Chapter 5
Luke
I take the key from her hand. Warm. Slight tremor in her fingers. Adrenaline, caffeine, or trauma—it is hard to say from one touch. The key goes in. Instead of ramming the door, I lean my shoulder into the frame, turn the knob all the way, and lift as I push.
The door releases and swings inward like it has never been the problem.
She exhales, a quiet, embarrassed huff.
“Of course.”
“House settles on this side,” I say. “She’s crooked. Needs new supports.”
Her brow lifts. “She?”
“Any structure that holds that much weight and keeps standing,” I say, handing the key back, “earns the pronoun.”
She almost smiles. There is the ghost of it—quick as a shadow—before she wrestles it down. She doesn’t want to show too much too soon. She thinks I deserve the cautious version of her.
She looks past me into the entryway. The air smells of stale drywall dust and old carpet glue, tinged with something sour that doesn’t quite commit to mold.
“Smells like a frat house died in here.”
“Frat houses don’t die,” I say. “They metastasize.”
That gets her. She smiles—for real this time. She wasn’t expecting me to be funny. People rarely do. It is one of the last luxuries left: not being what people have already decided you are.
“I’m Luke,” I say, trying to get a head start on the gossip or her assumptions. Probably both.
She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, studying me.
“You the neighborhood welcoming committee, Luke?”
“No,” I say. “Just the guy who knows the door. I’ve done work here before.”
That lands. Her shoulders tighten a fraction.
“For the previous owner?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what happened to her?”
She’s heard the story. Of course she has. Real estate agents lie about square footage, not about corpses. She asks like she already half thinks I’m responsible, but doesn’t know she is thinking it yet.
“She moved,” I say.
It isn’t untrue. People move into the ground all the time.
She gives me a look that says she isn’t sure if I am being evasive or cryptic on purpose, and I like that about her. She doesn’t let things go just because it would be easier.
“Right,” she says slowly. “Well. I’m—”
“Marin,” I say.
Her brows raise. “Do we know each other?”
“Not yet. But Mrs. Mather does a whole dossier whenever someone new moves to town. Circulates it like a church bulletin. She’s very worried you’re from California.”
“I’m not.”
“She’ll be disappointed.”
She huffs a laugh she doesn’t mean to. The tension in her shoulders drops half an inch. She glances at Mrs. Mather’s window, where the lace curtain flutters, then abruptly stills.
“Let me guess,” she says. “She’s making a list of my sins already.”
“Not yet,” I say. “She needs you to bake something for a potluck first. Makes it easier to be self-righteous if you’ve had someone’s brownies.”
She shifts her weight and I can see her right ankle is bothering her.
“You live around here?”
“Not far,” I say.
She glances toward the truck—battered, ladder strapped to the rack, toolbox wedged behind the cab. “Handyman?”
There it is. The word that’s going to stick—whether she wants it to or not.
“Something like that.”
She looks almost disappointed. “Huh.”
“I fix what people ignore—until it becomes a problem.”
She looks back at the house—the sagging porch, the crooked gutter, the cracked step she almost trusts.
“Then you’ll be busy. Seems like everything got ignored.”
“Not everything,” I say, before I can stop myself.
She doesn’t catch it. Or pretends not to. She plants her hands on her hips and surveys the battlefield.
“Do you have a card?”
I don’t. Cards are for men who need the work. I write my number on the back of a hardware store receipt and hand it to her.
She takes it, thumb brushing over the ink like she is testing it.
“Rates?”
“Depends what you want,” I say.
She glances up sharply. I realize how that sounds. Social filters aren’t my strong suit.
“Depends on the job,” I correct. “I’m fair.”
“You decide what’s fair?”
“No,” I say. “The work does.”