Chapter 6 #3
That didn’t seem to make Nicola any happier.
She hugged me and then dragged me out to the front porch, the only place that seemed unaffected by the new dust cloud we had raised inside.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t come along today?
” she demanded, and when Theo started to answer, she held up her hand and he shut his mouth.
I stopped coughing, finally, so that I could also speak. “I was making my way to the window and I could have broken it with a golf club I had found. There’s a whole set that looks nice,” I told them.
“And then you would have been cut by the glass! This is unacceptable,” my sister informed both of us. “I knew there was something going on and you were in danger.”
“Nicola, you caught us at a bad time,” he said. “Grace isn’t in any danger here.” But he didn’t sound very certain.
“Come see what I’ve done,” I told her. “Come look.”
“Are the floors safe? From what Danny said yesterday at dinner, I’m not sure about that.
” She took out her phone and smashed at it with her finger.
In another moment, she was on a call with the contractor who had worked on her own house.
Since he was more or less the son-in-law of one of her best friends, she didn’t mind bothering him on what was probably also his day off.
They set up a time for him to drive out here and do another assessment of the situation and, if possible, start work.
They settled all the details as we stared.
“It’s Theo’s house,” I reminded her when she hung up, and I pointed at him. “You can’t make him hire someone to work on it.”
She also looked at him and frowned. “I forgot about that,” she said. “I’m sorry, I got upset about my baby sister being trapped in the rubble. I’ll call Keon back and—”
“No, I’ve been trying to set up a meeting, but I’ve been busy. You’re right that Grace shouldn’t live in a place like this,” he answered, and Nicola started nodding.
“Excuse me.”
They turned to me.
“Neither of you can tell me where I can live,” I said.
“It’s Theo’s house,” my sister said, repeating my own words. “He does, in fact, get to decide who lives here.”
“No, because this is my job. Are you firing me?” I asked him.
“You’re not an employee. You were working for room and board,” he said, “in a back-scratching deal. It doesn’t itch,” he added.
“Grace, please don’t say anything about lumber,” Nicola ordered, holding up her hand again. “If he’s not paying you, how are you living? You have expenses beyond food.”
“Come see what I’ve been doing,” I told her. “Come look.”
Reluctantly, she followed me into the cabin.
I showed her the empty kitchen, where she pointed out the missing cabinets and the place were the stove should have sat.
Then we went to Theo’s bedroom, and she also noticed that the medicine cabinet was gone.
The hole in the wall, which that cabinet had covered, now exposed pipes that were definitely not copper or PVC, which she knew all about.
Nicola knew everything. I took her to my room, the powder room, and the dining room, which was as much as I’d gotten done on this floor.
“And there’s an upstairs, an attic, a basement, a barn, and several outbuildings,” she confirmed, and Theo started to look very bleak.
“I’m almost finished,” I agreed. “Isn’t it great?”
“You’ve done such a good job, but you need help.” She turned to the homeowner. “This is an amazing place,” she told him. “You’re so lucky to have it and I agree, it will be great.”
“Grace has done more work than ten people,” he said. “I’ve been very impressed.”
It hadn’t been wonderful to get trapped in the library, but this had turned into a good day for me.
“Grace did the work of ten people, but we have more than ten who can help you,” my sister told him.
“Why didn’t anyone put this in the group chat?
” She grabbed her phone again and started typing.
“We’ll miss JuJu’s strength but I’ll have Addie send her husband.
Granger looks like he could lift this house himself.
” She paused. “Which should I ask, Mom or Dad?”
“Mom,” I answered. I didn’t want to see him.
“You’re going to have to…are you bleeding?
” She grabbed my arm. “What cut you? Your last tetanus vaccine was four years ago, but you need to wash that out.” She gestured to Theo, who now looked surprised but offered to go with me to the bathroom as she walked around outside, trying to get a stronger signal.
“I can wash it myself. I’ve been doing that every other time,” I told him once we were away from my bossy sister.
“How many cuts have you gotten?” He examined my arm, holding it gently and rotating my elbow so that he could see better. “This isn’t deep.”
“I know.” I took my limb back and leaned over the sink. “Nicola will get someone to check the water, too.”
“I should have done that. I should have done all of this, not your sister and not you. Please don’t bring up room and board, because you’re doing much more than what you’re getting back.”
I didn’t agree.
“Is she going to recruit your whole family to come up here and work?” he asked me.
“Yes, except the kids will all be useless. You would think that my mom would be, too, but she did a good job of remodeling my dad’s former office to make it into her yoga studio, then back into his office, then into a baby changing room for her grandchildren.”
“Is that why you wanted her instead of your father?”
“There are a few reasons.” She would bother Nicola a lot if she didn’t get included, and I didn’t want that to happen. Also, I wasn’t very happy with my dad right now—actually, I hadn’t been for a while.
“Whew,” Nicola called as she came back inside. “It’s getting colder out there. Is the heat on?”
That turned out to be another problem, but soon enough, many members of my family started arriving to help solve everything. They hadn’t brought their various babies but they had brought tools and dust masks.
“Come and look at what Grace did,” Nicola offered, and took them on a tour.
“By yourself, or did you call in your biker gang friends?” Sophie wondered, and I heard Theo ask Beckett if she was serious about that.
“We’re just acquaintances and they don’t do construction, only motorcycle maintenance,” I explained to him.
“How do you know that if you’re just acquaintances?” Brenna asked, but then Dion and his girlfriend showed up with snacks and drinks, and with my mom.
Everyone started emptying the contents of the house into the dumpster that Theo had rented.
Granger pulled down the rest of the cabinets singlehandedly.
“I thought so,” Nicola congratulated herself.
It all went amazingly quickly, and we didn’t miss the heat until it started to get very, very cold inside.
By then, fortunately, Danny’s friend had arrived to repair the old furnace, and since it was in the basement, we got to go down there for the first time.
“Grace, not you,” Nicola immediately ordered, but I shook my head and went anyway.
After all, Theo and I were in charge today, no matter how much my biggest sister was used to that role.
My siblings were asking me where to put things and how I wanted them just as frequently as they were posing those questions to Theo.
At the end of the day, we all had Chinese food together while sitting on the floor of the living room, since that was now clear of debris and swept clean of dust and Dermatophagoides farinae and pteronyssinus, too.
We drank water out of bottles, since Nicola hadn’t yet been able to get someone to come out to test the well. She’d put in a lot of calls, though.
“Theo, cheers,” my brother Patrick said, and he held up his bottle. “Welcome to the Curran family.”
Everyone laughed and held up their bottles, and Theo raised his as well.
He turned to look at me, though, and he wasn’t smiling.
He looked very dirty from all the clean-up and also very, very concerned.
Maybe it was due to the remarks about my biker friends, or maybe it was because I’d fallen through one of the steps to the basement and scratched up my leg pretty badly.
Or maybe it was because my brother had suggested something that scared him, which I could understand. Sometimes I wanted to get away from my family too, because we were a lot. But I hoped that he didn’t want to get away from me.