I shake my head and walk toward the front porch. The boards creak under my boots but hold. Not bad, but not great either.
“Roof decking might still be solid,” I say. “Hard to know without looking underneath.”
She frowns.
“Underneath?”
“In the attic.”
“Oh.”
There’s a pause … a long one. I glance back at her. She’s suddenly eyeing the porch railing like it might offer her an escape route.
“You… have an attic, right?” I ask.
“Technically.”
Another pause. Her expression shifts into something that looks suspiciously like panic wrapped in a polite smile.
“Before we go in,” she says quickly, “I just want to mention something.”
“That usually means something bad.”
She winces.
“Okay, but in my defense I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“You invited me.”
“Semantics.”
I push the door open and step inside, and immediately stop. Not because the house is terrible. Because it’s chaos.
Moving boxes. Half-unpacked kitchen supplies. A ladder leaning against one wall. A stack of gutter pieces on the floor. Tools everywhere. The place looks like someone started twelve different projects and finished none of them.
She moves through it like she belongs there anyway. Like chaos doesn’t scare her—it just slows her down. Rainey slips past me and gestures wildly around the room.
“So this,” she says, “is what I would describe as a temporary organizational phase.”
I look at the pile of clothes draped over the back of a chair.
“Temporary.”
“Yes.”
She grabs a box and shoves it toward a corner.
“I’ve only been here a week.”
“That explains some of it.”
She narrows her eyes.
“Some of it?”
I shrug.
“Not the ladder in the kitchen.”
