Chapter 10
Marin
It starts with the porch. I go back out to the car because denial comes with a timeline, and mine runs out when the bottom step gives way under my weight—just like he said it would.
It’s not a dramatic fall. No arcing limbs, no slow-motion gasp. Just a sharp crack and my foot punching straight through the board, wood splintering around my shoe like it’s been waiting for the chance.
I grab the rail on instinct, wrench myself upright—and then feel it.
A hot, slicing sting along my shin.
“God—”
I yank my leg out and look down. A rusty nail has torn through my jeans and caught skin on the way out. Blood beads immediately, bright and rude.
Across the street, Mrs. Mather’s curtain flutters again.
Excellent.
I hop back onto the porch, heart hammering, staring at the hole where the step used to be. My leg throbs, scraped and angry, but nothing feels broken.
Still—blood is blood.
Him: 1.
House: 1.
Me: 0.
I fish around for the receipt in my pocket like it personally offended me. His number is scrawled there in that blocky, efficient handwriting of men who write only when they have to—lists, measurements, warnings.
Depends what you want, he said.
What I want is to not be the woman who calls a stranger because she can’t manage a simple porch step without falling through it. What I want is to be the kind of person who arrives in a new town and is left alone.
What I get is myself, sitting on a sagging porch, with a gash in my leg, doing the math on how long my savings will last if I break something important in my body or the house.
It’s not a generous equation.
I grab my phone out of my back pocket and stare at the screen. Service is spotty enough that the little bars flicker like a heartbeat on a bad day. The realtor texted: Congrats again! So excited for your new chapter!
She used three emojis, which should have been my first red flag.
I stare at the phone in one hand, receipt in the other.
“You are not calling him,” I tell myself.
I smooth the receipt out anyway. His number is there, clear, patient. Waiting.
It occurs to me then that this is how it happens. You make a choice because you’re tired, because something hurts, because the house is bigger than you, like he said. You tell yourself it’s temporary. Just a fix for the step. Just help with the front door. Just until you get your feet under you.
Just this once.
I type his number with more force than necessary, like I can punch my way through my own pride.
My thumb hovers over the call button. I picture him in that truck, hands on the wheel, face unreadable, already knowing I’d cave.
I picture the way he watched me, cataloging me the way I cataloged the house.
He knows doors. He knows weak spots.
The phone rings once. Twice.
My pride wins.
I hang up.
The screen lights back up. I stare at it, startled, then realize of course he’s the type to call back.
I answer before I can think better of it. “Hello?”
“You hung up,” he says. His voice is lower through the speaker, rougher, like gravel under tires.
“Service is spotty,” I lie.
“Right,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound arrogant. Just factual. “You fall?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “Why would you assume I fell?”
“Because I told you that board would go, and because you sound like you’re in pain.”
I look down at my bloody shin like it betrayed classified information. “It’s fine.”
There's a sound on his end. High, ragged. Something between a wheeze and a sob.
"Is that…an animal?" I ask.
"Just a stray," he says.
I picture him crouched on the side of a road somewhere, coaxing something injured and feral out from under a truck. It actually makes him seem nicer than I'd like.
“Anyway,” he says. I hear more noise in the background, muffled. “You want me to come replace that step or not?”
There it is. The choice, packaged neatly. Pride or function.
I inhale. The air tastes like dust, old wood, and whatever’s left of the last woman’s life.
I think of the rumors about what happened to her, how the realtor mentioned with her voice pitched just a shade too high: Terrible what happened.
A real tragedy. But that’s why the house is a steal, so I guess there’s a silver lining!
I think of starting over and how no one ever mentions how much heavy lifting that actually requires. But whatever, at least Charles will always know I did it for him, and after all, isn’t that what relationships are all about?
“You still there?” he says.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“You called. I assume you need my services.”
“Yes,” I say, hating the relief in my own voice. “The step. And the front door. And maybe…you can tell me how to get your client to stop staring at me through her curtains.”
There’s a small pause, like he’s smiling, except I don’t know him well enough to picture that yet.
“Now?”
“Well, not now, now. I mean, just whenever.”
“I’ll be there in an hour or so,” he says. “Don’t walk on it.”
“The porch or the ankle?”
“Both,” he says, and hangs up.
I stare at the phone like it might offer commentary. It doesn’t. It just reflects me back—tired, bruised, already folding.
So this is how it happens.
Not with a scream.
Not with a bang.
Just a call.
Just a step.
Just this once.