18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
BEN
Sunrise finds me on my knees on the decking with a tape measure and a flask. I’ve already been out here long enough to watch the mountains change shifts.
Thursday. Day three of the new arrangement.
I’ve got the west frames stripped back to what’s worth saving, which is more than Ella feared and less than I told her, because she doesn’t need the worry.
The soft cladding’s marked with chalk. The gutter’s down, waiting on brackets.
I measure the last run twice, write it once, and start the day’s list on a fresh page.
The list is a pleasure. I’m man enough to admit it.
7:00, frames.
9:30, Hollis about the lumber.
10:00, call the electrician back before he wriggles.
12:00, lighting man in Gatlinburg.
And at the bottom: E. ate nothing last night. Fix.
May ran plates out to the barn at six because Ella was deep in a folder of numbers, building some proposal to win back the October booking that canceled by voicemail.
The plate sat untouched. Then she drank half a mug of tea and let the rest go cold.
At ten, her office light was still on. The plate went back to the kitchen under its foil, and nobody said anything, because around here Ella not eating is expected.
Not on my list, it isn’t.
Hollis first. He runs the salvage yard out past the rodeo grounds, and Maggie, the mail lady, told me that Hollis has a dairy barn coming down in Wendell County. Old oak. I dial his number, and he picks up after two rings.
“The Gazette groom,” he says. “Son, you’re famous.”
“I’m told. You’ve got a barn coming down?”
We talk boards. He talks prices like a man who reads headlines and smells money.
I let him run, then mention that his flatbed’s got a wheel bearing singing so loud I heard it from the road yesterday.
I let him know I’ll pack both hubs and check his brakes while I’m at it if the cladding lot comes in at his cost. Silence on the line.
Then Hollis laughs and says, “Come Saturday, bring your grease gun.”
That’s how it works out here. Same as home. Money’s for strangers.
The electrician takes longer because he’s a wriggler.
He quoted Ella eleven hundred for the annex hookup back in spring, then went quiet when the Gazette ran its headline, the way small-county money goes quiet around trouble.
I don’t mention the wedding. I mention that Silas Lockhart vouches for me.
That the job’s ready-access with the walls open, half a day for a man who knows his business.
That I’ll have the trench cut and the conduit laid before he arrives, so all he’s selling me is the license and the hookup.
He comes off eleven hundred like a man stepping off a porch. We land at four fifty.
I write it on the list.
Lighting man in Gatlinburg has bistro strings, commercial grade, coming off a restaurant remodel. Enough for Evelyn’s creek path with a spare run for the loft rail. I ask him to hold them till Saturday, and he says, “For the Gazette groom, anything.” Turns out being famous is occasionally useful.
By eleven I’m hungry, which is how I remember the last line on the list.
The annex kitchen came through rough plumbing and rougher luck with one working ring, a kettle, and a skillet Ella keeps out there for reasons I haven’t asked about. I make the run up to the main house, where May takes my request with an expression that makes me look at my boots.
“Eggs, bread, butter,” she says, loading my arms. “Bacon’s in the paper there. Take the good jam.” And then, at the door, not a question: “For Ella.”
“She didn’t eat last night.”
“No,” May says. “She didn’t.” She looks at me with an eyebrow raised and a half-smile, and I get out of there fast.
Ella surfaces from the loft office at half-past eleven, folder under one arm, phone in the other hand, mid-list, and walks into a wall of bacon smell.
She stops and looks around her. “What is this?”
“Second breakfast. Sit.”
“I don’t have time for—”
“You have time.” I put the plate on the trestle.
Eggs, bacon, toast cut on the angle because Grace informed me once that triangles taste better.
“Your twelve o’clock is a lighting call I already made.
Strings are held till Saturday, commercial grade, restaurant remodel, better than the ones in your budget column and forty percent cheaper.
So the call’s off your list, the minutes are mine, and I’m spending them watching you eat. ”
She looks at the plate, then at me, but I can’t read her face. For a second, I think I’ve overstepped, that feeding a grown woman uninvited is a liberty. Then she sits, wary as a barn cat, and picks up the fork.
“You made the electrician call, too.” It’s not a question. She’s reading the day’s list where it sits by the plate. “Four fifty. He originally quoted eleven.”
“He remembered his manners.”
“When does he start?”
“Second week of August. He’s got a hotel job in Gatlinburg to finish first.” It’s not ideal, but the price is set and his word’s given.
“And Hollis.” Her fork stops. “You got Wendell County oak at cost. Nobody gets anything from Hollis at cost. Rose has seen him charge a widow for directions.”
“I’m packing his wheel bearings Saturday.”
“You’re…” She sets the fork down. “You’re packing his wheel bearings?”
“Both hubs. Checking his brakes if there’s time.” I top up the tea she’s abandoned and swap the cold mug for the hot one. “Eat your eggs.”
She doesn’t eat her eggs. She looks at the two mugs, the cold one leaving, the hot one arriving. Her hand comes up and touches the chain at her throat. When she speaks again, her voice has gone somewhere quieter.
“You noticed the tea.”
“You never finish a cup. You drink two hot sips, then forget about the rest.” I shrug and busy myself with the skillet. “I notice things, Ella. Cattle, boards, mugs. You’d be amazed how little gets past me.”
“Ben.”
“Eat.”
She eats. Slowly at first, then like a woman running on fumes, chasing the last of the eggs with the toast. I stand at the annex window with my own plate and let her do it without an audience, watching the venue instead.
Watching the venue. Not the line of her throat when she tips the tea back. Not the sound she made at the first bite of bacon, which a man could get in trouble replaying. The venue. I’m watching the venue.
It’s coming. You can see it from here now. New decking silvered in the morning light. Chalk lines waiting on the oak. The gutter run stacked and ready. A building halfway back from the dead.
And one building that isn’t.
The honeymoon cabin sits across the meadow with its curtains drawn, the way it’s sat since Sunday.
She hasn’t been back in. I stripped it with her, I carried the linens out myself, and since that morning the path to its porch might as well be wire-fenced.
Everything else on this ranch, she works like a woman possessed. That one door stays shut.
There’s a why. I can feel it, but I don’t press. She’ll tell me in time.
Still, I write it at the bottom of the day’s list, small, in the space under the lumber numbers, where questions go when they’re not ready to be asked.
The cabin?