I could relate. Alessandro and I slept in the same bed every night, but both of us felt awkward about him moving into my room for completely different reasons, so we settled for him staying in the side building and me keeping my window open. For him, climbing in and out of the window was infinitely preferrable to having to run the gauntlet of my family just to get to my door.
“Where am I going to stay?” Arabella asked. “Am I going to stay in one of the casitas?”
“I think they’re spoken for,” Mom said, watching Bern double-time it down the path. “Bern and Runa will take one and the Etterson children will take the other or others.”
“There’s a shack in the back, behind the main house,” I told Arabella. “You can live there.”
She marched around the house. Mom and I followed her along a narrow path, flanked by Texas olive trees, esperanza shrubs, still carrying the last of their bright yellow flowers, and sprawling clusters of cast-iron plants with thick green leaves.
“So Bern and Leon get their picks, and I get the leftovers,” Arabella called over her shoulder.
“Yep.” I nodded. “You’re the youngest.”
She mumbled something under her breath. Torturing her was delicious.
“What did you say this place was?” Mom asked.
“A failed resort. The first owners built the main house, Leon’s tower, and the bigger casita. Then they sold it to a man who decided to make it into an ultrasecure ‘rustic’ hotel for Primes and Significants. His website called it ‘a country retreat for the Houston elite.’”
Arabella snorted.
“He owned this place for about twelve years and built all of the auxiliary craziness. His business collapsed, and now he’s trying to unload the property to settle his debts.”
Nothing about this estate followed any kind of plan. To add insult to injury, the second owner thought he was handy and did a lot of the renovations and maintenance himself instead of hiring professionals. According to our building inspector, his handiness was very much in doubt.
“How much does he want for this place?” Arabella asked.
“Twenty million.”
“That’s out of our budget,” Mom said.
“It’s not if we get financing,” I said. We had already put in an application through a mortgage company Connor owned, and it was approved in record time.
“We can afford to put half down,” Arabella said. “But this place isn’t worth twenty mil. I mean I don’t even get a house. I get a shack . . .”
We turned the corner and the path opened, the greenery falling behind. A huge stone patio spread in front of us, cradling a giant Roman-style pool. Past the luxuriously large pool, the patio narrowed into a long stone path that ran down to the four-acre lake. Between the pool and the lake, on the right-hand side, stood another three-story tower.
Where Leon’s tower looked like something plucked from a Norman castle, this one could have fit right into the seaside of Palm Beach. Slender, white, with covered balconies on the top two levels and a sundeck on the roof, it had a clear vacation vibe. A narrow breezeway connected its third-floor balcony to the main house. Of all the places on the property, it was the newest and required the least amount of work to be habitable.
“Your shack,” I told her.
Arabella took off across the patio.
Mom and I strolled down past the pool toward the lakeshore. An exercise track circled the water, and the roofs of three other houses poked out from the greenery at random spots along its perimeter.
“The southern entrance is there.” I pointed at the other end of the lake. “We can put Grandma’s motor pool in that spot, facing the road.” We would have to get her a golf cart to get to it. Grandma Frida was spry, but well past seventy.
“Can we really afford this place?” Mom asked.
“Yes. If we put twenty-five percent down, we will have enough for a year’s worth of business expenses and have half a million left over to renovate. We’ll have to stagger the repairs and we’ll need to invest in some livestock for the agricultural exemption. The place already has solar panels, so we’ll be saving some money there, but we will need a yard crew and probably a maid service of some sort.”
Mom bristled. “I never needed maids in my life. If you’re old enough to have your own space, you’re old enough to keep it clean.”
“I agree, but the main house is huge, and we have the barracks and the offices. We are all going to be really busy. There will be an army of people to supervise, renovation decisions to make, and we still have our regular caseload and then there is the other business . . .”
My time was no longer completely my own. A chunk of it belonged to my family and the running of our House, but another, significantly larger part, belonged to the State of Texas and the complex entanglements its magic families created.