True to Me - Kay Bratt Page 0,10

the woman, absolutely speechless. Of all the possible things she’d thought could go wrong, the previous owners still living in her new home was not one of them.

Chapter Four

Only half an hour before, Quinn had been ready to accept all the challenges of becoming a homeowner. Now, however, she sat at the kitchen table and waited for Maria, the previous owner, to return and explain why she was still living in a house that didn’t belong to her or how she didn’t know it was being sold in the first place.

As Quinn waited, she looked around. The room was interesting. The seventies-style orange countertops definitely needed to go, and the floor tiles had seen better days too. She thought the cabinets themselves might be salvageable, with a good sanding and a new paint job. Maybe some different handles on them.

At least the original wainscoting was still in place. That was going to look nice freshened up. The kitchen had good bones and, with some changes, could be exactly how she envisioned.

Quinn felt silly, remembering that she wasn’t here to have coffee with a friend and fantasize about new floors. Her dream house, unfortunately, had come with a family included.

She wondered if she had any sort of trial period where she could back out of the contract. Did house buying include such a clause? Sort of like the thirty-day trial on a new mattress, or the twenty-four-hour clause when you bought a new car? And wasn’t this a criminal matter? Should she call the police? Tell them she’d bought a home and didn’t know it included people, and she wanted them out? What kind of monster would that make her?

“Just let me get them settled so we can talk privately,” Maria had said after leading Quinn into the kitchen, then disappearing into the family room.

To make things worse, Maria had a nice face. Probably about forty or so, she fit the mold of just a regular stressed-out mom. Quinn wished the woman wouldn’t come off as so nice. That would’ve made it easier for Quinn to stand her ground.

She heard a discussion start. The teen boy didn’t sound happy either. The girl piped in with a comment, and her mom shushed her, but she did it kindly, with a gentle voice.

Quinn couldn’t count the times someone had asked her and Ethan if they had children or when they were going to have them. She never could understand how a stranger could look so innocent when asking such a personal question.

“We are childless by choice,” she’d answer, though, truth be told, it was more Ethan’s choice than hers. She never pointed out that they hadn’t even crossed the first milestone of getting married. They’d been together so long they automatically looked the part.

Now, with the sound of the cartoon blaring and the boy giving his mom all the reasons she should let him use her car, Quinn let herself think about what motherhood would’ve been like. She wanted to believe she’d have been a good mom, but the truth was that taking care of herself and Ethan while juggling a high-paced career was exhausting, and she’d never really thought she’d be able to take on a child too. Even if she had wanted to, Ethan had made it clear in the first year they’d been together that he had no intention of ever procreating. He took it as a personal affront that so many children were being born in a world that was already overcrowded and facing an inevitable lack of resources one day. Yet, when she’d brought up adoption, he wasn’t interested in that either.

Quinn’s own childhood had been just fine, but if she were being honest, it had also been lonely at home. If—and it was a moot point now—she had gone the route of being a mother, she would’ve never had just one. Her imaginary child would have siblings, something that Quinn had always longed for.

The front door slammed, and other than the cartoon, the house was silent. At least the little girl wasn’t trying to give her mother a nervous breakdown.

Maria returned, her face red and sweaty. She took the seat across from Quinn. “I’m so sorry. He’s going through quite a bit right now. He’s not usually like this.”

He’s going through quite a bit? Quinn had just spent a fortune on a house that someone else was living in! She stared at Maria, wondering how to phrase all that without sounding like a completely unfeeling robot. She