Chapter 2
Gage
Well. That ain’t right.
I looked at the three-inch gap between frame and concrete, the frame way, way overhanging its foundation, and sighed.
“This is my fault,” I muttered as I punched in both Cohen’s and Riggs’s numbers. “I dared to think, oh look, it’s Friday and has been quiet all week, maybe the week will end quietly too. Murphy needs to stop being my goddamn pimp—”
“You’re muttering to yourself,” Riggs said. “That’s not a good sign. What’s broke, Gage?”
Ah, they’d both picked up while I was ranting. Excellent. That meant I could keep ranting.
“I’m going to switch you two to video call so you can see what I’m seeing.
” I pushed the button to make that happen, then changed the camera angle and crouched down to make the problem obvious on-screen.
“I’m at the Schoolcraft project. Today was supposed to be a quick inspection on my part for the framing.
There’s not going to be anything quick about this. There, see that?”
Cohen abruptly lost his shit. “The frame’s a whole three inches off! That’s stupid obvious, so why the hell did they keep going? At the very least, they should have called me and reported a problem.”
“That’s what I’m saying! But walk with me.
Look how it’s so off back here? Now as you walk up”—I walked toward the front of the building, keeping my camera pointed low—“the framing rejoins with the foundation about halfway, and by the time you reach the front of the building, it’s fine.
It’s aligned. So clearly either the foundation was laid crooked—”
I could see Riggs sifting through paperwork. “No, the building passed first-stage inspection. The foundation is square.”
“So it’s the framing,” Cohen said grumpily. “Which assholes did this job?”
“New crew we were trying, I think?” I squinted up into the clouds like they might have the answer, because my own brain cells sure as hell didn’t.
“Also correct,” Riggs confirmed, flipping another sheet. “This was a freelance crew we’ve not used before.”
I stood there and marveled. “Riggs, how do you remember everything and keep details straight? We’re juggling so many projects right now.”
He gave me a dry look. “My brain is on paper. Hence”—he shook the folder in his hand—“paper.”
“Fair. Well, we’re not using these guys again, for sure.”
It didn’t immediately fix the problem, though.
Since I was going to be here a minute, I swung by my truck to spray myself with some sunscreen and put on a hat.
A sunburn I did not need, thanks muchly.
People thought Michigan didn’t get hot, but we were having the hottest July on record, so it was a scorching hundred degrees outside.
I felt the heat beating down on my shoulders and head, sweat already trickling down my temples.
I turned again to study the building, this time pulling out my laser pointer and the blueprint so I could measure and mark things.
I wanted to know precisely what had gone wrong and where.
As both the company’s architect and structural engineer, I did not appreciate my work being disrespected due to lazy mistakes.
The office building was huge—a good five thousand square feet—and I’d designed it to not look or feel like an endless corridor of hallways while still providing ample space for small offices and businesses. The downside? With so much required framing, there had been a greater margin of error.
From the front of the building, the framing looked fine. I started there, using my laser pointer. Everything lined up with the foundation, no issues.
About halfway down, my laser pointer showed the framing had gotten slightly off-kilter. Ah-ha, I had found the problem. They had not laid down a chalk line, or something, just eyeballed it. A rookie mistake because eyeballs lie.
Cohen grunted when I tilted the camera for him to see. “Yup, that’s where the problem starts.”
“Still amazes me that the quarter-inch difference there turns into a three-inch problem at the end,” Riggs mused.
Frustration bubbled up in me like a potion in a witch’s cauldron.
Come on, this work was downright shoddy.
Who looked at a frame literally hanging off the foundation and said, Meh, it should be fine.
There was no point in me measuring anything else, either.
We would have to tear out whole sections of the framing to redo it, which was time and money lost.
We’d take the money out of the crew’s hide, too. We were not paying for their mistakes.
“Nothing about this can be saved. I can’t trust any of their work now. We need to tear out about half the framing on the ground floor, and of course nothing on the second story is going to be right, not with the base so askew.”
