Dream House Read online

  DREAM HOUSE

  (BOOK I)

  STEPHANIE FOURNET

  Contents

  Floor Plan of Nanna’s House

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books By Stephanie Fournet

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, artistic works, product names, places, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference or world building. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book whole or in part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  Copyright © by Stephanie Fournet 2021; All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Cayla Zeek.

  Floor plan by Hannah Robideaux

  www.stephaniefournet.com

  For Caitlin Neal-Jones

  My Woo-Woo Guru

  Chapter One

  STELLA

  “Do you want it?”

  “Of course I want it.”

  “Then keep it.” Pen throws up her hands like this should be obvious, her half-moon earrings jangling with the motion. For the first time, I notice they match her cosmos-themed head wrap. Of course, I’ve been too overwhelmed lately to notice much.

  I huff out a sigh. “It’s not that simple.” All of the factors I’m weighing could make the roof cave in. Even without any added weight, this roof might cave in by itself. “There’s a lot to consider.”

  My best friend makes a dismissive noise. I glare at her.

  “What?” she demands. “You think Estelle Lafitte Mouton didn’t already consider everything this would mean for you? You have to give your Nanna more credit than that.”

  Pen presses her hands together and bows over them in reverence. And now that she has invoked Nanna’s name, I can almost feel my grandmother’s presence.

  But it’s been like that all morning just because I’m standing in her three-story, one-hundred-twenty-year-old home again. The one she left to me.

  Me.

  Stella.

  Her only granddaughter.

  My cousins are furious. My brother Tyler probably would be too if—

  Best not to think about that. He’s not furious. He’s not a lot of things he used to be. But he’s here.

  I look up at the high ceilings of the formal dining room. A water stain the color and shape of a liver confesses a once-leaky toilet upstairs. The asthmatic window unit blasts icy air that only seems to reach the middle of the room. The pine floor creaks beneath my feet.

  “Maybe she intended for me to sell it,” I say to the liver stain.

  “Hmph,” Pen mutters. “If she wanted it to be sold, she would have left it to your dad and your uncles.”

  She has a point. Unlike my cousins, my dad and his two brothers aren’t furious. Well, they’re not happy about Nanna leaving the house to me and me alone, but they don’t look at me like I’ve fooled them all these years with pretend innocence.

  They know I was around when they weren’t.

  Dad, my Uncle Mike, and my Uncle Les may not like this outcome, but I don’t think it took them by surprise.

  Not like me. I sure as hell didn’t see this coming.

  And even though Nanna had been sick for a long time, I didn’t think I’d lose her. Not yet.

  My gaze sweeps the room again. Even with all the furniture hidden beneath makeshift dust covers, the room is crowded with memories.

  I haven’t set foot in here in more than a year, but the house smells so much like my grandmother it’s unfair.

  “I think she knows exactly what she’s doing,” Pen says with her reliable, wise tone. When I meet her amber gaze, I don’t for a second doubt her claim to be a modern-day witch. Especially when she’s talking about my late grandmother in the present tense. It’s both spooky and comforting.

  For one of those reasons, the hairs on my arms stand up. Then again, maybe that’s just from the blasting window unit. I chafe my arms and try to make progress on the decision ahead of me.

  “But if I keep it—”

  “We both know you’re going to keep it,” Pen says sagely.

  I roll my eyes. Maybe she’s right, but I just don’t see how. “It’s not that simple,” I say again.

  Pen arches an elegant brow. I know the lashes she bats at me are false, but the effect of her stare is no less commanding. Whether this is magic or simply the Power of Pen, as I often tease, it’s hard not to feel chastened.

  “Stella Jane Mouton.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you mean to tell me that you’d rather stay in your two-bedroom apartment with Tyler and Maisy for the rest of your lives?”

  “No, no, and no.” My best friend knows this, but she also knows I have a plan. “No matter what, it wouldn’t be the rest of our lives.”

  “The Plan. I know.” Pen gives me a long face like I’m slow to solve a simple puzzle. “But look around you, Stella. You could put that plan into action right here.” She opens her arms and seems to hold up the sky with her upturned hands.

  “Open a salon in here.” I speak the words aloud.

  I can’t pretend I haven’t already thought about it. That it didn’t cross my mind just minutes after hearing what Nanna’s lawyer had to say.

  Yeah, I can picture turning this room—this massive dining room—with its oak table that seats ten, its rosewood china cabinet, and the pearl-inlaid buffet—into a commercial space. I could fit three stylist stations in here. Two hair-washing sinks along the wall that joins with the kitchen, and at least one hooded dryer chair.

  This room has a southwestern exposure. The front wall is lined by windows. I couldn’t ask for better light.

