Free Devotion by Maile Meloy

T hat the yellow house was thrillingly affordable might have been a warning sign, if Eleanor had known how to read it. But she’d been desperate. She was sharing a room with her four-year-old daughter, Hattie, in her parents’ house, and she had to get out. Her parents didn’t want her to leave, but that was part of the problem. What her mother really wanted was to have Eleanor back inside her, along with Hattie, nested like matryoshka dolls.
    So when the neat bungalow came on the market, close to the school her daughter loved, Eleanor thought she’d made it up. A wish on a candle. The seller was a pixie-like blond songwriter who was never there and was selling it as is—another red flag. But Eleanor had never bought a house before, and the real estate broker had the air of an authoritative and impatient aunt, waiting for a decision. She tapped long nails on the steering wheel of her parked Lexus while Eleanor gazed at the little house from the passenger seat. The sycamore in the yard had good roots, the broker said.
    â€œWon’t someone outbid me?” Eleanor asked her.
    â€œIt’s too small for most people. And the seller thinks you’re sweet. I think we can wrap this up, if we do it now.” The broker tapped the steering wheel.
    â€œYou really think so?” Eleanor asked.
    â€œLook, do you want it or not? You’re getting manna from heaven, in your price range. What do you want, a burger?”
    What Eleanor wanted was to ask her father to come walk through the house. But the broker already didn’t take her seriously because she had a streak of pink in her hair and a bracelet of vines inked around her wrist. She didn’t want to be the hapless tattooed girl who had to call her dad.
    â€œNo, I want the house,” Eleanor said. “I do.”
    â€œAll right, then,” the broker said, dialing her phone.
    The offer was accepted, and Eleanor promised her soul and her future income to the bank. It was a little dizzying. Her father raised his eyebrows at dinner. “Want me to look at it?” he asked.
    â€œWhen I’ve got it all set up,” she said.
    â€œYou’ve got an inspector?” her mother asked.
    â€œThe broker does.”
    â€œI want to see the house,” Hattie said. She’d been refusing to use the booster seat because she was not a baby, and her head barely cleared the table.
    â€œYou will,” Eleanor said. “You’ll have your own room there.”
    Her daughter eyed her. Eleanor knew Hattie was thinking that she didn’t really want her own room, but she wasn’t going to be caught saying it.
    â€œHow about a real estate lawyer?” her father asked.
    â€œIt’s a very straightforward transaction,” Eleanor said.
    At that, her parents fell silent. It was fraught territory. They’d wanted her to get a lawyer when Hattie was born, too, but she’d refused. She had met, in her last year of art school, a boy as fierce in his independence as she was, and their friends had bet against the romance lasting six months. When she got pregnant—a broken condom—she discovered that she had complicated feelings about fate, about why the latex had broken, about that particular sperm and that particular egg. James had moved to Australia. Struggling for his art wasn’t going to include taking care of a baby. He had no money, and sending lawyers after him would only have prolonged the pain.
    The first year was a blur of tears and lost sleep, a demoralizing return home, and her mother’s delight in coming to the rescue. People felt sorry for Eleanor and sent her design jobs, and she took anything that was offered, staying up late after Hattie went to bed. Gradually the jobs turned into steady freelance work. She had saved money, living with her parents for four long years, and she had inherited a little more from her grandfather, and now she was trying to regain her own ground.

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