4. The Number I Didnt Save
four
The Number I Didn't Save
Nora
The longer the hours pass, the more my nervous system feels like a live wire throwing sparks into a dry room.
I scoop coffee grounds into the stained plastic basket of the Mr. Coffee machine, the dark, earthy scent doing nothing to clear the gray fog in my own head.
I am carrying too many metrics, and none seems less heavy than the other.
On one hand, there is the sheer, concussive shock of yesterday morning after realizing that the massive, silent stranger who dismantled my careful walls in a Galveston motel room is the exact same neighbor who owns the land I want badly.
On the other hand, my phone is sitting on the windowsill, its screen dark for the moment, but I can almost see the number with the Houston area code blinking repeatedly, reminding me that Stanley is still actively trying to get to me.
Then there is my father, shrinking into his mattress down the hall, his left side dark and useless. And finally, anchoring the entire mess is the fact that Clara's grave rests on land owned by a man who looked me in the eye and told me to get the fuck off his property.
The coffee machine begins to hiss, letting out a low, wet rumble. I press my palms against the edge of the counter, my head dropping between my shoulders.
How did I let things get this sloppy? For so long, I kept the margins tight and didn't make mistakes. I didn't let people in. And then, in one night of pure, blind panic caused by a run-in with Stanley at a Houston mixer, I threw out the blueprints.
I went to a bar in Galveston, picked a man who looked like an eviction notice with broad shoulders, and let him remind me that I was still made of skin and blood. And now that man holds the deed to my daughter's resting place.
I watch the dark liquid drip into the glass carafe, my mind sliding back over the fence line against my will. It's bad enough that I spent the night with him, and my body still remembers the exact pressure and roughness of his palms.
But the real problem is that I am completely at a loss for how to handle him. As an architect, I deal with stubborn city planners, corrupt contractors, and impossible soil types. You find the pressure point. You find the numbers that make them bend.
But Jackson Rowe didn't look like a man who had a number. He looked like a man who would burn his own house down just to keep the ash from belonging to someone else.
"Nora?"
The voice is small, muffled by the heavy drywall of the hallway, and it breaks my loop. I blink, the yellow kitchen coming back into focus.
"I'm here, Daddy," I call out.
I pour the hot coffee into a heavy ceramic mug, not bothering with sugar or milk, and walk down the narrow hallway. The floorboards groan beneath my bare feet, a slight five-degree list toward the eastern foundation that I can feel in the soles of my shoes every single day.
My father's right hand hooked like a talon into the faded cotton quilt. The blinds are half-drawn, casting long, gray bars across his chest. He looks smaller today, as if the stroke is slowly evaporating the meat from his bones, leaving nothing but the brittle scaffolding underneath.
"You… you went over there," he says, his tongue thick, the left corner of his mouth dropping as he tries to form the consonants. "To the Rowe place."
I sit on the edge of his mattress, setting the coffee mug on the small nightstand next to his plastic pill bottles. "I did. I met with him yesterday morning."
He studies my face, his good eye widening slightly, searching for the structural damage. "What did he… what did he say, Nora?"
I reach out, taking his right hand between both of mine.
"I explained the situation, Daddy. I offered to buy him out. I told him we'd cover the back rent and give him significantly over market value for the fifteen acres."
My father lets out a long, deflated sigh, his head sinking deeper into the pillowcase. His hand goes limp in my grip. "From the look on your face, I guess he refused."
"He did," I say softly, keeping my voice level. "He was very clear about it."
"That's exactly what I feared," my father whispers, his gaze drifting up to the water-stained ceiling tiles.
"Daddy." I squeeze his hand gently.
"That's why I never approached him all these years. I always wanted to go to him. But I was terrified, Nora. I didn't know how to handle it if he said no. If he knows the lease is dead, he has the legal right to fence it off. He has the right to make us move her."
"He's not moving anyone, Daddy," I say, my voice hardening by a fraction of an inch. "I told you, I'm handling this."
"But…"
I cut in easily. "You don't need to sweat over it. I'm an architect; I rewrite property lines for a living. This is just a negotiation that started on the wrong foot."
"I'm sorry, Nora," he croaks, a single tear leaking from his good eye and tracking down into the deep, gray stubble of his cheek.
"There's nothing to be sorry about, Daddy."
