As much as waiting to edit makes me twitchy, I am pleased to have the time to break out the prompts I’ve had stashed. Today is another one. I will post the prompt that inspired the mini outline below and then list the mini outline.
Thursday, February 13th: The tiles were dusty.
The tiles were dusty. She looked over the space, her feet leaving little imprints in the dust. Half she knew was from work on the house, but the rest she was certain was the dust settling after work came to a stop.
‘Only half of the tiles are down,’ she thought. She could almost see the line where the tools were put down when the work was stopped.
Jane stepped carefully over the edge of the finished section and on to the bare kitchen sub floor underneath. There was no grout as that would only go between the tiles once all the tiles were I place. From the wall bare pipes showed where plumbing was running. The pipes were capped and new wood showed where rotten boards were replaced.
‘Well, newer wood,’ she thought.
The person restoring this place managed to rip out all the old, replace the rotten structural elements, even reconfiguring a few spaces before work ended. He was killed in a hit and run. It was a drunk driver who was easily identified and charged. No nefarious anything, just one of those things.
Jane was used to looking for the nefarious, but when she looked at the details it proved to just be one of those random accidents.
The man’s adult children squabbled over the vague terms of the will he left behind for well over two years. The final determination was that they all wanted money more than the house. The house went on the market as it was.
The shell of a house wasn’t selling.
It wasn’t in a location byers wanted and the project itself looked daunting.
To Jane it reminded her of growing up. How many houses had her parents bought and refurbished over the years? She didn’t know. Her father’s job always had them moving. They would buy a house that needed love and her mother would provide the love and fresh design eye it needed. Then when her father was once again transferred, they would sell the house for a profit and move on to the next one.
When Jane thought of her childhood, there was almost always a construction site as the setting. Occasionally they got to live in the house fully renovated for a few months before moving on, but often there was the last push to finish the reno work once news of the next transfer came in.
Over the years Jane managed to get a hone a host of reno skills and knew this project, no matter how daunting it was for some buyers, was right up her alley.
It actually felt strangely comforting.
‘And it’s location works for me,’ she decided.
Jane continued her tour and found that the half-tiled kitchen was the most complete room in the house. The living room managed half a wall of drywall fixed into place and she could see the insulation ready to be covered up. A few of the other rooms had their insulation, but no dry wall.
When she went upstairs, she found that the open walls displayed the new plumbing pipes and wiring, but no sign of any drywall or insulation, let alone finishes.
Looking in the garage, she could see that there were some supplies placed there. How usable they would be would depend on how weatherproof the garage was. As the nervous realtor did not have the combination to the lock holding the shed closed, they couldn’t check.
Jane turned to the realtor. He didn’t look hopeful.
“It will take a lot of work,” she said.
She could see the realtor prepare for a rejection. Even after the final division of property the house sat on the market a while. She imagined he showed it to a lot of people who passed it by. She mentally did the math.
“It has good bones though,” she added. “If the price is right, I can make it work.” The realtor’s face lit up and Jane gave her offer. The realtor slipped away with his cell phone to begin the process of negotiating.
SETUP: Jane needs an out of the way place to live. She isn’t hiding so much as trying to stay off the radar. She knows about a murder and some nefarious dealings of her deceased husband’s family.
COMPLICATION: Others who initially dismissed her are coming to realize they actually need her. While some worry that she might know something.
RISING ACTION: Jane buys a reno project of a house and slips out of the expected places. She quietly extracts herself from everything previously tied to her and simply stops showing up. She tries to make it seem as natural as she can and not like she is running away to hide. (The house is too big since it is just me, type of thing). She sells her house and camps out in the reno while she works. She gets the necessities and starts working on the rest. She gets calls from people checking on her and she starts to realize it isn’t just the nefarious dealings, she doesn’t like them and doesn’t want the connection.
MEANWHILE: People begin to suspect that she knows something and start to look into where she is.
CLIMAX: Jane convinces them that she is just involved in a project and doesn’t know anything. They back off and she turns the evidence she has over to the authorities knowing that they could always change their minds and come back. She makes the evidence anonymous and mails it from a different area code so even postal stamps don’t implicate her.
DENOUEMENT: She finishes the house and as she settles into a new life she sees them arrested on the news.
Ten til Midnight 