Tiny House in the Trees Read online

  TINY HOUSE IN THE TREES

  Books by Celia Bonaduce

  Tiny House Novels

  Tiny House on the Hill

  Tiny House on the Road

  Tiny House in the Trees

  Fat Chance, Texas Series

  Welcome to Fat Chance, Texas

  Slim Pickins’ in Fat Chance, Texas

  Livin’ Large in Fat Chance, Texas

  Venice Beach Romances

  The Merchant of Venice Beach

  A Comedy of Erinn

  Much Ado About Mother

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Table of Contents

  Books by Celia Bonaduce

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Teaser Chapter

  Meet the Author

  TINY HOUSE IN THE TREES

  A Tiny House Novel

  Celia Bonaduce

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Celia Bonaduce LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund- raising, and educational or institutional use.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  LYRICAL PRESS Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: November 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0239-6

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0239-8

  First Print Edition: November 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0240-2

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0240-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Elle—my right-hand woman

  And

  Elliot—my wingman

  Chapter 1

  Joy

  Focus

  Graditude

  Graditude?

  That couldn’t be right.

  Molly stared down at her hand, where she was writing her words of affirmation. She’d meant to write “Gratitude.” She let out a sigh, took a dab of antibacterial gel, and rubbed at the “d.” All it did was smear. But Molly was determined to stay positive. She shook her wrist until the gel dried. She wrote in a “t” where the “d” had been—and frowned. It now read “GraTitude.” She was a perfectionist, and the aesthetics of the word bothered her. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and smiled encouragingly.

  “Today,” she said out loud to the image in the mirror, “I will let the little things go.”

  She mentally embraced the outsized “T.”

  Having to remind herself to see the good in life was new to Molly. When she was a kid, her brother, Russell, who the family called Curly due to his wild corkscrew hair, used to say she was upbeat to the point of annoyance. She’d taken her perky outlook with her to Cobb, Kentucky, where she was working as a waitress until she got her master’s degree in civil engineering. The last few months had been tough. Her car needed work, but the money she was making at Crabby’s Restaurant barely paid for food.

  Let’s not even mention rent.

  She’d hoped to finish her thesis in time to graduate in June, but she’d accepted the impossibility of that. She had informed her family in Iowa that she now hoped to graduate in December. It was only eight months away, but it seemed like forever. Missing her June deadline also felt like a failure. But the biggest obstacle to a peaceful mental state was the fact that, even with the breathing room of eight more months, her master’s thesis was not going well.

  It was not going well at all.

  Molly was working on a scale model of a tree house, complete with electricity, ramps, and plumbing. One member of her thesis committee, Professor Cambridge, a compact man with a perpetual frown, seemed skeptical.

  “Civil engineers use their knowledge and expertise to make society a better place through infrastructure,” Professor Cambridge said. “A tree house seems a bit…lighthearted…for a thesis.”

  Molly wanted to say she thought she was going to have to defend her thesis at the end of her master’s program, not before, but she held her tongue.

  “I realize that, sir,” Molly said, wondering if the “sir” was laying it on a bit thick.

  The frown lines in the professor’s forehead neither tightened nor slackened, so she proceeded. She drummed up all the University-Speak she could remember.

  “Civil engineering is also about design and beauty—a bridge that is aesthetically pleasing as well as a way of getting from point A to point B. And fountains, which usually have no reason for existence except to…cheer people up.”

  “Cheer people up?” Professor Cambridge sneered. “You are getting a degree to cheer people up?”

  Molly was silent. She knew “yes” would be the wrong answer…but her answer was “yes.”

  Molly was passionate about her idea. She argued that she considered a tree house the perfect subject for a scale model. Tree house designs could be miniatures of traditional houses, so a tree house model was a scale of a scale.

  Professor Cambridge said she might be better suited to a philosophy degree. But in the end, her thesis was approved. Immediately another problem arose. While Molly had lots of theories about how to build the structure, she found her knowledge was lacking when it came to a very fundamental element—the tree.

  After her thesis was approved, Molly had visions of securing a job at the large Christmas tree farm just outside of Cobb, owned by the handsome-to-the-point-of-absurdity Quinn Casey. Quinn was a town legend. He piloted his own helicopter—a beat-up chopper he called Old Paint—harvesting the largest trees on his farm, carrying them through the air at top speed to the tru
cks that were waiting to take them across the southern United States for distribution.

