Chapter 4 #2
Mags wraps up the formal agenda at seven-fifteen and then does the thing she does where she keeps talking after the meeting is technically over and everyone stays anyway, because Mags has never in her life delivered her most important information during the meeting.
She catches me in the parking lot afterward.
"Walk with me," she says.
This is not a request. I fall into step beside her. She has the brisk, purposeful stride of someone thirty years younger and the expression of someone organizing her thoughts before she deploys them.
"Delaney's coming," she says.
"I heard."
"She's going to need things. The cottage needs work, more than just the roof. Elise slowed down in the last couple of years and things got deferred." She pauses. "I'm not asking you to do anything you're not already being paid to do."
"I know you're not."
"But I want someone I trust looking at that property.
Elise trusted me for forty years of her life, and I intend to take care of what she left behind.
" She stops walking and looks at me with the specific Mags look that has ended many an argument.
"She's a good person. The granddaughter. She came here to the funeral and took care of everyone else the whole day, and nobody thought of taking care of her, and I noticed that. I’ve checked up on her as often as I could since then.
I think about the church in April. The organized reception. The woman with the composed expression, who'd apparently spent the day managing everyone else's grief. The way I'd noticed her and then lost her in the crowd.
"She's going through something significant," Mags says, "and she comes here. She could've gone anywhere — friends, family, wherever. She comes to Millhaven. To Elise's place." She starts walking again. "That means something. I just want to make sure she lands somewhere that's ready for her."
We reach her car. She unlocks it and turns around.
"You'll do the inspection," she says. "You'll be thorough. And you'll be kind." She points a finger at me, which is a Mags move that means this is non-negotiable. "She will not want to be handled. But she's going to need people in her corner."
"Mags," I say. “I’m a contractor. That's the job."
She gives me the look that says she knows exactly what the job is and that the job is not the point. "How's your dad?"
"Good week."
"Give him my love." She gets in the car. "Tuesday morning if she responds. I already told her ten o'clock at the cottage.”
"You already—" I stop.
“You were being slow.” I wait for a response and quickly understand that I won’t be receiving one when she promptly turns towards her car and begins walking.
She pulls out of the parking lot. I stand there for a second in the dark still attempting to process the entire conversation.
Beck appears beside me. He has the expression of someone who heard the whole thing and is choosing, with visible effort, to say almost none of what he's thinking.
"She told a woman she hasn't met yet to come to her coffee shop," I say.
"That's Mags."
"She scheduled my inspection around a coffee she arranged without asking anyone."
"Still Mags."
I look at the empty parking lot exit. "She's going through something," I say. More to myself than Beck. "Coming to a town she barely knows, to an empty cottage, by herself."
"Yeah," Beck says.
I think about what Mags said. She could've gone anywhere. She comes here. "That takes a certain kind of person."
Beck is quiet for a moment. "Cole says she's the one who organized everything for Elise's funeral. Reception, flowers, the whole thing."
"I know."
"While she was grieving."
"I know."
Beck picks up his level from where he'd set it on the trunk of my truck and hands it over. "So, you'll do the inspection."
"Obviously, I'll do the inspection."
"And you'll be?—"
"Beck."
"Just checking." He raises both hands. "I'll see you Friday."
I drive home down Elm Lane because it's between the community center and my house and because that's the route I take.
The cottage at 14 Elm is dark. It's been dark since April, since Elise died and the property passed to the granddaughter who lives in Raleigh and has her own life and a husband and, presumably, a full set of reasons she hasn't been back.
Except she's coming back now.
I slow down, not quite to a stop. Old habit — I do this with houses I've worked on or am thinking about working on.
The cottage has a problem at the rear dormer I noticed in August when I was driving past, and the angle of the light was right.
The fascia on the north side needs attention.
The gutters are original, which means they're aluminum and they're tired.
None of that's urgent. The roof is the question.
I pull into my driveway four houses down and sit in the truck for a minute.
She will not want to be handled, Mags said.
I think about that. About the woman I saw at Elise's funeral who spent a whole day organized and present and composed, and what it costs to do that, and whether anyone handed her a plate of food and made her sit down.
I'd watched her from across the room twice without meaning to — once when she was directing the caterers, once when she stood alone for about forty-five seconds near the window before someone approached her and the composure went back up like a screen.
Forty-five seconds. Then she was back to managing.
Nobody had made her sit down. I'd thought distantly that someone should. And then the thought was gone, filed somewhere I hadn't opened since.
I think about the text she sent. It's been a complicated week. Written like someone who isn't in the habit of explaining herself, who chose the minimum necessary words.
I'm not going to make assumptions about her situation. It's not my information, and it's not my business, and she hasn't asked for anything except a roof inspection, which I'll do on Tuesday if she confirms.
But I think about what Mags said about Elise. She was good people.
And I think about the way some people come from certain places, not just addresses but the values of the person who held the place. The way you can sometimes recognize a person by who raised them.
I get out of the truck. The night is the particular quiet of October in Millhaven — cool, clear, the smell of leaves and the distant sound of someone's television two streets over. I stand in my driveway for a minute, looking at nothing in particular.
The cottage at the end of the block is dark.
She comes here, Mags said. That means something.
I'll go inside, write up the Galveston scope revision, and schedule the inspection for Tuesday at ten.