The foreman, Mick Riley, was a talker. His booming,overly confident voice carried to my porch as he directed—or rather, gestured loosely toward—the work being done by his two-man crew. They looked like they’d rather be anywhere else, their movements slow and imprecise. Riley himself had a habit of propping one dusty boot on whatever was handy to survey the scene like a king overseeing a particularly tedious royal duty.
I studied him for a few minutes, my professional hackles on alert. They were prepping a section of the massive back wall for new siding. Riley gestured toward a roll of moisture barrier.
“Make sure that wrap is tight,” he called out. “Don’t want any waves in that new siding when it goes up.”
The words were right. But then, Riley pulled out his phone, facing away from the wall as he launched into a loud conversation about someone’s terrible golf game. I narrowed my eyes. The instructions were sound, but the problem lay in the execution. Old places like Heron House didn’t forgive shortcuts. They hoarded them, magnified them, then presented you with a horribly expensive bill later.
She has no idea what she’s dealing with,I thought, a familiar sense of distaste and something uncomfortably like concern stirring in my gut.Riley might talk a good game, but if he decides not to follow through…
“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” I told myself as I turned back toward my property. It was none of my business. If Iris Holloway wanted to employ a human question mark to further butcher her inherited money pit, that was her prerogative.
Then I turned around and stared at Heron House. It stood there, an overambitious, romantic notion that a broken thing could be made whole again with just enough stubbornness and hope.
Just like Mom.
The thought landed with an uncomfortable thud.
I remembered the look on my mother’s face in the years after Dad left. She’d been in over her head, too. And all of us stepped up because that was the right thing to do. You didn’t let someone drown just because they were too proud to ask for a life raft.
Iris had that same look sometimes. That mix of bright-eyed ambition and the quiet panic of someone who knows they’re one bad step from disaster. She was clueless, but she didn’t deserve to have that grand old house fall down around her ears because of a hack like Mick Riley.
With a heavy sigh, I headed over to thank her for the coffee cake. It was a legitimate excuse.
Mostly.
I found Iris outside, conferring with Riley near the section of wall they were working on. She glanced up as I approached, her eyes widening. Riley, when he saw me, straightened, his expression shifting from bored indifference to a practiced, professional smile.
“Iris,” I said, my voice neutral. “The, uh, coffee cake was pretty good.”
Her face lit up with unguarded pleasure. “Oh! You liked it? I’m so glad! I was worried the apples might be a bit tart.”
“It was fine.” I nodded toward Riley, my gaze hardening. “Riley. Didn’t expect to see you working on a project of this scale.”
Riley’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. “Austin. Been a while. Good to see you, man. Yeah, Heron House is a big job, but Miz Holloway here knows quality when she sees it.” He clapped a hand on a nearby ladder.
Before I could offer my unvarnished opinion on that statement, Iris jumped in. “Oh, he’s been great so far,Austin! Mick and his crew have been here bright and early every single day, and they’re making such good progress. Really, it’s been a relief after some of the stories you hear.”
My internal alarm bells, already jangling softly, now clanged with the urgency of a four-alarm fire.
Bright and early doesn’t mean doing it right, Iris.
Just then, as if summoned by the god of good timing, Riley’s phone blared a jaunty ringtone. He fumbled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and held up a hand with an apologetic grimace that didn’t hide the relief in his eyes. “Gotta take this, folks. Talk to you later.”
He winked, then strode off, already deep in another conversation. Which left Iris and me standing in a pocket of unexpected, and for me, deeply uncomfortable, silence. I studied her for a moment. The late morning sun caught the gold in her blonde hair, a line deepening between her brows. She looked hopeful, determined, and completely out of her depth. For some damn reason, the thought of Riley taking advantage of that earnest optimism set my teeth on edge.
“Iris,” I began, the use of her first name still feeling a little foreign on my tongue. “About Riley.”
She turned to me, eyes wide. “What about him? Is there something I should know?”
I hesitated. It wasn’t my place. Not my problem. But for some reason, I couldn’t stay quiet.
“He’s got a history,” I said carefully, choosing my words. “Sometimes he does good work. Sometimes, not so much.”
Her brow furrowed. “Oh. He’s been very dependable so far. And he told his crew exactly how to put up that moisture barrier this morning. I heard him.”
“Telling them is one thing. Making sure they do it and do it right, that’s another.” My gaze drifted over theancient manse, appreciating the potential but not negating the very real problems. “My brother-in-law, Chase, is an architect. He’s told me these old houses are full of surprises, and I know a thing or two about that too. Rotted wood where you least expect it, plumbing that makes no sense, foundations that have settled in ways that defy gravity. You don’t want your contractor to be another one of those surprises.”
Iris chewed on her lower lip, her gaze drifting toward Riley, who was now laughing into his phone. When she looked back at me, there was a new unease in her eyes.