  Quinn’s farm boomed with workers from October to December, but he kept a skeleton crew year-round who trimmed growing evergreens, uprooted felled trees, and planted saplings. She could learn firsthand what it took to live with evergreen trees, the first step in envisioning what it would take to live in one.

  Molly was gregarious by nature and was loved by the locals who hung out at Crabby’s. But she was shy around Quinn. Whenever Quinn was in the restaurant, which was often, given that he was Crabby’s nephew, he was surrounded by people. She practiced her pitch for weeks. But before she got up her nerve to ask for a job, her research revealed a new snag.

  It was possible to build a small tree house or decorative platform in a pine, spruce, yellow poplar, cedar, or redwood tree. However, she learned that the strength of the wood was a factor. So hardwood trees like oak, hickory, walnut, or cherry lent themselves more to her ambitious ideas. While this smashed her hopes of having an organic reason to work alongside Quinn, she’d magically picked the right state in which to do her homework. Kentucky was one of the most biologically diverse temperate zones in the world, with oak and walnut dominating the landscape. She spent much of her free time walking in the woods and studying trees.

  She never did ask Quinn for the job.

  Galileo, the cantankerous African Grey parrot her father had rescued twenty years ago who now lived with Molly, was the first to point out her obsession with Quinn.

  “I love you,” Molly said to Galileo one morning.

  Waiting for his ubiquitous “Bite me” response, the bird startled her with:

  “I love you, Quinn.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Molly asked.

  “I love you, Quinn.”

  She felt her cheeks redden just at the thought of Quinn hearing this. She realized that when she tried out new lipsticks, she’d kiss her hand and say, “I love you, Quinn.”

  The African Grey never missed anything!

  “Let’s stick to ‘Bite me,’ shall we?” she said.

  Molly checked her cell phone for the time. The days of worrying about Quinn learning of her secret crush seemed years—instead of months—ago. Crabby’s had been jumping and the tips plentiful. If she could keep her mind off Quinn, she could focus all her energy on her thesis.

  But Crabby’s wasn’t very busy of late. With money worries always in her thoughts, the tree house languished. It sat on a table by her front door, the tree’s limbs stretched out for attention. One evening, as she covered Galileo with a sheet—a standard practice among many parrot parents—she did the same to the tree house.

  In the morning, she only uncovered the parrot.

  Crabby Cranston was trying everything he could think of to resuscitate the business. He’d opened for breakfast, closed for breakfast, reopened for breakfast. He made the dining room more formal, then more casual, turned up the volume on the TVs in the bar, then taken the TVs down. But so far, nothing seemed to be working.

  The words “Joy,” “Focus,” and “GraTitude” bounced up and down as she flicked on a coat of brown mascara. She thought her good thoughts.

  There was Joy in going to work at a place she liked.

  She refused to think:

  Even though the place is tanking.

  She would Focus on her thesis.

  She stopped herself from adding:

  …and not on my money problems.

  She had GraTitude for her health, her family back home in Iowa, and the progress she was making toward her life goal of being a civil engineer.

  By the time she had her lipstick on, she actually did feel better.

  Grabbing her messenger bag, Molly opened a latch on Galileo’s cage. The latch swung down, creating a ledge, so he could hang out during the day and not feel locked up. Her father had spent years teaching Galileo not to fly away when the cage was open.

  “You’re spoiling him,” Molly’s mother would say. “Maybe you could help with dinner instead of spending all your time talking to that bird.”

  “How would you like to spend your life in a cage?” her father would reply, when dinner was ready without his help once again.

  At the time, Molly agreed with her mother. But now, she was grateful to have such an independent and well-trained companion.

  “See ya,” squawked Galileo, swaying manically on the ledge. “Wouldn’t want to be ya.”

  You and me both, she almost said.

  Instead, she held out her hand to Galileo.

  “See this?” Molly pointed to “Joy,” “Focus,” and “GraTitude” one at a time. “This is the new order of things around here. Got it?”

  “Bite me!”

  Molly headed confidently out the door. She jumped into her old blue Buick Lucerne and started the ignition. Instead of the snort of the engine roaring to life, all she heard was a rapid click click click. She tried again, but the clicks just came faster. Then it stopped entirely. She dug through her purse, looking for her AAA card.

  Please don’t be the alternator.