  Yeah, I’ve thought about it.

  “But it needs so much work. The roof alone…” I shake my head, unwilling to estimate the cost of replacing it.

  Since the house has been essentially empty for over a year, no one was here to notice the leak all the way up on the third floor. That space is essentially attic anyway, so even if Nanna had been home, it might have been a while before it was detected. But now a new roof is in order and new sheetrock for a second floor bedroom ceiling. The fact that we’ve had a dry winter, and the house is built of cypress, kept the damage from being a lot worse.

  But this house might as well have been an extension of my grandmother. I can’t help but feel that if Nanna would have been home, she would have sensed it. Known something was wrong in her home. Her realm. This old house is like the Ship of Theseus, added onto, passed down, repainted, run down, but essentially, an extension of her.

  Everyone in my family—except me—wanted to put Nanna in the nursing home after her second heart attack. I wanted her to have a live-in nurse so she could stay here, ri
ght where she belonged. My dad and his brothers said that it was too expensive. It would burn through her life savings.

  What they really meant was it would burn through their inheritance.

  When I suggested that they set up a reverse mortgage instead, you’d think I’d confessed myself as a communist kitten killer who dealt cocaine to preschoolers.

  I’m sure it galls them that it’s up to me to decide what happens now. And I wonder what she expected me to do.

  Did she want me to keep it? The three-story Edwardian came to her from her father, who, according to Nanna, was the best man she ever knew.

  I can’t count how many times I heard her speak of him that way. It didn’t make me sad until I grew up and realized she’d had a husband, raised three sons, and watched five grandsons grow into manhood.

  Her own father died when she was twenty. When Nanna died last week, she was eighty-two. Sixty-two years is a long time to go without meeting a man who impressed you more than your father.

  I hope I have better luck, but the way things are going, it doesn’t look great.

  But Nanna weathered all of those disappointments right here. From the sanctuary of her childhood home. Nobody could take that from her. Not even when my grandfather walked out on her and her boys.

  When my parents split up when I was five, Mom, Tyler, and I lived here for a little while. I didn’t think of it at the time, but Nanna made a choice back then. She chose her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, not her son. She made it her mission to help us get back on our feet.

  “Did you know I lived here once?” I blurt to Pen.

  She nods. “The first time we spent the night here, in tenth grade, I think,” the corners of her mouth turn up at the memory, “you told me the room we were staying in had been your room once. I asked you if it was haunted, and you said no, and when I was bummed, you said we could go check out the cemetery.”

  The memory surfaces like a Jack-in-the-Box. “And I meant during the day.”

  Pen screws up her features. “What’s the point of exploring a cemetery in the middle of the day? Nothing paranormal is going to happen then.”

  “Exactly.” My adamant tone sets off her laugh.

  Pen has always fascinated me with her witchy ways. Sometimes that fascination has bordered on terror—case in point, the midnight adventure through St. John Cemetery in tenth grade—and other times it has led to life-altering insights. Like when she read my tea leaves after I told her I was pregnant, and she said that I would raise Maisy—yes, she actually said Maisy—on my own, and it would be the greatest joy of my life.

  So I tease her about her spells and her amulets and her rituals, but I sure as hell don’t dismiss them.

  “What are your spidey senses telling you about the house?”

  Her brow arches so severely, I think of arrowheads. “I don’t know whether to scold you for likening my gifts to those of a bug-bitten teenager or congratulate you for finally taking advantage of them.”

  I try not to look too amused. I need Pen in my life. She makes my everyday seem much less maudlin. “Consider me scolded. Now get to the congratulating part.”

  With a sigh she proceeds to play hard to get. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “You know I do,” I say indulgently.

  Her smile is satisfied. I also notice a glint of excitement in her eyes. “I had a dream last night.”

  I suck in a breath. Okay, so not all of Pen’s dreams are premonitory. She once dreamed that the floor of the apartment above mine caved in, and she wouldn’t let Tyler, Maisy, and me sleep there for a whole week. The only thing that caved in was Tyler’s birthday cake. So more a baking fail than life-threatening catastrophe.

  But other dreams?

  The morning after Tyler’s accident—before Mom called to tell me what had happened—Pen kept blowing up my silenced phone until it vibrated off the nightstand and woke me. His bike is in the ditch, she kept saying. He’s not answering his phone.

  I’d tried to tell her that Tyler was safe in his apartment, sleeping—just like I had been. And then my phone beeped with another call, and as soon as I saw Mom’s name, I knew.

