Page 87 of Best Offer Wins
I’ve been dying to call him, but I didn’t want to raise suspicion by seeming too thirsty. Better to wait for him to come to us.
“Hi, Margo,” he says somberly. “Horrifying news about this poor girl, isn’t it? So much potential. What a waste.”
I roll my eyes. “Really unthinkable.”
“So… I’m just checking in,” he says, trying to sound casual. “I haven’t wanted to push, but I kind of thought I would’ve heard from you by now.”
“Oh?”
“Well, yeah. I assume you guys want to pull the offer, but I can’t legally do that until you confirm—”
“What about the other buyers?” I interrupt him. “Have the rest of them dropped out?”
Ian sticks his head out of the bedroom, registering who I’m talking to. I put Derrick on speaker.
“Well, yeah. Of course they have,” says Derrick, sounding perplexed by the question. “At this rate, they’ll probably have to burn that place to the ground.”
Ian strides quickly over to the sofa now. “Derrick?” he interjects. “Thanks so much for calling. You’re right, we’re withdrawing our offer, too.”
“Sure, that’s what anyone would do in your—”
“No, no, Derrick.” I glare up at Ian, daring him to speak again. “Give us just a second, okay?”
I mute the phone, my eyes lingering on the screen to make extra sure I’ve properly silenced our end of the call. Now they burn back into Ian. “What the fuck?”
“I can’t do this, Margo. It’s too much, what you’re doing to Natalie. What you did to—” He chokes up before he can say her name. “I just… I can’t live in that house.”
How many times am I going to have to explain this to him?
“We’ve gone over this, Ian. If we don’t buy it, Jack and Curt will have zero reason not to tell the police about us.Zero. And, anyway”—I rest a hand on my belly—“this isn’t about you anymore.”
The lying, cheating father of my child stares at me for a few seconds before his face collapses in on itself. His eyes drop to the floor, as he begins to weep softly. Maybe it did work out for the best that I couldn’t kill him. Living might be a worse punishment.
I unmute the phone. “Derrick, are you still there?”
“I’m here. What’s the verdict?”
A smile breaks loose across my face.
EPILOGUE
We’re keeping this room coral.
Somehow, I always sensed I was having a girl, but when the ultrasound confirmed it this morning, I was still ecstatic. It still felt like a surprise. And now we won’t have to do a thing in here. The floral wallpaper on the ceiling can stay, too.
Whenever Ian gets around to putting it together, I’m planning to float the crib right here in the middle of the space. I ordered it as soon as I made it past the first trimester—I couldn’t wait a second longer. The changing table will go over there, under the window. Three months in, and I still can’t get over the view. I’m sure a lot of people would say it’s nothing special. Just some nice big trees, some pretty houses with tidy lawns. But when you’ve been staring from the other direction for so long—from the outside, looking in—there is no greater pleasure than standing within the walls of your very own forever home, looking out onto the street where your daughter will one day learn to ride her bike.
We got to move in sooner than we’d anticipated. Jack and Curt accepted our offer, no negotiating required, then pulled Penny out of school and hightailed it to London. The couple next door—Lunchbox’s owners, a nice pair of empty nesters—told me themoving company sent a crew to finish packing up once the police were gone. Jack, Curt, and Penny never set foot inside this house ever again.
All the neighbors, not only Lunchbox’s parents, are super friendly. Whenever I take Fritter for a walk, someone stops us to chat. At first, they’d always steer the conversation toward the house, hinting around for some macabre detail. “Terrible what happened there,” they’d say, “are you settling in okay?” Or, “How wonderful to have some new energy in that place after…you know.” Yeah, not subtle. But they seem to be calming down now. Certainly, they can all agree we got one hell of a deal.
In fact, since we didn’t have to compete, we had enough money left over to finish the basement, as long as we do most of the labor ourselves. Ian has thrown himself into it. He spends almost all his nights and weekends down there, really any time he’s home, framing out the new bathroom, adding drywall and proper flooring. “I just need it to look different,” he keeps saying. And that’s A-okay with me. Whatever it takes to keep him occupied till the baby arrives.
Fritter loves it here, too. On nice days, he’ll nap for hours in the sun on the deck. Sometimes, just watching him out there makes me cry. The hormones probably have something to do with that. But it also just feels so good to give him the life he deserves.
He doesn’t seem to miss Natalie at all.
It was later that Wednesday, the very same day we told Derrick that we still wanted to buy the house, when the train of cop cars came flying down U Street. As soon as the first one braked in front of our building, I knew they were there for her. The footage with her partial plate had been circulating for less than twenty-four hours, but how many red Volkswagens with two number 7s on the tag can possibly exist in DC?
