Part 2
“For forty-one years,” June said. “How did you know him?”
Cal looked again at the stamped name. “I worked for him when I was nineteen. He was the first person who ever put my name on a payroll check.”
Before June could answer, the ceiling seam opened with a wet sigh. A slab of plaster dropped onto the place where the kitchen table had stood and broke across the linoleum.
Denise was moving before the dust settled. She moved the nearest lantern clear, checked the exposed lath without standing beneath it, and sent Noah for the roll of plastic packed with the rain gear. Cal ushered June into the living room, one hand hovering at the small of her back.
“I know where my living room is,” she said.
“Good. Keep going.”
No one was hurt. That should have made the accident smaller. Instead, June kept looking at the white fragments scattered among the damp footprints, each one painted the pale yellow she and Walter had chosen in 1989.
Denise stretched plastic across the kitchen opening to catch loose debris. “I’m a structural engineer,” she said. “I can’t tell you what’s happening inside the roof from down here, but that ceiling needs to stay clear until somebody can.”
June folded the quilt in her arms once, then again. “You all can sleep in the living room and dining room. I’ll use the chair.”
“You’ll use your bed,” Cal said.
“Upstairs.”
“Then you’ll use the couch.”
She began to argue, but the sharp smell of wet insulation had entered the room. It smelled like the shed after Walter’s pipes froze one January and he tried to pretend the damage was less than it was. She set the quilt on the couch.
Cal waited until the others had settled again. Then he sat on the lowest stair, leaving the chair for her.
“Walt used to tell a story about a kid putting a finish nail through a copper pipe in a house on Grant Avenue,” June said.
“That was me.”
“He said the kid tried to stop the leak with chewing gum.”
“I was nineteen.”
“He left that part out when he told it.”
Cal rubbed the side of his thumb along the seam of his jeans. “I lied about knowing trim work. I lied about having a driver’s license, too. Walt figured out both by lunch.”
“But he kept you.”
“Not the whole time.” Cal glanced toward the framing square. “I took a cordless drill off his truck. Told myself he owed me because he docked my pay for the broken pipe. He came to the room I was renting and asked for it back.”
June could picture Walter on a stranger’s doorstep: shoulders square, cap held at his side, more disappointed than angry. That expression had been harder to withstand than shouting.
“Did you give it to him?”
“No. I’d already sold it.”
“He fired me. Two weeks later he offered me Saturday work at half my old rate. Every hour went toward the drill and the water damage. I thought he was trying to humiliate me.”
“He probably was a little.”
Cal laughed once. “Maybe. But he kept a stool for me at lunch. That mattered more than I let him know.”
Rain drummed overhead. In the dark living room, riders shifted beneath June’s quilts. Someone whispered a joke; someone else shushed him.
“What do you do now?” she asked.
“Own a restoration company in Flagstaff. Mostly fire and storm damage. Denise makes sure I don’t move walls that hold up roofs.”
“Somebody has to.”
“Walt said the same thing.”
June looked toward the kitchen and the broken pieces on the floor. “Walter has been dead fourteen years.”
Cal’s face changed, but he did not offer one of the soft phrases people used when a death was old enough to be convenient. “I didn’t know.”
“No reason you would.”
Her phone vibrated beneath the bowl. In the sudden quiet, the sound was loud enough that both of them heard it.
Cal nodded toward the counter. “Somebody checking on you?”
“Somebody checking up on me.”
He accepted the distinction, though his eyes stayed on the bowl for another second.
At two in the morning, the rain weakened. At four, June woke to find the bucket in the upstairs hall nearly full and emptied it into the bathtub. At six, pale light filtered through the wet windows. The riders rolled quilts, wiped the floors, and carried their gear outside.
Denise stood in the yard studying the roofline. She did not climb, probe, or pretend that looking was the same as knowing. She pointed out the deflection above the upstairs hall, separation where the rear addition met the original house, and a porch post that had shifted on its footing.
“The main roof needs an inspection by a licensed roofer,” she told June. “The rear room should stay empty until then. I’d avoid the front porch, too.”
“You’ve managed to rule out half my house from the driveway.”
“I’ve told you where I wouldn’t put my own mother.”
June almost said that Denise’s mother was not living there. She stopped because the reply was too easy and because Denise had not spoken to frighten her.
Cal handed June a business card. MERCER RESTORATION was printed above a Flagstaff address, two license numbers, and a plain black phone number.
“If you call, I’ll come with Denise and one roofer,” he said. “No crew. No bill. We look, tell you what we see, and leave.”
“I don’t accept free inspections.”
“Then charge me for the macaroni and we’ll call it a trade.”
“That meal wasn’t an invoice.”
“I know.” He slipped his helmet over his hair. “That’s why I’m asking, not arranging.”
June tucked the card into her cardigan pocket because throwing it away in front of him would have been rude.
The motorcycles started in small groups. The engine noise rolled across the road, and curtains shifted in two front windows. Cal was the last to leave. Before mounting, he lifted the crooked screen door enough to clear the porch boards, then released it exactly as he had found it.
June watched the riders disappear east toward Flagstaff. The quiet they left seemed less like peace than a room after furniture had been removed.
She carried the rolled quilts inside. Her phone showed seven missed calls.
Anna arrived before June had finished sweeping mud and pine needles from the living-room floor.
Her daughter’s blue Subaru stopped at the foot of the driveway, avoiding the washout near the mailbox. Anna got out wearing scrub pants, hiking shoes, and the expression she used when a patient had given her a dangerous version of the truth. At forty-six, she had Walter’s quick stride and June’s habit of pressing her lips together before saying something unkind.
She reached the broken porch tread.
“Don’t use those steps,” June called.
Anna looked down, then up at the roof. “You said the house was fine.”
“I said I was fine.”
“You didn’t answer seven calls.”
“There were fourteen wet people in my kitchen.”
Anna came around through the mudroom. Her eyes moved over the stacked bowls, the dark damp marks the jackets had left on the wall, and the plastic Denise had stretched beneath the ceiling.
“The motorcycles were here?”
“They needed shelter.”
“You let fourteen strangers into this house during a storm, but you won’t let your own daughter pay a roofer.”
“Those are unrelated things.”
“They are exactly the same thing.”
June returned to the broom. “You drove three hours to lecture me. At least have coffee first.”
Anna did not move. “I drove three hours because the woman next door called me when part of your gutter landed in her yard.”
So it had been Nola. June made a note to return the borrowed canning jars without peach preserves in them.
Anna reached into her shoulder bag and took out a long envelope, bent at one corner. June recognized her own handwriting on the front.
“You mailed my check back unopened,” Anna said. “Then you canceled the contractor I scheduled. I thought you were being stubborn about the price. I didn’t know the ceiling was coming down.”
“It came down once.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
A gust shoved the front screen door across the swollen porch board, where it caught and hung open. Anna crossed the hall to lift it. The hinge pulled another screw from the soft frame.
June put the broom against the wall. Cal’s card felt suddenly heavy in her pocket.
Anna saw her hand move. “What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“Mom.”
June had let fourteen strangers into her house. She resented that handing Anna the card felt harder and held it out before she could change her mind.
Anna read the name. “Is this one of the riders?”
“He knew your father.”
“And he does storm restoration.” She took out her phone. “I’m calling him.”
“He said he’d only come if I asked.”
Anna lowered the phone. For once, she did not push. “Will you ask?” June looked at the broken ceiling, then at the envelope her daughter had carried all the way from Phoenix. “One hour,” she said. “He gets one hour…”
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