Three days after returning from their Tahitian honeymoon, Roger and Holly received identical messages at work from Jamie Frame, Rachel's oldest son: "Meet me in room 347 at Bay City General before 4 PM. Urgent."
Now, Michael was out of the office that day, and Roger's first thought was that he had been involved in a car accident.
Holly, on the other hand, thought something had happened to Rachel, since the message had come from her son.
They were surprised when they literally ran into each other at the emergency entrance of Bay City General Hospital. "You got a message from Jamie Frame too?" Holly asked as Roger steadied her so she didn't fall down after they collided.
"It said 'urgent,'" Roger replied, and Holly saw the anxiety and fear in his eyes now. "Michael's been out of the office all day. I'm afraid something may have happened to him, and that's why Jamie called me."
"I didn't think about that," Holly replied, instantly feeling a pang of distress for Roger, and for Donna as well. "Since the message was from Jamie, I thought it's about Rachel, since he's her son."
"I didn't think about that," Roger said, feeling his own pang of anguish for Holly, knowing how close she and Rachel were after all these months.
"We'd better get up there and find out exactly what's going on," Holly said.
"Yeah," Roger agreed.
As they headed into the hospital, they reached for each other's hands, holding on tightly on the seemingly interminable elevator ride to the third floor.
They were hurrying down the corridor, still holding hands, scanning the room numbers on the doors as they rushed by them. "There it is," Holly said, catching sight of Room 347 on her side of the corridor.
She and Roger stopped short when they heard an unfamiliar and very angry male voice shouting from inside the room. "You're not thinking rationally, Liz! And Jamie, I don't know why you got involved at all!"
"Because they're good friends of my mother's, and best friends with my in-laws, and I was trying to be helpful," Jamie retorted with an edge to his voice. "I see Aunt Liz a lot more than you do, Russ, and I don't just mean medically either."
"The stroke was not a major one, Russ," said a female voice that Roger and Holly both figured must be the aforementioned Liz. "I still know my own mind. This is what I want, and everyone else is being supportive."
"Which I don't understand. What is the matter with all of you?" Russ wanted to know.
"You were right, Olivia," said another unfamiliar voice, this one female. "We shouldn't have called him."
"And why not?" Russ demanded.
"Because, Father, I knew this is how you would react," Olivia replied.
"Which doesn't even make sense, because you haven't lived in Bay City in years," said another female voice Roger and Holly didn't recognize.
"None of us have, except for me, and Aunt Alice when she returned six months ago, but she didn't move back into the house with Aunt Liz," added Olivia.
"I don't understand why all of you aren't more bothered by this!" Russ insisted.
"And I don't understand why you are so bothered by this," Liz said, sounding truly puzzled.
"It's because he can't control the situation," said the first woman, the one who had just agreed with Olivia that they shouldn't have called Russ.
"Oh good, you're here. Jamie told me he had left messages for both of you," Rachel Cory greeted Roger and Holly, coming up behind them.
"There seems to be an argument going on in there," Holly said, exchanging a look with Roger that clearly said they were both greatly relieved that they weren't there because something had happened to Rachel, or to Michael, but they had no idea why they were there, or who most of the people having the argument in Room 347 were.
Unfazed, Rachel simply said, "Russ must have gotten here," then gave two perfunctory knocks to the half-open door to the room before opening it all the way and entering. "And what are you bellowing about, Russ?" she asked, by way of greeting.
Roger and Holly cautiously followed Rachel into the room, hanging back uncertainly.
"You knew about this," Russ accused Rachel.
"We all knew about this," Rachel replied. "And we all understand it. I don't know why you can't understand it."
"Because he doesn't want to understand it," Olivia muttered under her breath.
Roger spoke up then. "Excuse us, but Jamie, why did you call Holly and me down here and tell us it was urgent?"
Jamie looked abashed then. "Oh, no, you thought something had happened to Mom, or to Michael and Donna, didn't you? I should have realized that's what you'd think. I'm so sorry, Roger, Holly."
"So this is the couple you told me about, Rachel," Liz said then. Roger and Holly saw now that Liz was a woman in her early eighties, her short cap of tight white curls rioting about a lined face and alert, aware blue eyes. The only indication of the stroke she had mentioned was the cane leaning against the armchair in which she was sitting.
"Yes," Rachel said, "Liz Matthews, meet Holly and Roger Thorpe. Holly, Roger, this is Liz Matthews. I've known Liz...oh, my, two weeks short of forever, or at least that's what it feels like."
"Since you and Russ were in your ill-fated marriage," Liz added. "That's probably part of your problem, Russ, dear. Things have never worked out for you with any of your wives. Maybe if you could find a nice woman and finally settle down for real, you wouldn't be so irritable all the time."
