This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison Read Free Book Online

mother has canceled. Yesterday he called to confirm the ride for the second time. He even offered to come over and take a look around the house, make sure everything was in working order. Not only that, he offered to house-sit, and pick up the mail in her absence. She feels terrible for underestimating him.
    “Take your time, take your time,” Dwight says, from the open kitchen, admiring the stainless-steel appliances, running a hand cleanly across the marble countertop. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”
    “No, no, dear. I’m almost ready.”
    It’s no small kindness, Dwight’s offering to drive Harriet as far as Kingston—and at 6:00 a.m., no less. That he was considerate enough to arrive twenty minutes ahead of schedule just puts a fine point on it.
    No, there’s nothing shifty about Dwight Honeycutt as he sashays from room to room, flipping light switches, turning water spigots on and off, knocking on walls, inquiring about square footage, admiring views, peering keenly out at the patio.
    “Hot tub work?”
    “As far as I know, dear. Bernard maintained it scrupulously.”
    “Nice amenity.”
    “I really ought to use it more, you’re right.”
    The relative dryness of the banana belt, sheltered as it was by the rain shadow, had been the decisive selling point, when shortly after his retirement from Blum Bearing in ’88, Bernard made the mutual decision that they were leaving the city for the peninsula. Oh, not that there hadn’t been some discussion on the subject. Harriet’s objections had been heard, among them not wanting to leave the kids (though Skip was nearly thirty), not wanting to sell the family home (though truth be told, it was a drafty old Edwardian with all the frigid corners of a haunted house), and not wanting to say good-bye to their friends (though, let’s face it, how exciting did twenty more years of playing pinochle with Gene and Margaret Blum sound?). In the end, it was a game of inches. Only eighteen inches of precipitation annually in Sequim, according to the real estate agent. Nearly thirty inches less than Seattle. More than pollution, more than crime, traffic, high property taxes, or any symptom of urban decay, Bernard could not abide rust. A corrosive menace. An insidious predator.
    “Gotta love this rain shadow,” says Dwight, as though he can hear her thoughts. “No wonder everybody wants to retire here.”
    Harriet never wanted to leave the north end, it’s true. She and Bernard had both been born and come of age in Seattle. They’d raised their children in the Ravenna house. But twenty-seven years later, hunched in the passenger’s seat next to Dwight, Harriet thinks of Sequim as the place she’s spent the best years of her life.
    It all started with the house—the one decision over which Bernard had been willing to grant Harriet the final word. Because she saw to its upkeep, organization, and operation, the home and hearth would ever remain Harriet’s domain. Long after Bernard had lost patience (having viewed a dozen listings and attended half as many open houses), Harriet was finally swept off her feet by a cedar-sided one-of-a-kind in the Carlsborg flats. It was everything the family house in Ravenna was not, with its river-rock chimney, spacious sunroom, and jetted tub in the master suite. The kitchen was a dream, airy and uncluttered, with counter space galore. She loved the cedar-scented charm of her new home. The luxurious sparsity of the open floor plan. There were even two darling guest rooms for the kids when they visited, and a rec room in the basement for the grandchildren (if Skip would hurry up and produce some). Out back, through the sliding glass double doors, lay a wide flagstone patio facing the Olympics, flanked on all sides by raised garden beds. And all of it for barely two-thirds of what they’d managed to get for the Ravenna house.
    “Oh yeah,” says Dwight, reaching for the glove box, from which he proffers a white envelope. “Mom