The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer

snickers. “Try two hundred.”
    Two hundred thousand? The words stick in my throat, though not in Patty’s. She shouts,“Two hundred thousand! Holy shit, that’s a lot of dough.”
    â€œYou got that right, babycakes,”Todd says.
    â€œThe only real estate my parents ever bought me was part of the Pugliese plot in Mount Hope.Which, let me tell you, does not exactly fill me with peace of mind.We Puglieses have never been known to coexist without incident for one night, let alone all of eternity. Not for nothing was Grandpa buried with his Glock.”
    â€œYeah, well, Mom and Dad didn’t want Lucy and Jason to be burdened by high monthly mortgage payments,” Todd explains. “Not, you know, with them starting out and all.”
    I have to sit on the couch and absorb this.Two hundred thousand dollars. My parents gave Lucy two hundred thousand because she was “starting out.” Yet, in their mind, I could make do with a hot, cramped tower until my prince came along to rescue me because I wasn’t starting.
    I was stagnating.
    "Well,” says Todd, “did that change your mind?”
    Did it ever.“Give me an hour. Patty and I will meet you there.”

Chapter Four
    Hugh and I almost did buy a house about a year ago. An experience that nearly killed our relationship faster than Grandpa Pugliese’s Glock.
    The house was a bright blue Victorian in the Spring Hill section of Somerville with bay windows and inlaid pine floors and a cheerful yellow kitchen plus an airy room on the second story that would have been a perfect place for Hugh to write. I pegged that as the selling point, the office.Though, privately, I thought it made a much better nursery.
    The problem was money. There was no way I could buy it alone, not on my salary as an admissions counselor. And since Hugh had yet to break out to the bestseller list with Hopeful, Kansas, he wasn’t able to, either. But with Hugh’s savings and mine there was a chance we could pull it off together. We could merge the assets, as my father likes to say.
    The tour of the house was the clincher. Just one hour of meandering around and I could picture Hugh reading in the golden living room on a cold winter night, a pine garland wrapped around the carved wooden banister, a twinkling Christmas tree in the corner. We’d throw cozy dinner parties for our friends in the fall, plant our raised gardens in the spring, and spend lazy summer evenings on the porch, getting to know our neighbors. And someday, someday we might even hear the pitter-patter of little feet running down the stairs on their way to school.
    I was so immersed in this fantasy that I could actually smell my roasting chicken in the oven, the one I was making while upstairs Hugh was banging out his latest novel on the computer. I could hear the rain on the roof, feel the garden dirt on my fingers.
    That’s when I had an epiphany: This house had to be mine, oh yes.
    Hugh was at his laptop when I burst through his door, excited and pink-cheeked and brimming with hope after the showing. I can distinctly remember what he was wearing (a Cool Runnings T-shirt) and what he was drinking (chamomile iced tea in a pink glass, using that morning’s Boston Globe as a coaster).
    â€œSo you like it, do you?” he said as I gushed about the yard, the living room, the office—can’t forget the office—the garden, and the kitchen where on snowy days I would bake cinnamon cookies and drink hot cocoa with our children, Meg, Beth, and Amy. Slowly, gradually, Hugh’s smile slipped into a frown.
    â€œGenie,” he said, using his professor voice to cut me off. “Stop.”
    "Why?” I didn’t understand how he could not be as thrilled as I was.What was not to love? The house was adorable!
    â€œI’m not there yet.”
    â€œWhat do you mean you’re not there yet?” Though I knew exactly what he meant.
    He pushed back