Pat and Alice exchanged surprised but deeply amused looks and it was all Olivia could do not to smirk at Russ being on the receiving end of Aunt Liz's usual blunt opinions.
"According to Rachel, you two have quite the love story," Liz said, addressing Roger and Holly now. "Almost as good as her and Mac, rest his beautiful soul. And I understand from both Rachel and Jamie that you two are in the market for a house here in in Bay City. By lucky coincidence, I'm looking to unload a house here in Bay City."
"Without even bothering to think it over!" Russ exclaimed impatiently then.
"I have thought it over, Russ," Liz replied. "And my mind is made up."
"You'll have to excuse my father," said the youngest person in the room then, a blonde woman in her mid-thirties with a resigned look in her eyes. "He doesn't deal well with change. I'm Olivia Fowler, and the protestor is my father, Dr. Russ Matthews. These are his sisters, my aunts, Dr. Alice Frame," here she indicated another blonde woman, this one wearing a lab coat with a hospital ID badge attached to it, "and Pat Randolph." Pat, like Olivia and Alice, was also blonde, but where Alice had long hair pulled back in a chignon, Pat's hair was styled in a sleek pixie cut. Pat, Alice, and Russ were all in the same age range as Rachel, Holly, and Roger.
"Mom and Michael and Donna have all mentioned that you're looking for a house," Jamie said then, "and so when Aunt Liz told us that she's ready to sell her house, I immediately thought of the two of you."
"When Jamie mentioned it to me, I thought it was a great idea," Rachel added.
Roger and Holly exchanged a look, and then both looked at Liz. "We really appreciate you thinking of us, Mrs. Matthews," Holly began.
"But we've seen several houses here in Bay City, and none of them have been right for us," Roger concluded.
"You haven't seen my house yet," Liz said. "It's not listed with a realtor. And if you like it, then I won't have to go through all of the hassle and rigamarole of months' worth of Open Houses. If you're not busy right now, would you like to look at the house and see what you think of it?"
Neither Roger nor Holly really knew what to make of this. While they were, by this point, used to Michael and Donna, and Rachel, and Cass and Frankie, being willing to help them out with anything they might need help with, they didn't really know Jamie that well, and Jamie was apparently the one who suggested to Liz that she let Roger and Holly look at her house and the one who called them down saying it was urgent.
"Would one of you girls fetch my purse from the closet over there, please?" Liz asked. Pat moved to the closet and retrieved Liz's purse, placing it in her lap. Liz dug into the purse, removing a ring of keys. She held it up. "Rachel, Pat, Olivia, would you please take Holly and Roger over to the house and show it to them?"
"This is really happening, right?" Roger asked Holly in an undertone.
"Yeah," Holly said. Roger could see in her eyes and hear in her voice that she was just as surprised by this turn of events as he was. "We have nothing to lose here, so we might as well look at it." Holly looked to Rachel then. "Are you sure you don't mind showing us the house right now?"
Rachel looked at Liz fondly, and Alice and Pat and even Olivia were looking at her the same way. "One thing you'll learn the longer you live in Bay City: no one says 'no' to Liz Matthews," Rachel said. "I'm free right now. Olivia? Alice? Pat?"
The other women murmured their assent, though Olivia said something about needing to call her husband quickly to make sure he could pick up Allie from her piano lesson and Brian from his karate lesson. While Olivia was calling Sam, Liz spoke to Rachel and Pat, Alice and Jamie tried unsuccessfully to calm the nearly apoplectic Russ, and Roger and Holly stood in the middle of the room and just looked at each other in amazement.
"Our realtor has showed us 39 houses and we couldn't find anything we liked in all those houses," Roger mused. "We've never had friends who were keeping an ear open to help us find a house."
"Yeah, but we haven't looked for a house together since 1975," Holly reminded him. "I'm looking forward to seeing this house. It would be really ironic if we ended up liking this house, after all the houses we've seen and haven't liked."
And so Roger and Holly followed Rachel, Pat, and Olivia to the Matthews house.
They found themselves on a quaint tree-lined street of family homes, in front of a two-story red brick house with white shutters and an old-fashioned front porch that was big enough to sit in rocking chairs on and watch the world go by. The long, flat driveway led to a two-car garage that was attached and had a keypad on the outside, denoting an electric garage door opener. A row of rosebushes stood sentry in front of the house, their buds just beginning to bloom in the nascent spring weather. The lawn was obviously well-tended, and the exterior of the house was impeccably beautiful. Roger and Holly were both visibly impressed with the house from the outside. They got out of the car and looked up at the house in silence, exchanging a look that said they both liked what they saw, at least from the outside.
Rachel, Olivia, and Pat were waiting for them on the sidewalk in front of the house. "My late parents built this house when my father returned from World War II," Pat said. "It's been in the family ever since."
