In the rearview mirror Buster stared back at him. “Want to go for a ride?” Perry asked in the most nonpetrified tone of voice he could muster. He could’ve sworn the beast smiled back at him.
In that moment Perry made a decision. In fifteen minutes they could be at the hospital. He would not look back again. Not at the cloud of dog hair rising about him. Not at the pattern of wet nose prints accumulating in viral momentum across his back window. It was too late.
Perry started the car. He sneezed once, and again. Then put the car in drive.
Phoebe
With everyone at the hospital, Phoebe did not want to bother her parents with the realization she’d finally come to: her mother was right. There was no other choice. She needed to move home. The renovations had hit a point where the house was no longer livable.
“Remember we talked about adding a second bath upstairs?” she had asked earlier.
Dave kept working, so at first she didn’t think he’d heard. “What about it?” he said, finally.
“Well, you’d mentioned borrowing some bedroom space from the second large bedroom. I don’t love the idea of one boy having a larger bedroom than the other.”
Dave turned to her, hands on his hips, his gaze even. So even that she imagined him using one of those liquid-filled bubble levels to direct it at her. However he did it, it was effective. She tried to fix him with one of her own. “What I also don’t love is all four of us sharing one bathroom upstairs. You know, for resale purposes, as well as livability.”
Dave considered this. “Those are both good reasons. But a second bath isn’t a budget item.”
“I’m aware of that. But is it still possible?”
Dave glanced around the room at the dusty space. “Do you mean humanly possible?” Another of his quirks. No matter, she had her answer. It could be done; it just wasn’t going to be easy.
“Good. Because I’d like to tackle it.”
“I suppose if you’re going to do it, it makes sense to get it over with now. While the house is torn up and the workers and equipment are on-site. Cheaper that way.”
Phoebe nodded heartily, but he wasn’t done.
“Look, if you’re serious about that, we can go up and take a look. But I’d need to know in the next couple days to line up the plumber. And you’d need to check with town hall to be sure the septic is in compliance.”
Phoebe loathed going to town hall. There was always another permit to obtain, another inspection to schedule, and then there was the waiting for approvals. She’d become painfully familiar with the Health Department, the Building Department, the Planning and Zoning Board, and her least favorite, the enforcement officer. The woman seemed poised to veto just about every proposed project, citing anything from setbacks to “endangered fern species” on the property. Twice already Phoebe had had to go before the Board at monthly meetings. It wasn’t just expensive. It was stressful. She trudged into the town hall with a hastily written script in hand, including several highlighted things Dave had advised she say, and a few underlined thingsnotto say. What she really wanted was for him to go in; he was so much better at this than she, but she couldn’t spare him at the site.
To her surprise, the news from this town hall visit was good for once! She returned to the site that afternoon and told Dave that the septic was in compliance for an added bathroom. It was almost too good to be true. Rob, however, didn’t celebrate the small victory.
“Are you sure we need a second bathroom?” he asked her as he changed out of his business clothes, later that night. The look on his face was anything but pleased. But she could not have timed it better. It was the bedtime hour, and as if on cue the boys came thundering in. Phoebe didn’t say a word. She allowed Rob to witness the pushing and shoving, the splashing. The soaked towels on the floor. The smeared toothpaste in the single sink.
“It is pretty tight in here,” he admitted, glancing warily at the aftermath.
“They’re only going to get bigger,” she reminded him.
“If only our bank account was. Where are we going to find the money for this?”
That was the bad news. They’d have to dip into savings. “But a two-and-a-half house is more valuable than a one-and-a-half,” she proffered. “Think of the resale. It’s an investment.”
The next day Jed was moved into Patrick’s room, his furniture emptied, and the wall came down. With all the commotion and debris, Phoebe took the boys to her parents’ house for the day. She was sitting at the kitchen island eating a grilled cheese sandwich and showing Edward and Jane the adorable Jack and Jill bathroom they had designed when her phone rang. For the first time, things seemed to be working out. Until her cell phone rang.
Half an hour later she was back at the cottage she’d only just left, staring at a newly exposed wall of twisted electrical lines. “I don’t understand. The house is supposedly up to code. The electrician rewired.”
“He did,” Dave said. “Downstairs. But this section of the house was an addition, and whoever did it didn’t wire properly.”
All of the progress they’d made came to a halt. And the punches kept coming. It wasn’t just the wiring. One of the walls, a load-bearing one, wasn’t properly framed. Dave called Rob andPhoebe in to explain his concerns. “See this joist? All of the weight from the roof rests on this, and it runs the entire section of this part of the house. It’s a mere two-by-four, attached to another. And they’re bowing. We need a new LVL beam.”
As Phoebe stood under the eaves, which had been opened up to reveal the skeleton of the framing, she felt like her own insides were also being exposed. Rob stood motionlessly, hands on his hips. She could feel stress radiating from him, reverberating off the pitched ceiling. She wondered, if she opened a window, would it fly up into the sky, allowing them all a little more breathing space?
Dave’s gaze traveled from Rob’s face to hers. She and Dave had a solid working relationship. They were in the trenches together day in and out, and they knew how to read each other. Rob was only on-site for occasional updates and walk-throughs. Dave had no reason to know how Rob would take this news, and for once, neither did she.
“What kind of cost are we talking about?”
