Ximena winced, and even some of the girls—probably the ones who’d be sleeping in this wet room tonight—turned to look at him accusatorially. Rosie stiffened her shoulders.
“What, really?” she said, and Tom wasn’t sure it was better that she looked surprised that he hadn’t managed it.
“I did call a bunch of them,” Tom said. “And two companies came out. But the insurance estimate doesn’t pay enough to fully replace the roof, and—”
“Can’t they just repair it?” Rosie asked, brow furrowing.
“I’m sure someone could, I just—nobody has said yes yet. When I’ve asked.”
Rosie closed her eyes, disappointment playing across her features. They’d been out here two months now. They were leaving in two weeks. And Tom still hadn’t handled the roof even though he’d said he would.
Rosie swept her hands back from her face, pressing curls flatas she thought, probably, about how Tom was still an unreliable flake after all these years. Tom wished devoutly that the earth would open and let him fall into a pit.
“Okay, okay,” she finally muttered. “I’ll deal with the roofers tomorrow. Can everyone else just help me clean up as best we can tonight?”
“No, seriously, I will do it before I leave,” Tom said, suddenly concerned that this would be the screwup that led to him eating pudding cups alone in the nursing home on Christmas Eve fifty years from now while Rosie and her redheaded descendants feasted on roast goose somewhere else, probably in a building that hada fucking roof.
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “It’s fine. You’ve done plenty. I should have stayed on top of the contractors too.”
Tom’s throat tightened, because he didn’t want Rosie to let him off the hook, even if he was tripping over her low expectations.
“Iwillget to it,” he reiterated, grabbing a pot at random.
Rosie tilted her chin back, partly in resignation, partly because of a new droplet that had just struck her in the face. The nor’easter was rattling the ancient windows and pulling entirely new leaks from the battered roof.
“Can you and Boyd grab one of the planters from the garden shed?” she finally asked. “I think we’ll need at least one big basin if this keeps up.”
“WhereisBoyd?” Ximena asked, looking around the room.
As though in response, Tom heard a loud thud on the roof, louder than the surrounding clatter of rain and the snap oftarps coming loose in the wind. Like a very big, very reckless raccoon.
“Uh, he was going to see if he could hammer some of the shingles down and stop the leaks,” Snow Wolf said, flapping her palms in distress.
“In the middle of a lightning storm?” Rosie demanded, wheeling on her.
“Oh my God, didn’t you write a fic where he was hit by lightning?” the Great Puffin whispered to Snow Wolf, who gasped and covered her mouth.
Tom went to the window over the second-floor addition, looking down at the short section of composite-shingled roof. The main roof sloped sharply down on this side of the building, low enough that someone determined and not very bright could climb it. That was probably how Boyd had made his way up.
Tom opened the window, admitting a blast of wind and early-spring rain.
“Boyd!” he shouted with half his body hanging out the frame. “Boyd, you goddamn squirrel-infested sack of nuts! Get down! Get off the roof.”
Tom thought he heard the other man call back, but he couldn’t make out the words.
Ximena was dialing on her phone, even though it probably wasn’t a good idea for Boyd to answer during the storm, and he was unlikely to hear it over the deluge.
Tom looked out the window again. Then he sighed and started taking off his jacket. Fuck his life.
“No, Tom,” Rosie said when he put his hands on the loweredge of the window. She grabbed him by the upper arm and held on, big blue eyes fixed anxiously on his face. “This is a Florida Man thing. I’m calling Florida Man on this. You promised no more Florida Man shit.”
Tom apologetically shrugged her hands off, because that was true, but it wasn’t like he could just let Boyd fall off the roof. There were a lot of loose shingles, and the tarps weren’t very secure either.
And wasn’t it all his fault too? That the roof wasn’t done and that Boyd was even out there to begin with. She ought to be hoping hedidslip and put them out of their misery.
He got his feet square on the addition roof and gripped the window frame to figure out his next step.
Rosie leaned out as though she intended to follow him.