  The last time the AAA guy came by to jump-start her car, he looked apprehensive. He said it sounded like her alternator might be going. And if the alternator broke, it would stop charging the battery. She still didn’t exactly know what an alternator was, but from the look on the man’s face, it was expensive.

  Molly found the card. It was expired. She slumped in her seat. She’d let her AAA membership lapse in a misguided attempt at economy. She stared accusingly at the positivity radiating from her hand. She closed her eyes, trying to come up with her next move. Her apartment building was on the main road. She could probably stand next to the car looking pathetic and hope some local person might give her a ride.

  A knock startled her. She opened her eyes to see Bale Barrett smiling through the window. Bale was the owner of Bale’s Tiny Dreams, a tiny house emporium that kept expanding as interest in minimalist living continued to sweep the country. Molly and Bale had gotten to know each other during Bale’s visits to Crabby’s Restaurant. She tried to roll down the window, but since everything in the car was electric, nothing happened. She opened the door.

  Bale’s dog, Thor, jumped in her lap and gave her an energetic kiss.

  “Hey, Bale,” Molly said. “Hey, Thor.”

  She knew her voice was shaking—a dead giveaway that tears were soon to follow. Trying to buy some time before the tears started, she gave Thor a quick human kiss on the red patch of fur that sprouted between his ears.

  “Hey,” Bale looked at her, concerned. “I was driving by and saw you sitting in your car. Everything okay?”

  Molly turned away from him as hot rivulets of tears rolled down her cheeks. Joy, Focus, and GraTitude were deserting the ship. She put her head on Thor’s and sobbed.

  “Don’t cry,” Bale said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can fix it.”

  “I think it’s the alternator!” Molly sobbed.

  “See? No big deal. We can rebuild it.”

  “We?”

  “Well, ‘we’ being me.”

  Molly laughed as Thor licked at her tears.

  “Sorry. I’m just being stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid. I mean, how many stupid people know their alternator is shot?”

  She looked at him as he knelt on the open door frame. Bale was always so cheerful. Molly was disconcerted being eye to eye with Bale. He was a large man who usually towered above her. Although a decade or so older than she, Molly and Bale had bonded over their passion for miniature house solutions and ideas, sharing discoveries and failures whenever Bale stopped in at Crabby’s.

  Molly didn’t want to admit she had no way to get the car to his lot, thanks to her less-than-brilliant decision to dump the AAA. Bale saved her from her confession.

  “I’ve got my
truck. I can drop you off at work, then come back and tow the car over to my place.”

  Molly was about to ask him how he knew she was on her way to work, but she remembered she was wearing Crabby’s latest uniform—black pants with a stiff white shirt with the name “Crabby’s” embroidered in cursive over the left breast pocket. Above the name was an unpleasant-looking cartoonish crab. It was the owner’s latest attempt at energizing the place.

  Where else would she be going? Her life revolved around work, Galileo, and her thesis.

  “That’s way too much trouble,” she said. “Thank you, though.”

  “No trouble. Happy to help.”

  Molly thought she should protest a little more, just to be polite, but decided that was a waste of energy. And she really didn’t have the money for Plan B—if she even had a Plan B. She grabbed her messenger bag and hopped into Bale’s truck.

  “How are things going at Crabby’s?” Bale asked.

  Molly knew this was just small talk, but she longed to talk to somebody about how dismally sparse the crowd had been lately. Even thinking the word “crowd” verged on hyperbole.

  “We’re hoping things will pick up,” she said, looking down at her uniform.

  “I’ve heard that trendy restaurants are in, then they’re out, then in again,” Bale said. “Popularity comes and goes.”

  “I’ve never really thought of Crabby’s as trendy.”

  “Then you guys might be in trouble.”

  Molly looked at Bale. He shot her a wink. She wished she had just a touch of his que será, será attitude. In any language.

  Bale’s truck pulled into Crabby’s parking lot. There were two cars belonging to locals and an overloaded pickup truck with out-of-state plates parked in front. Bale and Molly exchanged a look. A stuffed pickup truck not belonging to someone from Cobb usually meant a new tiny-house owner was heading to Bale’s to pick up his or her (mostly “her,” Molly noticed) new house on wheels.

  “Expecting company?” Molly asked as she got out of the truck, nodding toward the pickup.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Bale said. “A lady is coming by to pick up one of the log cabins with the whiskey barrel shower.”