"Aunt Liz has lived here alone since Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary passed away," Olivia added. "Well, except for when I lived here, and when my cousins lived here, but we're all settled in our own lives and homes now, and Aunt Liz has been talking about going into assisted living for a year. The stroke was minor, thankfully, but it was the clincher for her. And once Aunt Liz makes up her mind, it's best to stay out of her way, because she will steamroll right over you if you're in her way. Father has been in Europe so long, he has apparently forgotten that."
"Liz will certainly remind him soon enough," Rachel said. She held up the keys to the house. "The house is very well maintained. Liz insists on nothing less, and she's had the roof replaced, the basement waterproofed, and the furnace replaced in the last five years."
"And she finally broke down and added central air conditioning two years ago," Olivia added.
"The house has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a finished basement," Pat chimed in.
Rachel pressed the keys into Holly's hand. "You two go ahead and look around. If you have any questions, we'll be on the porch."
With encouraging smiles and looks from the trio of women, Roger and Holly walked up the front walk, climbed the three steps up to the porch, Holly opened the storm door and fitted the front door key in the lock, and she opened the door.
She entered the front hall, Roger right behind her, and she gasped involuntarily. Roger was brought up short as well, at the gray-carpeted staircase leading to the second floor, and the two gray-carpeted steps leading down to the sunken living room, with its large picture window and red brick fireplace. One entire wall of the living room was floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and two comfortable overstuffed armchairs and a large lamp on a round end table between the two chairs to light the area for reading. The living room carpet was gray, like the carpet on the stairs leading both upstairs and down to the living room from the front hall. The living room walls were white, and the drapes on both the picture window and the smaller, regular window that overlooked the driveway were white.
Just off the living room was a dining room, with a rectangular oak dining table that seated six, a mahogany breakfront china cabinet, a small chandelier over the dining table, and a window that looked out on the driveway.
The kitchen was next to the dining room, and was considerably larger than the kitchen at Holly's old house in Springfield had been. All of the appliances were stainless steel. The refrigerator and freezer were side by side, and the refrigerator door dispensed both water and ice. The electric double oven was built into one wall, and the dishwasher and microwave were built in as well. A large center island stood in the middle of the kitchen, and the kitchen was done in an airy, cheerful shade of yellow, with a black-and-white tile floor.
There were two closed doors in the kitchen; one led out to the garage, which held only Liz Matthews' late-model sedan, a lawn mower, two bags of mulch, and several gardening tools on a workbench. The other door led to the large finished basement. A small laundry room containing a Whirlpool washer and dryer and a table holding bottles of detergent and fabric softener and an empty laundry basket was tucked into the northwest corner. The rest of the basement was divided into three rooms: a half-bathroom next to the laundry room; a room with an ancient pool table with books under three of its four legs and a rack holding four warped pool cues that Roger correctly deduced had once been used as a rec room; and a family room with two small windows, knotty pine paneling on all the walls, a row of track lighting on the end of the room farthest from the stairs, and half of the floor covered with a large blue rug and a small grouping of furniture consisting of an ancient, battered plaid sofa that had clearly seen better days, a matching recliner chair, a scuffed, dinged coffee table, and two end tables with small lamps on either end of the couch while the other half was gray cement floor. The water heater and the furnace with its central air conditioning unit served as an unofficial divider between the rec room and the family room.
Upstairs were four bedrooms with large windows, two of which looked out on the front yard and the street, and the other two of which looked out over a spacious backyard with a wooden privacy fence surrounding it. The three bedrooms were all good sized, at least ten feet by ten to twelve feet each. The master bedroom was fourteen by sixteen feet and boasted a wood-burning fireplace, a small sitting area with two matching armchairs upholstered in cream and a side table in black sitting in between them, and an adjoining master bathroom with a separate shower and bathtub, granite counters, a white pedestal sink, and maple cabinets and vanity, with the décor in a deep, rich blue. The hall bathroom was done in white and brown, with a combination tub and shower, and oak cabinets and vanity.
Roger and Holly toured the house in silence, drinking everything in. Standing in the hallway with two bedrooms on one side of them and the other two bedrooms and the hall bath on the other side, they looked at each other. Then Holly spoke. "That master bedroom would look great in green."
"Yes, it would," Roger agreed. He took a beat, then said, "The other bedrooms are good sized. Plenty of room for Chrissy and Ross to stay over for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and a room for Kevin and Jason to share. And two more rooms for any little brothers or sisters they might someday have...if they someday have any brothers or sisters."
"And that basement would make a perfect playroom," Holly added.
"The backyard is certainly big enough for a swingset and a sandbox. And that privacy fence...that's not a fence the boys could climb," Roger mused. He looked at her intently now. "I saw the way your eyes lit up at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves taking up one whole wall in the living room."
