Chapter 13
Seth
The storm had come and gone, but the town was still broken.
Somewhere down on Main Street, a generator coughed to life; further off, a nail gun popped in tired, irregular bursts.
I’d been home for exactly twenty-two minutes and finished three phone calls when I set the clipboard down, grabbed my toolbox, and told myself I was only crossing the lawn to check the locks on the guesthouse.
Not to see if Madison needed anything.
And definitely not because a four-year-old had called me Uncle Seth and knocked something loose inside my ribs.
The grass was still damp, spring-soft under my boots.
The porch light on the guesthouse threw a warm triangle over the steps.
Through the front window, I saw her, knees tucked up, hair piled on her head with a pencil speared through it, the picture of exhaustion wearing a legging and baggy t-shirt. I knocked on the door and waited.
She jumped a little, then smoothed her expression into something neutral before opening the door. “It’s late.”
“Locks,” I said, hefting the toolbox. “Storm rattles things loose.”
She frowned at the box. “You’re an architect who can just hire someone to do it.”
“I also have hands.” I brushed past her. The citrus-clean smell of the place had already faded under the gentler scents of laundry soap and warm skin. Lived-in. I hadn’t realized how sterile the guesthouse felt until it didn’t.
I crouched at the slider first. The deadbolt stuck, it always did after long rains.
I took the lock off the door, repositioned it, and screwed it back in place.
It was a simple fix. So was the loose hinge on the hallway closet and the tacky latch on the back bedroom window.
Small things that keep a place from feeling safe. Small things I could fix.
She hovered nearby with her arms folded, pretending not to watch, except she was, the way people watch thunderstorms, half in awe, half daring them to come closer. “We would’ve managed until morning.”
“Maybe,” I said, tightening the last screw. “But now you don’t have to.”
A beat of silence. She leaned a hip into the counter. “Are you always this helpful?”
“No.”
That earned me the ghost of a smile. It slipped away quickly, like she didn’t trust it.
When I was done with the easy fixes, I set the toolbox on the island and slid the front window open and shut, testing the track. “You should keep this one latched. It’s a weak point.”
Madison’s chin lifted. “Nobody’s breaking into your guesthouse.”
“Bad guys don’t care about property lines.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. For a second, the air between us felt lighter. Then she remembered who she was talking to and drew the armor back over her shoulders.
I picked up the toolbox. “Anything else?”
She hesitated. The word no hovered on her tongue, stubborn as a weed. Then, “The kitchen light flickers.”
“Let me see.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the island fixture.
It was one of those glass pendants that designers loved and electricians cursed.
I killed the switch, climbed onto a stool, and worked by the dim glow from the living room lamp.
She steadied the stool with two fingers, like she didn’t want to admit she was helping.
“Olive settled?” I asked, voice low.
“She’s out.” A small, proud exhale. “She likes the little room in the back.”
“Good.” I tightened the collar ring, feeling the fixture sit properly. “She likes her scrambled eggs, too.”
Madison’s mouth twitched again. “Don’t get cocky. It’s not a personality trait.”
“Works for me.” I tested the switch. The bulb held steady. “Fixed.”
She squinted up at the light as if it might defy me out of spite. It didn’t. Satisfied, she dropped her gaze and caught me watching her.
There was that half-second of stillness, the charged kind you get just before a summer storm breaks. I looked away first.
“Your house,” I said, back in safe territory.
“We’ll tarp it tomorrow at first light. I’ve got a crew free by noon.
We’ll frame a temporary wall and take pictures of all the water damaged items. The insurance company will drag their feet, but I’ll write the report so even a newbie could understand it. ”
Her throat worked. “Thank you.”
Two words, simple as a hinge, and somehow, they carried the heft of everything she didn’t want to say. I nodded once, like it was nothing.
“It’s not charity,” I added, because I knew where her mind went. “It’s a fix. The town needs you on your feet. Olive needs the roof not to drip.”
“And what do you need?” she asked, soft, almost curious.
I didn’t have a clean answer. I defaulted to the truth. “A to-do list with an end.”
She huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Good luck.”
I packed up. I should’ve left. Instead, my feet stayed where they were while my mouth betrayed me. “About earlier,” I said. “At the house. The ‘Uncle’ thing.”
Her shoulders bristled immediately. “I didn’t tell her to call you that. She just did. ”
“I know.” I held up a hand. “It’s fine.” The word was too small. It was more than fine. It was… disarming. A label I hadn’t earned and didn’t know how to wear. “I won’t make it complicated.”
Madison searched my face like she was looking for the catch. “It’s already complicated.”
“Then I’ll keep it simple.” I tipped my chin toward the hallway. “Tonight, you sleep. Tomorrow, I'll start on your house.”
“And the next day?”
“Then we fight about cereal brands, I guess.”
There it was, the smile, quick and bright, before she caught herself. “We don’t eat your cardboard flakes, Seth.”
“They’re fiber.”
“They taste like punishment,” she groaned.
“Punishment is letting a four-year-old choose dinner.”
“You’re not wrong.”
The quiet stretched again, but it felt different now, less like a dare, more like a truce.
From the back room, Olive’s small voice drifted out, dreamy and thick with sleep. “Mommy?”
Madison was gone before I answered. I heard the soft murmur of her voice, the creak of the bed, Olive’s content sigh.
I stayed where I was, palms braced on the island, staring at the ring a coffee mug had left on the quartz.
I’d never noticed it before. I’d never used this space enough to leave marks.
She came back a minute later, waves slipping around her face. “Nightmare,” she said softly. “She’s okay.”
“Good.”
Madison nodded toward the door. “You should… ”
“Go,” I finished for her. “Yeah.”
I picked up the toolbox and crossed the little living room.
My reflection ghosted briefly in the dark window, a big guy with square shoulders and a jaw that always looked like it was grinding through a problem.
Past that, my own house, porch light off, black windows watching.
The place looked like a photograph of itself.
The only light on the property glowed behind me, in a guesthouse that finally felt like it had a purpose other than impressing clients.
My hand hit the doorknob. I paused. “Madison.”
She lifted her eyes.
“If you think of something you need, put a list on the counter. I’m up before five.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” she said dryly.
“Don’t.” I surprised us both. “You don’t have to do this part alone.”
She looked at me for a long beat. Whatever answer she had, she kept it close. “Goodnight, Seth.”
“Night.”
Outside, the air had cooled, the kind of clean, washed feeling towns get after everything has been beaten down and rinsed. I crossed the lawn back to my house, toolbox heavy in my hand, a different kind of weight in my chest.
Inside, I dropped the box by the door, ignored the stack of reports on the dining table, and went straight to the back window. The guesthouse lamp still glowed. A small figure, Madison, moved past, and flicked it off. Darkness took over, and with it, the tightness in my jaw eased.
I’d never planned on belonging to anything again. Not the town, not a family, not the kind of life with nightlights glowing across the grass between two houses. I built things that stood straight, that made sense on paper. People didn’t. Feelings didn’t.
But the picture in my head, the one I never would’ve admitted to, had already shifted: a blue bungalow, dry and solid, a little girl in too-big rain boots, a woman at my counter arguing about cereal and leaving ring marks on the quartz because she forgot to use a coaster.
Complicated, she’d said.
Yeah. It was.
I set the alarm, turned out my lights, and laid awake longer than I should have, cataloging to-dos until the list blurred into something warm and unhelpful. When sleep finally took me, it came with the sound of rain I’d imagined and a small voice calling me by a name I hadn’t known I wanted.