Ellie
I felt like an i***t for dumping him. DJ seemed more than happy to just spoil me for a week, but what he was doing hit too close to home. He wanted to learn me. Take care of me. It was too much to pretend. Too real to be fake.
I shook it off in the cab ride to the rental lot. The call wasn’t Tom or Danny—it was Bill, my sister’s husband. The one who’d gotten me into real estate, who had steered me toward the less obvious, less traveled avenues. I had forgotten the auction was today.
Thank goodness Bill hadn’t.
The first time I saw the property was when Daniel was still alive. We’d talked about moving down here. It was five hours away but still close enough to his family and mine. I had fallen in love with it then.
Over the years, I kept tabs, checking the tax auction site