Cohen started swearing. Some of it was rather creative.
Riggs sounded grim. “So we’re losing, what, a week? To undo and redo this.”
“That’s assuming you have another framing crew you trust, one that has the time to come in immediately. Do you?”
“I wish my magic wand could produce crews on demand.”
“That’s what I thought.”
After a long sigh, Cohen grumbled, “I trusted the foreman to cover for me since I was out of town the days they were framing. Clearly, that was my mistake. I’m calling him, as he’s paying for this. It was his miss.”
“We shouldn’t have to pay, for sure. Riggs, have you paid the framing crew yet?”
“I haven’t, actually. Their invoice is on my desk waiting for your approval. After a previous drywall crew screwed us over, I refuse to pay until after inspection.”
Riggs was worth his weight in gold. He never let anyone burn him more than once.
He learned from past mistakes, and he would hold on to an invoice forever until he was satisfied the job had been done correctly.
He saved us a lot of money, time, trouble, and legal hassle.
“Bless you. I’m going to walk back through and take pictures so we can prove how badly they screwed up.
The framing would have never passed inspection, so they have no leg to stand on. ”
Riggs asked, “If the crew promises to make it right, do you want to give them the chance?”
“No,” Cohen and I said immediately.
“This is bad, Riggs. Like, I’m just eyeballing this back section and it’s obviously wrong. They did a shitty job. They don’t get to pretend like it was a simple mistake and come back in. I don’t trust them.”
“Got it. I’ll mark the invoice as Do Not Pay and put this crew on our blacklist.”
“Please and thank you.”
Unfortunately, our blacklist was growing.
Crews that had done such terrible jobs we’d never use them again.
It happened, and the best thing was to mark them down and move on with life.
We had taken a few crews to small claims court, which was part of the reason we had Shanice—to help with the legal stuff.
I ended the call then went back through and took pictures as promised.
I wanted all mistakes well documented. I was sweating like a counselor at summer camp by the time I finished, and I seriously considered taking off my shirt to wring it out.
Instead, I went home for a quick shower and change of clothes.
My house was in Northville, barely five minutes from the project.
It made more sense to wash off and get comfortable, as I’d be in the office the rest of the day.
I sat down long enough to email all the pictures to Cohen and Riggs, cc’ing Shanice just in case she needed them. Only after hitting Send did I pack up and head back to the office.
I wasn’t part of a lot of the day-to-day construction—they only needed me for certain aspects of the job, after all.
I filled my time doing consultations for projects outside of our own, or helped with house inspections, or designed homes for people.
It was a side gig of sorts for the business and brought in steady income.
The side projects also kept me busy, which I liked.
Nothing worse than a slow day at work. I got antsy quickly.
Right now, I was designing a house for an elderly couple who wanted something perfectly flat and level.
The husband had multiple sclerosis and needed something disability friendly.
I needed to do some research to make sure I was code compliant and providing him with everything he needed, which meant I had homework waiting.
No, trolling through building codes was not fun, but I liked the challenge of it. I had workaholic tendencies. It was why I’d double majored in college to begin with. I owned my crazy, thank you.
I’d driven about halfway to the office when I got a call. I glanced at the screen on my truck’s dash and groaned.
My mother.
I envied people who were close with their parents, who looked forward to chatting.
With mine, I wished I could be classified as a missing person.
If paying my mother to go away would work, I’d hand her a credit card with no limit.
Every time I interacted with her, I could feel myself entering this weird mindset where I was part counselor, part pseudohusband, with responsibilities I’d never wanted nor signed up for.
It felt incredibly awkward, even in my own head.
It was a persona made for me and not something I truly fit.
Like trying to put on a suit coat five sizes too large, paired with clown shoes and pants that were too short.
Nothing worked. And yet, not only was I expected to stand in those shoes, but my mother acted like I’d betrayed her if I even questioned why I was playing the part.
I did not, needless to say, ever wish to speak with my mother.
Sighing, I hit Accept. “You’ve got ten minutes. I’m almost at work.”