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bought it in 1980.
    He’d never thought much of the house—it was small, oddly shaped, and plain as a box—but Helen had thought it was adorable. Style moderne, she’d called it, pronouncing it the French way, with the first word sounding like “steel.” For the longest time, he’d thought it must have a metal frame.
    He and Helen had been living here when he’d bought the sprawling Georgian house in south Tulsa. To his shock, Helen had suggested forgoing the new place and staying here. Walter had scoffed. How would people know he was successful if he lived in a nine-hundred-square-foot shoebox? He was proud of the way he’d managed to invest his earnings from his job at the power plant and turn a handsome profit.
    But Helen had loved the neighbors, the schools, and the location. She’d said they had all the space they really needed. She’d thought the house was unique and charming.
    Walter saw nothing charming about it. The place was squat and square, with a flat roof, stucco exterior, and oddly rounded front corner.
    They’d had an argument over it—one of the worst in their forty years together. Walter had stormed out in anger. As usual, Helen had given in and Walter had gotten his way.
    God, how he regretted that now! He regretted ever telling Helen no about anything. If he’d had one iota of an inkling how much he’d miss her when she was gone, he’d have gone along with every one of her crazy ideas.
    Which hadn’t been all that crazy, in retrospect. She’d only wanted things like a family vacation, or Walter taking a day off now and then, or the two of them signing up for ballroom dancing lessons—things that would have given them more time together. Good Lord, what he’d give for more time with her now.
    “Why don’t you have a seat?” Sammi pulled him back to the present by motioning to the sofa. Moss green, curved, and upholstered in a fan shape, it reminded him of something out of an old movie. The house smelled like popcorn.
    His chest tightened. Popcorn and old movies were two of Helen’s favorite things.
    “What do you think of what I’ve done with the place?” Sammi asked.
    “You’ve made it look real nice,” Walter said, sitting down.
    But it was like putting lipstick on a pig. New paint and tile didn’t change the fact that the house was falling apart. It needed a new roof, new stucco, a new chimney, and extensive foundation work. He’d put in some new electrical wiring a few years ago and patched up the plumbing, but both systems needed complete overhauls.
    The dog stood up and barked. Sammi tightened her grip on his collar. “I’ll put Joe outside, and then I’ll be right back. I have a proposal I want to run by you.”
    Oh, Lordy—not another one. Over the last few months, Sammi had hit him up with all kinds of propositions. First of all, she’d dug up a bunch of historical information about the place and pestered him to apply for a historical-property designation. Apparently the place had been designed by some hotshot art deco architect back in the 1930s. Walter had refused, of course; a historical designation would only limit his options.
    Next she’d wanted him to sink thousands of dollars into the house so she could get a mortgage. When he’d refused to do that, she’d tried to negotiate a lease-purchase agreement, but he had no intention of getting locked into that. Lastly, she’d offered to use her own money to pay for repairs as she could afford them, but Walter had vetoed the idea because of liability concerns.
    The bottom line was, it would cost more to fix up the house than it was worth. Nobody wanted a seventy-five- or eighty-year-old home with no master bath, no laundry room, and a kitchen so narrow that two people had to turn sideways to pass each other in it. The home’s only value was its location. Wealthy yuppies or Gen-Xers or whatever the heck they were called nowadays were tearing down homes throughout the neighborhood and wedging oversized faux