“Ta da!” Fay said, jumping in front of the new bathtub and striking a pose. “I can swim in here!”
“You did this?” I asked Dayton, who’d joined us. “The plumbing, too?”
“Yeah. It’s nice, huh?” Dayton looked around as if seeing everything with new eyes. He’d been renovating in the evening for weeks and weeks, grading papers in the kitchen and rolling up his sleeves to update this house for my sister and their kids.
I took Fay by the shoulders. “You like it?”
“Yes!” She ran out and up the stairs to her room.
“Glad you found a tenant, by the way,” Dayton said.
My sabbatical was up, and that meant going back to work in two weeks, but with a new tenant upstairs, maybe I’d extend my time off for another few months—if my boss let me.
“Okay, we should go.” Dayton was shutting the lights off. “Gotta check on the turkey.”