Marine Returns From Okinawa to Find Her Bungalow Already Sold
I looked at his plate, then at my own untouched chicken salad. The air in the diner was thick, and I reached up to adjust my starch-stiffened uniform collar. “How bad was the leak?”
“Bad enough,” he said. “It took three days to dry out the crawlspace. I had to let the lawn go wild because we had to shut the main valve off at the street.”
I thought of the overgrown flower beds, the tall grass choking the porch steps, and the general air of decay that had settled over the cottage. This was not just a sudden plumbing emergency. The house looked like it had been completely ignored for months. He had promised to keep the place maintained while I was deployed, but the peeling paint on the porch rail and the dead ferns in the hanging baskets told a different story.
“Who did the work?” I asked.
“Local outfit,” Arthur muttered, his eyes darting toward the cash register near the door. “Good people. They got it sorted.”
“I need to see the bill,” I said. “I need to know what they charged to my account.”
