Read Last One Home for Free Online Page B

didn’t want to be paying storage fees for more than two months.
    Cassie had her feet braced against the chair. When she saw she had a voice message and who it was from, both feet dropped to the floor like a bag of concrete.
    Habitat for Humanity.
    This was it. Cassie was about to learn if she’d been accepted as a candidate for the program. She’d had to supply every bit of identification she’d accumulated in her entire life, including her birth certificate, her Social Security card, an income tax return,and bank statements. Plus she had to have worked six months with proof of income.
    Megan Victory, who’d helped Cassie through the application process, mentioned that in addition to everything else, Cassie had to show proof of a savings account. Cassie opened an account with the minimum deposit. She learned that before she would be eligible to move into her new home, she’d need to have enough saved to pay the first year’s home insurance premium.
    Anyone applying through Habitat had to be serious about wanting a home to go through this process. Once all the paperwork was compiled and Cassie had filled out the application, she met with the family selection committee. Following the interview, she then had to be approved by the board of directors. It’d been a month she’d been waiting for their final decision.
    For a long time Cassie simply stared at her phone, unable to find the courage to play the message. Her biggest fear was that she hadn’t been considered a good candidate.
    Teresa, the shop owner, came into the break room and grabbed a soda out of the communal refrigerator. She took one look at Cassie and paused. “You feeling okay?”
    Cassie looked up from her phone and knew she must have gone pale. “I don’t know yet.”
    “Yet? What’s the problem?”
    Thrusting out her arm, Cassie handed her cell to her friend. “Here, listen to the message and let me know what they say.”
    “Who called?”
    Cassie didn’t have time for explanations. “Just listen, and don’t ask questions.”
    Teresa reached for the phone, pushed the appropriate buttons, and pressed it to her ear. Intent on watching Teresa’s face, Cassie didn’t notice that Rosie had come into the room.
    “Mr. Greenstein is here for his haircut.”
    Cassie’s gaze didn’t waver from the shop owner. “He’s early. Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
    Rosie left the room and Teresa handed the cell back to Cassie.
    “What did they say?” Cassie asked, doing her best to keep the quiver out of her voice.
    “Well, my dear, it looks like you’ve been approved.”
    Cassie closed her eyes in order to absorb the sheer magnitude of the news. “They approved me?”
    “They sure did!”
    “They approved me,” she repeated, louder this time, so excited that it was impossible to hold still. She leaped to her feet and pumped her fists into the air. “I’m going to have a home. A real home for Amiee and me.” No more stove with no oven and nonworking burners. No more leaky bathroom faucets and a hot-water heater possessed with an evil spirit.
    “They want you to stop by their office tonight after work, if possible.”
    “I’ll be there.” Cassie danced around the table, so overcome with joy that she could barely breathe. For the first time in her young life, Amiee would have stability. She would live in a neighborhood, have a sense of place and of belonging. At last Cassie would be able to give her daughter the roots Amiee had never known.
    Cassie understood that this house wasn’t a gift. She’d be expected to volunteer a number of hours, making her own contribution in return for this amazing opportunity. How many hours depended on what kind of house was available to her.
    A foreclosure would require one hundred and eighty hours of volunteer work and not necessarily on the house that would be hers, but on whatever house needed work. Three hundred to five hundred hours was what was expected if her home was being built