She smiled. "And I saw the way you've been looking at every room in this house." She took the three steps that separated them and wrapped her arms around his waist.
He wrapped his arms around her, splaying one hand on her back. "I'm that obvious, huh?" he asked with the ghost of a smile.
"Only to me, because I know you so well," she replied.
He looked at her so earnestly it made her heart lurch in her chest. "I can see us here," Roger admitted quietly. "I can see us living here. I can see Chrissy and the boys and Ross coming here for dinner and for holidays, and us playing in the basement and the backyard with Kevin and Jason when they get older. I can see you reading in that sitting area in the master bedroom, or by the fireplace here in the living room. I can even see us folding laundry together in the laundry room, and loading the dishwasher together."
"Ooh, folding the laundry and loading the dishwasher. That's the serious stuff," Holly said, but she was just as earnest as Roger was when she said it. "We've never done those kinds of things together before."
"Maybe it's not what you usually picture when you picture yourself living in a house," Roger conceded, "but I want to do those kinds of things. I want to paint the master bedroom green, and put together a swingset and sandbox in the backyard for Kevin and Jason. I want to look at furniture and paint samples with you. I want to make a house into a home with you. The Bayshore is nice, but it's still a hotel."
"You want to make this house into a home with me," Holly corrected Roger lovingly.
"Only if this is the house you want too," Roger insisted. "You're my true home, Holly. But we can't stay at The Bayshore forever."
"I wouldn't want to," Holly said with a nod.
"We both have to agree on this house. It's too important not to," Roger insisted.
"What do you think about chaise lounges?" Holly asked then.
"For the patio?" Roger asked.
"For the bedroom," Holly replied. "I was thinking two of them, by the fireplace, in white, or maybe a dark green."
"Perfect for reading," Roger said.
"And big enough for two, when the mood calls for it," she said with a smile.
"I might be expecting too much, thinking that Chrissy and Ross and the boys will stay here overnight, even for Christmas, or the night before Thanksgiving," Roger said.
"Nothing is impossible," Holly replied firmly. "Look at where we are now, Roger. Look at where we're standing: in the hallway of our future home that we are buying together as a married couple." She flashed a wry grin. "Besides, you won't exactly be heartbroken if Ross doesn't stay over."
"That's true," Roger admitted, returning Holly's wry grin. "So, this is the house?"
"This is the house," Holly agreed. "Let's go back to the hospital and tell Liz Matthews that we're saving her a bunch of hassle and rigamarole."
When Roger and Holly emerged from the house hand in hand, Olivia and Pat were both on cellular phones, Olivia apparently trying to talk her father down, and Pat reporting to Liz that Roger and Holly were still looking at the house. Rachel saw Roger and Holly first and said, "Olivia, Pat, here they are."
"Just a moment, Aunt Liz," Pat said into her phone.
"Father, if all you're going to do is yell, then I am hanging up," Olivia said patiently. A few seconds later, she flipped her phone shut with a sigh, then followed Rachel's and Pat's gazes to the Thorpes.
Rachel asked the question on everyone's mind, including Liz, Alice, Jamie, and Russ back at the hospital, and Liz, in fact, was still on Pat's phone, which she was discreetly holding up so that Liz could hear the group gathered on the porch.
"We want to make an offer on the house," Holly announced.
Above the clamor of the in-person exclamations of delight and congratulations from the trio of women on the porch, Liz Matthews' voice rang out, tinny and strident over the small speaker of the cellular phone in Pat's hand. Roger cringed at the vociferousness of Liz's rhapsodic exclamations of joy and thanks, and Olivia, seeing this, told him, "That's just Aunt Liz. Seriously, you and your wife are getting a great house, and Aunt Liz is so eager to get into assisted living because she has a boyfriend there. Only my husband Sam and I know about Morris, though. Aunt Liz wants to wait and hit Father and Aunt Pat and Aunt Alice and even Rachel with this bombshell until after they've moved in, because she's actually moving in with Morris at the assisted living facility."
"I don't think your father's going to take it too well," Roger remarked.
"Father doesn't take anything well," Olivia said. "But Rachel and my aunts will be thrilled for Aunt Liz, just like I am. Congratulations on your new home, Mr. Thorpe. And I know that someday, people in Bay City will be referring to this place as the Thorpe house instead of the Matthews house."
"That would be wonderful," Roger said honestly.
Holly broke away from the happy chatter of Rachel, Pat, and Alice to join Roger and Olivia. "It looks like we've got ourselves a house, Roger," she said happily, putting an arm around his shoulders.
"And we're going to make it our home," he vowed, pulling her against his side and resting his head against hers as the chatter from Rachel, Pat, Alice, and, via cell phone, Liz filled the air around them, and Olivia leaned against the porch railing with a smile.