He held out the pry bar for her, and she understood that her helping him with this, tearing down the walls of her bedroom, endlessly renovating the house, would make skipping school okay.
It was an unspoken deal.
And she knew she had no choice. Not really.
It would be different if Mama were here. But then again, if Mama hadn’t gone away, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have made a habit of skipping school; high school wouldn’t have turned into the disaster that it was. The house would still be intact. Mama would never have put up with the torn-down walls, the plaster dust that covered every surface like fine snow.
Her insides twisted as she reached for the pry bar, her fingers gripping, squeezing tight, like she was trying to choke it, but the metal was cold, unyielding.
She was sure that she couldn’t have made that sledgehammer drop. She was just a girl. A powerless, school-skipping, odd girl whose mother had run off and whose father was making hope where he could find it.
She was a terrible, cruel girl for wishing him harm. It was like spanking a little baby for crying because it was hungry.
He smiled at her now, his whole face lighting up. “Won’t your mama be surprised,” he said, “when she comes back home and finds things fixed up so nice. A brand-new house. That’s what it will seem like. Won’t she be happy then?”
FRAMING
CHAPTER 7
Helen
JUNE 8, 2015
They were just finishing framing the downstairs when the sky opened up.
The house had truly begun to take shape. The subfloor was in and the four outer walls were up and braced; the interior walls framing the pantry and mechanical room were done. They were attaching the final bathroom wall when thunder shook the house; lightning struck so close Helen could feel the electricity in the air, smell the ozone. She’d never seen such a powerful storm. Was it because they were higher up in the mountains here, closer to the sky?
She stood in the center of their newly framed downstairs, surrounded by the two-by-four framed walls—the skeleton of thehouse—watching the storm,feelingthe storm.
Nate was stressed because they were behind schedule. The plan was to be finished framing the entire house, including the roof, in six weeks, and it didn’t look like they’d make it. Helen wasn’t worried. She’d worked with her father enough to know that it was normal to be a little off schedule and over budget. They’d get it done. And they were moving a little faster each day as their skills and confidence improved.
“It’s not safe out here!” Nate yelled over the downpour and rumbles of thunder. Off in the distance, they heard sirens. They got their tools under cover and sprinted down to the trailer, laughing at how soaked they got. They changed into dry clothes and Helen made a fresh pot of coffee. The thunder and lightning let up, but the rain continued. They sipped coffee and watched the rain fall, feeling cozy and content as they listened to the lovely sound it made on the old tin roof of the trailer.
“What should we do with ourselves?” Helen asked, looking at the stack of papers on Nate’s makeshift card-table desk in the living room—the house plans, the building timeline, the endless to-do lists and schedules. Surely there was some rainy-day project for them to tackle.
“I say we take the rest of the day off,” Nate announced, and Helen was thrilled.
“Uh-oh,” Nate said, noticing a place where the roof leaked—water dripping through the thin, stained boards that made up the ceiling. He grabbed a bowl and put it beneath. Just then, Helen noticed another drip splatter onto the peeling linoleum floor. She got a saucepan. Soon, the two of them were doing a strange dance, hurrying to put vessels beneath quickly multiplying leaks.
“Better hurry up and get the second floor and roof done,” Nate said. “I don’t know how much longer this place is going to last.”
Helen smiled in agreement. She couldn’t wait to be out of their tiny sardine can of a trailer.
Nate settled in on the couch with a book on bird behavior. He turned on the lamp on the side table and the kitchen light flickered. Helen opened her laptop and checked her email to find a note from her friend Jenny, saying only:How are things going in the Great North Woods? You ready to come back home yet? I’ve got martinis waiting…
Helen looked around at the containers catching drips in the leaking trailer and tried to formulate a witty reply, but her attempts just sounded pathetic. She’d write Jenny back later.
The rain pounded the tin roof, adding to the percussive music of the steady drips into the pans, bowls, and cups scattered around the trailer.
Helen decided to don her rain gear and go into town. It had beenthree weeks since they’d arrived in Hartsboro, and she had been busy with building and starting the garden, and honestly, it felt a little selfish to take time off for research when there was so much work to do each day. And by the time work ended each day, she was too sore and exhausted to do much more than settle in with a glass of wine and early bed.
“I’m going to take advantage of the rainy weather to go check out the town hall and library and see what I can dig up on our property and local history,” she announced. “Want to come?”
Nate shook his head, eyes focused on his bird book. “I think I’ll stay in and catch up on some reading,” he said, clearly pleased to have the afternoon to himself to read. “Have fun,” he added when she paused to kiss the top of his head on the way out.
Helen stopped into Ferguson’s General Store to pick up a loaf of bread. It sold everything from hunting rifles to fresh pies with labels that had clearly been made on someone’s inkjet printer (Nate called them “grandma pies”—bumbleberry was his favorite). There was a teenage boy with a crew cut and a blaze-orange camo T-shirt working the register. A police scanner was squawking from a shelf behind him: chimes, followed by voices uttering codes.
“Bad weather out there,” Helen said as she set her bread down to pay. There was a coffee can on the counter with a label on the front showing the photocopied faces of the three teens who had been killed in the bus accident a few weeks ago. The collection was for their families.
