Read Aurora 04 - The Julius House for Free Online

bathroom and downstairs bedroom, and another way to get to the kitchen, rather than going through the dining room.
    What a nice wide hall. Wouldn’t it look great repapered and lined with bookshelves?
    I laughed out loud. It seemed there could hardly be anything more entertaining than to have a house to redo and enough money to redo it.
    This was the happiest morning of my life, spent all alone, in the Julius house.

Chapter Three
    I picked up Madeleine from the vet’s, where I’d boarded her while I was gone. The entire staff could hardly wait until she left; Madeleine hated everyone who worked there and let them know it. Growls issued from her carrier all the way to the townhouse, but I ignored her. I was riding on a happy wave and no fat marmalade cat could make me crash.
    I met Martin for lunch at Beef ‘N More, and once we’d said hello to half a dozen people, we were free to talk about the house. Really, Martin listened to me talk. I set my notepad by my plate and had to keep pushing up my glasses as I referred to it.
    “You’re happy,” he said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin.
    “More than I’ve ever been.”
    “I got you the right thing.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Would you mind if I left you with the whole responsibility of seeing to the changes we need to make in the house?”
    “Is this a nice way of saying, ‘Since you’re not working, could this be your job?’”
    Martin looked disconcerted for a second. “I guess it is,” he admitted. “I want our house to look nice, of course, and be comfortable for us; I mean, I care what it looks like! But I have some business trips coming up—”
    I made a little sound of dismay. “Trips?”
    “I’m sorry, honey. This was totally unexpected. I promise in three weeks I won’t budge.”
    Three weeks from now was the wedding. “But there are a lot of things I have to tie up before I take off for the wedding and our honeymoon.”
    To tell the truth, the prospect of having free rein on the house renovation was very attractive. I felt he was dangling that as recompense for the business trips, but okay. I bit.
    “What have we got in the next three weeks that I need to be on hand for?” he said, getting his pocket calendar out.
    I whipped out my own and went over the schedule: a supper party, a shower for me. “Then,” I went on, “we have a barbecue in our honor at Amina’s parents’ lake house, a week from Saturday. It’s informal. Amina and her husband will be driving in from Houston for that.”
    Amina would be my only attendant. The fit of her dress and the chance of her getting nauseated during the ceremony added yet another note of suspense to an already nerve-wracking rite.
    “Southern weddings,” my beloved said darkly.
    “It would be a lot worse if we weren’t so old and established,” I told him. “If I were twenty-two instead of thirty-one and you were twenty-four instead of forty-five, we’d have at least double this schedule.”
    Martin was aghast.
    “I’m not joking,” I assured him.
    “And then, at the reception, you just have cake and punch,” he said, shaking his head.
    “I know it’s hard to understand, but that’s the way we do things in Lawrenceton,” I said firmly. “I know when Barby got married she had a supper buffet and a band, but believe me, we’re stretching it by having champagne.”
    He took my hand and once again I felt that oozy, melty feeling that was disgustingly like a forties song.

    “I heard from Barby,” he said, and I kept my face smiling happily with some effort. My future sister-in-law wasn’t my favorite part of the wedding package.
    “She’s flying in two days before the wedding, and she accepted your mother’s offer of her guest bedroom. I’ll call your mother and thank her,” Martin said, making a note. “And Barrett called.”
    Martin’s son called Martin about once a month, to recount his ups and downs on the road to an acting career in California.
    “Is Barrett still going