Chapter 4
Troy
The Carter place sits exactly where I remember it. Halfway up the ridge, tucked between a stand of old spruce and a slope that catches the afternoon sun. Good land. Neglected, but good.
Rainey pulls her SUV to a stop beside the cabin and kills the engine like she’s bracing for impact. I step out of my truck and take a slow look around.
Overgrown weeds. Untended grass. A couple of shallow runoff channels cutting through the yard. But the soil color is right. Dark under the surface. Healthy, if someone’s willing to do the work.
My eyes move up to the cabin. And immediately land on the gutters. She wasn’t exaggerating.
One section is hanging crooked, like it’s lost the will to live. Another stretch is missing entirely. The downspout on the far corner is gone, which explains the trench carved into the dirt below it.
Rainey climbs out of her vehicle and watches my face carefully. She’s wearing jeans that hug in a way that makes it harder than it should be to focus on the gutters.
“So,” she says, folding her arms. “On a scale from one to ‘you bought a disaster,’ how bad is it?”
I walk closer to the cabin.
“Not a disaster.”
She exhales loudly behind me.
“Thank God.”
“Yet.”
Her relief evaporates.
“Gutters need replacing,” I say. “Downspout too.”
She nods quickly like she expected that.
“What about the roof?”
I step back to get a better view. The shingles are older but not terrible. The edges show some curling, but nothing catastrophic yet.
“Could be worse,” I say. I tilt my head, checking the lines. “Seems to be one layer of shingles.”
“That’s… good?”
“Yes.”
I glance back at her.
“Means you could possibly add another layer instead of tearing the whole thing off.”
Her face lights up.
“See? This is why I invited you here.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“You invited me?”
She gestures vaguely between us.
“You suggested lunch. I accepted. That’s basically an invitation.”
I shake my head and walk toward the front porch. The boards creak under my boots but hold. Not bad, but not great either.
“Roof decking might still be solid,” I say. “Hard to know without looking underneath.”
She frowns.
“Underneath?”
“In the attic.”
“Oh.”
There’s a pause … a long one. I glance back at her. She’s suddenly eyeing the porch railing like it might offer her an escape route.
“You… have an attic, right?” I ask.
“Technically.”
Another pause. Her expression shifts into something that looks suspiciously like panic wrapped in a polite smile.
“Before we go in,” she says quickly, “I just want to mention something.”
“That usually means something bad.”
She winces.
“Okay, but in my defense I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“You invited me.”
“Semantics.”
I push the door open and step inside, and immediately stop. Not because the house is terrible. Because it’s chaos.
Moving boxes. Half-unpacked kitchen supplies. A ladder leaning against one wall. A stack of gutter pieces on the floor. Tools everywhere. The place looks like someone started twelve different projects and finished none of them.
She moves through it like she belongs there anyway. Like chaos doesn’t scare her—it just slows her down. Rainey slips past me and gestures wildly around the room.
“So this,” she says, “is what I would describe as a temporary organizational phase.”
I look at the pile of clothes draped over the back of a chair.
“Temporary.”
“Yes.”
She grabs a box and shoves it toward a corner.
“I’ve only been here a week.”
“That explains some of it.”
She narrows her eyes.
“Some of it?”
I shrug.
“Not the ladder in the kitchen.”
“Oh, that’s structural.”
“Structural.”
“Yes.”
She points upward.
“I thought I might need it for the gutters.”
I follow her finger to the ceiling.
“You can’t reach the gutters from inside.”
“Well, obviously I know that now.”
I nod slowly. She watches me like she’s waiting for judgment. I don’t give her any. Instead I walk toward the back hallway where a narrow door sits under the slope of the roof.
“Attic access?” I ask.
She sighs.
“Yes.” Then she adds quickly, “But before you open that, I should probably warn you.”
“About what?”
She hesitates.
“Dust.”
I pull the door open. The attic ladder drops down with a creak. Rainey winces.
“Okay,” she says. “Also possibly spiders.”
I glance at her.
“You bought a mountain cabin.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have spiders.”
She sighs again.
“I was hoping they’d be seasonal.”
I start climbing the ladder.
“Stay down there.”
She crosses her arms.
“I wasn’t planning on joining you.”
The attic smells like dry wood and insulation. I shine my phone light across the rafters and check the underside of the roof. Shingles are old but the decking looks solid. No sagging or rot. That’s good news. I climb back down and step into the room again. Rainey is pacing.
“Well?” she demands.
I brush some dust from my hands.
“You can add a second layer of shingles.”
She freezes.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
For a second she just stares at me. Then she laughs. A loud, relieved sound that fills the room. Her laugh catches me off guard. Something honest in it. Something that doesn’t calculate its effect before it happens.
“Oh my God,” she says, dropping onto the couch. “I thought you were going to tell me the whole roof had to come off.”
“Not yet.”
She points a finger at me.
“See, this is exactly the kind of information I needed before I bought twelve tools and a bag of concrete.”
“You don’t need the concrete.”
She sighs.
“I had a feeling.”
I glance toward the yard through the window.
The slope behind the cabin catches my eye. Good sunlight. Decent drainage once the runoff is redirected.
“You planning to do anything with the back lot?” I ask.
She follows my gaze.
“I was thinking about a garden.”
I nod slowly.
“That could work.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“You’re serious?”
“The soil’s good.”
She leans forward like I just told her she won the lottery.
“You can tell that already?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I shrug.
“You look at land long enough, you learn what it’s capable of.”
“Well, Troy Bennett,” she says, “sounds like I might need a teacher.”
I meet her gaze. And the thought crosses my mind before I can stop it. Teaching her anything is going to be trouble. Wanting to ,,, might be worse.