  So, yeah, I pay attention when Pen tells me about her dreams.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  She bites her bottom lip, the excitement glowing brighter in her eyes. “I dreamed that I was hanging my prism collection above my bed…” She pauses for dramatic effect and points to the ceiling. “In the third floor attic.”

  I blink. “Wait.” I double blink. “This third floor attic?”

  Her witchy snark is irrepressible. “Does the Pen Pen have a third floor attic?”

  The Pen Pen is the affectionate name we have given to Pen’s crappy loft apartment. It does not have a third floor attic. It does have a way of attracting crazy.

  Or maybe that’s just Pen.

  The Pen Pen is situated downtown on Lee Street right next to The Hideaway and Spirits Liquor Store. It’s safe to say Pen is never short on visitors.

  I side-eye her. “What are you saying?”

  She says nothing but bats her false lashes at me.

  My heartbeat speeds up. “Are you saying you want to move in here with me?” Suddenly, the thought of taking on Nanna’s rambling, run down house seems more doable.

  Pen puts on a pout. “Were you planning on living in this big ole house all by yourself?”

  My giggle is spontaneous. “I wasn’t planning on living here at all.”

  Pen stares at me, letting the words hang there, and I hear what she must hear. They just don’t ring true.

  “Or if I was, of course, it wouldn’t be all by myself.”

  Her nod is quick. “Of course not. Tyler and Maisy—”

  “But if you wanted to join us,” I interject, “there’s more than enough room.”

  She looks at me like I’ve said something absurd. “More than enough room? Honey, you could house a travelling circus and a small army.”

  Well, not really. But the house does have six bedrooms, not counting the third floor attic. All told, it’s more than four thousand square feet of living space. Jesus, the utilities alone will be as much as I pay in rent now.

  My second thoughts rebound. “Do you have any idea what it costs to cool this place in the summer?” I shake my head. “This is still too much house for four people.”

  “So rent out some of the rooms,” Pen says with unnerving sincerity.

  I laugh. “Good one.”

  Pen blinks her impatience. “I’m serious.”

  Again, my heartbeat steps up. “H-H-How would that work? Just share the house with a bunch of strangers?”

  “You could pick and choose who you’d want as a tenant-slash-roommate.” She shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Besides, this house is so big, it’s not like you wouldn’t have privacy. You and Tyler and Maisy could have the whole second floor.”

  I frown. “But then I’d be giving the en suite bathroom to someone else.” Nanna’s bathroom is nothing short of wondrous. High back, cast iron, claw-footed tub, chrome-plated space heater—sure it’s a safety hazard, but I remember the enveloping heat like a comforting hug when Tyler and I would sleep over in the winter—and a stained glass window of blooming magnolias...

  “No, if I’m living here, that bedroom—Nanna’s bedroom—is mine.”

  Pen’s eyes sparkle. “That’s more like it.”

  “What?”

  She nods. “That fire. That pull to keep it.” Her smile is so smug I almost roll my eyes. “I’m glad to see you’re finally being honest with yourself.”

  “I said if. If I’m living here.” I don’t want to admit it, but she’s right. I want to be here. I already see myself here. But I’m still not sure how to make it work.

  Pen glares. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking of selling.”

  I draw in a deep breath. If I sell, I don’t have to worry about the utilities. Or the roof. Or the insurance. Or the property taxes. Or the upkeep.
<
br />   But then someone else—someone with no connection to Nanna Estelle—will be living in this house. Soaking in that cast-iron tub. And probably yanking out that space heater. Let’s face it, they’d probably change a lot of other things I love about this place too. The telephone stand tucked under the stairs. The glass door knobs. The heavy-duty monogrammed screen door with the L for Nanna’s maiden name stamped in the aluminum grill.

  I shake my head. “No, I’m not thinking of selling.” When I speak the words out loud, it happens again. My heart thumps quickly, like it’s a restless bird trying to lift me off the ground. And I don’t know if it’s afraid for me or ready to soar.

  Maybe both.

  Because I can’t just do this by myself. “You’d move in?”

  “And pay rent,” she says nodding.

  I frown. “I couldn’t ask you to pay rent. That’d be weird.”

  Her scowl is almost mean. “You think you can keep this place from falling down and open your dream salon and take care of Tyler and Maisy all on your measly paycheck?”

  “It’s not measly.” I do okay. With Tyler’s disability check, we make ends meet. I’ve even managed to save a little this last year.

  “I’d pay rent,” Pen says again, giving me her best no-nonsense face. “And you have three other rooms you could rent out to help you make this place what you’d want it to be.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Wouldn’t that just be weird, though? Living in a house with strangers? Sharing bathrooms and a kitchen?”

  “How’s that any different from a dorm?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” No dorms in cosmetology school.