5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
Robinson
They couldn’t clear all the furniture for their checks or anything, so it was a bit squirrelly to handle everything, but nothing they couldn’t handle. Especially not with Chuck, the boys, and the arrival of the contractor crew. They didn’t have a ton of crew for this job, since apparently Eliza had known they wouldn’t have the room for a full-court press into the house, but enough showed up that furniture at least got moved away from the walls. It let Jake check for structural problems, Aras look at the electrical hookups and wiring, and gave Robinson access to the plumbing…except in the upstairs bathroom, where he and Ryan were still working their way through the piles of boxes and totes.
“You need a break, tell me.” Robinson handed Ryan a small, purple tote that was remarkably heavy for its size. “I don’t know about you, but I’m already getting hot.” He wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up with any of the kids—well, he was actually entirely sure, since he’d suggested Ryan could shadow him, but that was an offer to be nice, not to actually be taken—but Robinson found himself painfully aware of…everything. His words, his body, his own thoughts.
Oh, and the fact that I have a criminal history and used to smoke meth and I shouldn’t be trusted with other people’s children.
Ryan sighed. “It’s always warm in here. Even when we could use it as a bathroom, it got hot as balls. All this crap piled in here just holds the heat even more or something.”
“Well, I’ll talk to Jake and Aras about that.” Robinson doubted it was anything to do with the plumbing, but it probably pointed to a lack of ventilation. Which made it an issue for them.
“So you really do all this in three weeks?”
“Yeah. That’s the idea. Not every house is in as good of shape as yours when we get there.” Robinson handed him another, lighter box. They’d made it about halfway into the bathroom, leaving a pile of boxes in the hallway, but there was still a lot to go. The entire bathtub was stacked at least two layers deep and stacked to the ceiling, and Robinson couldn’t tell the extent of the work necessary until they got it all cleared away. “First one we did for the show had been through a fire. And some of the houses we put up on VideoHead were super gnarly. Caved-in roofs, water damage, places that hadn’t been lived in for ten, fifteen years.” He hefted a particularly weak box up and shuffled his hands underneath to support it. “Better let me carry this. It’s barely holding together.”
Ryan shuffled out of the bathroom and Robinson set the box down on the floor. Then he caught a whiff of something…off. Off and familiar. He looked down at his hands and… “Shit.”
Ryan stepped up next to him. “What’s wrong?”
Robinson held up his hands, showing the white, powdery residue all over them. “Mildew. Which means there’s probably standing water or a leak in here.” He put his hands down and away from Ryan. “Go run and get your dad, and if you two can find Mason, tell him we need to get everything moved out of here fast.”
Ryan’s eyes widened a second, but he nodded and headed down the stairs. “Dad!”
I didn’t mean for you to yell and give your dad a heart attack . Mildew wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but if there was anything sentimental in these boxes, Robinson knew damn well what damage mildew could do. If those boxes were sitting wet for a long time, there was a good chance some of the contents were unsalvageable.
Footsteps banged up the stairs. Chuck’s face was red, and Mason was leading Bunny up, with Ryan at the back of the train. Chuck stopped at the top step, eyes darting side-to-side. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Water damage on your boxes.” Robinson hated saying it. Some stupid part of himself felt responsible. I should have at least smelled it before I saw it. I could have warned him instead of springing it. “It doesn’t look like mold, but you should stay out just in case. I’ll hand boxes through the door, and if I see something with mold, we need to clear out and get masked up.” Robinson shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Guess the shower wasn’t the best long-term storage.” He looked over his shoulder. “Ryan, I want you to stay downstairs until we’re sure it’s good, okay? I’ll send Nick and Colby down and you three can hang out.”
Chuck headed down the hallway and knocked on Nick’s door, then stuck his head inside. Robinson forced himself to turn around and start unloading boxes. He handed the first one to Mason and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to panic him.” He kept his voice low. No point undermining someone in front of their kids. “It’s mildew, not anthrax.”
“Better he’s over-cautious than under.” Mason carted the box out and waited for the next one. “How bad is it?”
“I haven’t seen anything actively damp yet.” He cleared another two boxes, then went back for more before Mason even got them set down. “But it’s a lot of mildew. Ryan said the bathroom always gets really hot, so I think there must not be great ventilation. Could just be a small leak, and then nowhere for the moisture to escape.”
Chuck pushed his way in, scrubbing his hands up and down his face. “All right, what’s the damage?”
“Nothing crazy.” Robinson handed him the next box. “We’ll see once we get everything out of here, but I’d be surprised if there’s anything major. Big water damage should have shown on the ceiling downstairs.” It was time to just rip off the bandage. “But you’re going to want to look through the stuff in the boxes. Mildew on the surface means there’s a good chance it got inside.”
Chuck’s spine stiffened, then relaxed. “I don’t think there’s anything important in here. Old pictures are all in the master suite, or down in the living room. We didn’t have many. Andrew’s clothes are in our room. Maybe some books? My old work files? Unless Andrew moved something in here I didn’t know about. I guess I don’t know.” He rubbed a hand up his face and through his hair. “I don’t know.”
In spite of the clearly desperate attempts to convince himself it was fine, Chuck was getting more freaked out the longer he talked. So Robinson grabbed a box and pushed it into his grip. “Hey. Move boxes now, then you can try to work out if anything major got damaged. If there’s still standing water in here, it’s just getting worse the longer we talk about it.”
Chuck’s eyes widened, then he sucked in a sharp breath and wrapped his fingers around the bottom edge of the box. “Right. Sorry.”
Robinson wanted to reassure him, but Chuck was already moving. Which was what Robinson was after, so he couldn’t say anything. Just had to keep moving.