in.
“That. . . all of it. . .was what she’s meant to do. Autumn, you lit up when you spoke about it. That’s your dream and I’m going to make sure that you have it. I’d do it for any of you,” she emphasized as she gave a look at each of us. “So, let’s all cross our fingers that it pans out the way we hope.
“Now, tell us more about the bed-and-breakfast idea,” Mom added as she began swooping up the papers, settling the vase with the single sunflower back into the center from where Alex had nonchalantly moved it out of the way in her haste.
I still didn’t understand her reasoning, but knowing my parents, they probably had something up their sleeves.
“Where did this flower come from?” Aspen asked curiously, her fingers reaching out to touch the delicate petals.
Mom chimed in before I could respond. “Autumn met a man in town today and he gave it to her.”