"I handled it poorly. I was just… I was so goddamn scared."
"Hey," I lean down, pressing my forehead against his right shoulder, the scent of lavender and old wool filling my senses. "Stop that. You did what you had to do to keep Clara safe. Now it's my turn. You get some sleep while I work on the site plans for the downstairs bathroom. Okay?"
He nods and immediately closes his eyes, his chest rising and falling in a slow, ragged rhythm that tells me the conversation has drained whatever residual battery he had left. He waves his right hand weakly, a silent dismissal, and lets his head fall to the side.
I stand up, picking up the untouched mug of coffee, and walk out of the room, closing the door gently.
I need space to put things into perspective. I need cold air and wide horizons where the lines are straight.
I grab my leather drafting tube, my heavy aluminum T-square, and my portable wooden stool from the coat closet, and I head out the back door. The screen door slams shut behind me with a loud, metallic thwack that echoes across the empty marsh.
The Beckett property ends in a small, splintering wooden dock that juts out forty feet into the brackish water of the tidal creek. The wood is greyed from decades of salt spray and sun, the planks warped and rough.
It's my favorite place to work when a project gets stuck in my head. Out here, there are no walls to enclose the anxiety.
I set up my stool at the very end of the dock, where the water laps against the green slime of the pilings. I unroll the heavy, translucent vellum sheet of the bathroom renovation floor plans, pinning the corners down with four heavy lead weights I keep in my kit.
The wind is coming off the Gulf, cool and wet, making the edges of the paper flutter like small wings. I pick up my 0.5mm mechanical pencil. I align the T-square against the edge of the board. I tell myself to draw.
But the graphite stays stationary against the vellum.
My mother used to say every house needed one beautiful thing that served no purpose.
Not practical. Not load-bearing. Not efficient.
Just beautiful.
A stained-glass window. A carved banister. Bluebonnets planted where nobody expected them to grow. Something that reminded people they weren't machines.
I haven't built anything like that in years.
I'm not sure when I stopped.
Maybe around the same time I stopped believing beautiful things stayed.
I close my eyes.
I remember tracing the tiny dimple in Clara's chin with my fingertip.
I remember the impossible softness of her red hair.
I haven't trusted beautiful things since.
Instead of tracking the plumbing redirect for the zero-threshold shower, my mind betrays me again, going back to the bar and the broody, silent man who sat three stools down from me, smelling of burnt iron and rain.
Despite the tense, ugly interaction we had in his salvage yard yesterday morning, I cannot deny the absolute, terrifying pull I feel toward him. I had told myself that day that it was just the alcohol, that the three shots of whiskey had blurred my judgment and magnified his presence.
But meeting him again with a clear head? Sane, sober, and standing in the blinding Texas sun?
The sizzling heat between us was stronger than I remembered, and he looked even better than what I had in memory. The dim, amber light of that Galveston tavern hadn't done him an ounce of justice.
He is six feet two of pure, unadulterated working muscle. His dark blond hair was slightly overgrown, the ends curling against the collar of his faded flannel shirt like he couldn't give a shit about a mirror.
His jaw carried two days of dark, rough stubble that I know, goddamn it, I know, feels like wire against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
And bright, pale blue eyes, like the surface of a frozen lake; they see every single thing in a single glance.
I notice the full sleeves of tattoos on both arms and how much they suit him.
I remember the river tattoo running the length of his left forearm, from his wrist all the way to the crook of his elbow, the black water lines moving with the play of his tendons when he gripped my hand.
A sudden, sharp wave of heat blooms deep in my belly, making my throat dry.
My skin turns hot under my linen shirt, my nipples hardening against my bra as my mind flashes to the memory of those scarred hands locking onto my hips, lifting me against the motel mattress while his mouth buried itself in the crook of my neck.
My breath catches, my chest rising fast as a sudden hum of need vibrates through my entire body.
I slam the pencil down against the wooden plank.
"Stop it," I whisper to the empty marsh, my voice trembling. "Just goddamn stop it."
I pick the pencil back up, my fingers tight, and force myself to draw the partition wall for the plumbing stack.
I work for ten minutes in a silent, furious trance, desperate to drown the memory of him in technical precision. But when I step back to look at the section layout, my heart drops as I realize I've drawn the entire wall configuration three inches off-scale.