Page 28 of A Chance Love

They excitedly finished up their shopping. This was the break they needed. Now they could go back to focusing on the building of their dreams.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dust burst into the air as Georgia and April pushed a broken desk from the corner of the living room area. It’d been a pain to gather everything there in the first place, but somehow it was even harder to get it all out.

April thought about cutting every piece of old decor into tiny pieces to carry out, but she knew it would be the same amount of effort, just different work.

Unfortunately, everything seemed to have dust. No matter what they were doing, dust and a musty smell filled the air. Nothing was safe, not even the paintings that hung on the walls.

“Gosh, everything is full of just a gray layer of filth,” Georgia complained as she helped take the desk to the front yard where the half-full dumpster sat.

“Just think, your new furniture we ordered will be coming tomorrow.”

As they pushed the desk up and over the dumpster wall, Georgia closed her eyes. “Okay, I’m starting to feel better. I think I’ll feel even better when the furniture I ordered is in the actual house.”

April looked back at the living room, noting all the furniture they still had to move. It was going to be a while until the new things would be allowed to touch the house. The place was still disgusting.

She almost didn’t want to think about everything that had to get done. The laundry list of things needing fixes continued to grow. Somehow, they dodged or squeezed their way through every hurdle thrown at them so far. Everything broken was scheduled to get fixed.

Except for the things Georgia decided they could do on their own. Which included getting rid of the furniture once they saw how expensive it was to hire several people to clear it all out.

Cleaners were next on the list to get crossed off, after April convinced her it was an unnecessary expense. Cleaning supplies were cheap enough. And with everything they were replacing, like the carpets and floors, they barely had any work to do. It was mostly the dust that had to be wiped away.

The next piece of furniture on the list was probably the heaviest one in the entire house. The wooden dresser from the second floor was almost thrown down the stairs in a fit of frustration the day prior. After an hour of grief, they were able to slide it down the stairs one at a time.

Now, they could at least pick it up from the bottom and carry it out the door with little trouble. Everything else had been harder to carry out the front door and easier to take down the stairs. But this was heavy, with most of its weight in its bottom half.

“Okay, one, two, three,” April said as they each tried to get a good grasp of the chunky furniture piece.

It toppled slightly as they tried to get their hands in the right positions. But finally, it evened out and they began to walk. That’s when April felt it.

Something small tapped her finger. She shrugged it off thinking it must have been the side of the dresser, the little lip that helped prevent things from sliding under it. But then it happened again. A tickling of her hand. Then several tickles, as if something was crawling.

Without a second thought, April’s hands slid from under the dresser. If it had been higher off the ground, Georgia would have been hurt from the sudden drop. But thankfully, she was able to slide her side to the ground soon after.

“What is it?” Georgia yelled to her mom.

April held her hands between her legs, scared to even say it out loud. “I think… There’s definitely a spider there. A spider crawled on my hand. It touched me! It tried to bite me!”

Georgia looked between her mom and the dresser. After rolling her eyes, she walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a paper towel. Her hand slid under the wood and April gasped, afraid for her daughter.

“Look,” Georgia said as she pulled up the towel in her hands. She said it so calmly that April’s body fully relaxed and inched closer to investigate the towel. “It was just a daddy long legs.”

The body looked as though it were still alive, but it didn’t move. And April jolted back. “Oh my gosh, you’re holding it! I can’t believe you just did that!”

“It’s just a spider, Mom.”

April couldn’t believe that her daughter killed the thing that had been haunting her for days. Ever since she saw it for the first time, she knew it was always lurking in the house, waiting for her to sleep. And her daughter killed it, just like that.

She didn’t realize that the renovations would include such a brutal battle with the thing she hated most.

April did love animals, but spiders were where she drew the line. Anything but spiders.

***

One of the other things April and Georgia decided they could do on their own was replace the light fixtures in the bedrooms. The old, yellowing dome lights were being thrown out in favor of the more modern, black lights with fans.

It wasn’t the easiest they could have chosen to install, but it was a better option for their guests.

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