My day off.The three words tried to sing a quiet, contented tune in my head, a promise of uninterrupted puttering or the satisfying precision of tackle maintenance. Over the past few weeks, I’d even learned to accept some of the racket from next door. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to it.
I’d earmarked this morning for much-needed work on my favorite seven-foot casting rod. The tip guide had taken a beating on my last charter when a feisty permit did its best to impersonate a runaway submarine.
I was on my back patio, enjoying the shade while the delicate components of the rod tip were spread out on a clean canvas cloth. The old guide was off, the blank cleaned, and I was just starting the process of whipping on the new one with fine, dark-blue thread. It was a delicate operation that required a steady hand, the kind of task that usually settled my mind and allowed me to exist purely in the moment. The sharp scent of rod epoxy mingled withthe salty air and the distant, sweet perfume of a blooming frangipani.
But concentration was proving hard to capture.
The sounds from Heron House, the usual roar of hammers and power tools earlier, had shifted. Now, it was a series of more sporadic, distinctly amateurish noises. The scrape of something being dragged. A frustrated grunt, sharp and distinctly feminine. Then, the thud of something heavy, followed by a faint, exasperated mutter that even the breeze couldn’t quite carry.
Focus, Coleridge. Just the thread. Keep the tension even.
I tried to tune out the fact that she was right over there, to lose myself in the repetitive wrapping of the thread. I didn’t think about how I’d catch her staring at that old mansion sometimes, a determined look in her eye even as she wrung her hands. I sure as hell didn’t think about how good her legs looked in shorts, or how her arms were toned yet feminine.
And I absolutely didn’t spare a single thought to her round, full lips.
Riley’s crew was probably working inside. Or maybe Iris was experimenting again. With a sledgehammer this time, by the sound of it.
But another sound, a sharp crack of splintering wood followed by a choked cry, made my head snap up, the fine thread slipping from my fingers. My carefully constructed bubble of solitary peace popped with an almost audible hiss. I shot to my feet and rushed to the hedge.
And there she was.
Iris. Alone. Perched precariously near the top of an ancient, rickety-looking wooden extension ladder that looked like it had been left to rot by Noah after the ark landed. She was wrestling with a long, heavy piece of new siding, her frame straining against its unwieldy length, herblonde hair plastered to her sweaty forehead with a mixture of fierce determination and what looked like pure panic.
What in the ever-loving hell is she doing?
I scanned the Heron House yard, my gaze sweeping from the overgrown jungle to the peeling paint of the massive Victorian. No sign of Riley’s beat-up work truck. No sign of his crew. Just Iris, a solitary, out-of-her-depth figure battling a twelve-foot plank of composite wood that clearly had the upper hand.
“Are you kidding me? Those assholes.”
They left her. That son of a bitch Riley had actually walked off the job—on a Friday, no less, classic move—and left her to deal with this mess by herself. This wasn't just her being clueless anymore, or her usual brand of enthusiastic, disastrous incompetence. This was her being abandoned with a genuinely dangerous problem.
She let out another frustrated yelp as the siding slipped, the top edge swinging wildly away from the wall for a terrifying moment, nearly taking her with it. She scrambled for purchase, her body contorting at an unsafe angle.
That was it.
I dropped the rod components onto the lawn. She was going to get herself seriously hurt if someone didn’t step in. And it looked like that someone was going to have to be me.
I rushed down the faint path next to the hedge, the usual irritation I felt when approaching Heron House now replaced by a grim urgency. I found her on the ladder, red-faced and sweating, streaks of dirt and maybe tears smudging her cheeks. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the siding, her body trembling with exertion and, I suspected, a huge dose of fear. She looked like she’d been through a war with a lumberyard. And lost.
“Iris,” I said, my voice cutting through the oppressive afternoon heat and her muttered string of what sounded like increasingly desperate, G-rated curses.
Startled, she jumped and whipped her head around. The ladder gave an alarming wobble. For a heart-stopping second, I thought she was going to come tumbling down. My muscles tensed, ready to catch her.
“What do you want?” she snapped, her voice tight and defensive. She swiped at her forehead with her upper arm, leaving another streak of grime across her already smudged cheek. Her blue eyes, when they met mine, were blazing with defiance and unshed tears.
“Looks like that thing’s about to come down on you,” I said, keeping my tone as level as I could, though my insides were anything but. My gaze flicked from her unstable perch to the precariously hung siding, then back to her. “You need to get off that ladder before you break your neck.”
“I’ve got it!” she insisted, her chin jutting out with that stubborn tilt I was starting to recognize, the one that usually preceded some new form of disaster. “It’s fine! Perfectly fine! I don’t need any help, thank you!”
She punctuated this bold, entirely unconvincing declaration by giving the siding another futile tug, which only made it sag more alarmingly.
“Iris, come down,” I said, my voice firmer, taking a step closer to the base of the ladder. “That whole section is unstable. It’s not properly braced. You keep yanking on it, you’re going to bring the whole damn thing down, and yourself with it.”
“I know what I’m doing!” she shot back, though the tremor in her voice betrayed her bravado. Her eyes darted from the siding to me and back again, like a cornered animal. “It just… slipped a little. I almost had it.”
Slipped a little? It’s hanging on by a prayer and your increasingly desperate grip.
There was a fine trembling in her arms.
