Chapter 2
Dave McGuire let himself into the old hardware building before sunrise, while the rest of Sapphire Bay was still asleep.
He found the switch by the door and turned on the lights. Two of the long fluorescents flickered and caught; a third stayed dark. The room was bare and yellow around him. Plaster dust and mouse droppings littered the floor, and the air smelled of a place that hadn’t been warm in a long time.
It was barely past six. Hank and the others wouldn’t arrive for another hour, and that hour was the reason he’d come early. A man couldn’t think with a crew around him, and Dave liked to think before he picked up a single tool.
He walked the floor slowly, looking past the mess to what the building would become.
He’d learned a long time ago that old buildings and people had more in common than most folks realized.
Neither appreciated being judged by the cracks everyone could see.
Sometimes all they needed was someone patient enough to look a little deeper.
And this building had a lot of cracks. Somebody had run a hardware store here for forty years and then walked away.
Water had damaged the north wall, twisting the baseboards and bowing the plaster.
The ceiling sagged where a pipe had burst, several tiles were missing, and it looked as though half the birds in town had nested in the rafters.
None of it surprised him. He’d read the inspection report twice, and the building was telling him the same story now. The damage was bad, but underneath, the framing was solid.
Dave placed his hand flat against the brick of the east wall and felt how thick and square it was.
Old masons had built this to last, and it had.
The floor joists were full-sized lumber, the real thing, nothing you could buy now.
Whoever had let the roof go had been careless, not unkind.
The building had simply been waiting for somebody to come back and want it.
Natalie had told him that an arts center manager was starting work soon. Dave hoped whoever took the job wouldn’t be the kind to complain about the dust and noise of a remodel. On a building like this, he’d never be able to make them happy.
Dave looked around the room and frowned. He should have turned down this job.
Most of his crew were out at Finley Point. The resort was a big contract and it would keep him busy for the next twelve months. By rights, he should have handed Natalie a list of people who could have helped her and gone home.
He hadn’t, though. Natalie had stood in this room and told him what they wanted it to be.
There’d be art and craft classes, a gallery, and maybe even a café.
It would be open seven days a week for everyone, whether they were children, retirees, stay-at-home parents, or widowers.
Before good sense could stop him, Dave had said yes.
The arts center mattered, not for the income it gave him and his crew, but for what it would mean for the town. Projects came and went. Families moved away and stores changed hands. But every now and then a building became part of people’s lives.
He moved toward the back of the building, where Natalie wanted the kitchen and two workshop areas. For a moment he could see the rooms finished. They’d be warm and full of the ordinary noise of people who’d come here for a reason.
He could see it the way Carol used to make him see things.
The thought slipped into his head unannounced, the way it always did.
Nine years, and it still caught him off guard.
His wife would have loved a project like this.
She’d have walked the empty floor beside him and transformed the interior before he’d finished checking the joists.
She would have been right about the colors and wrong about the budget, but he’d have built it the way she wanted anyway.
Carol had meant the world to him, and he still missed her every single day.
His phone buzzed against his hip. It was a text from his son, Mark: Still on for Sunday?
He smiled at the screen and typed back, Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll bring the steaks.
The reply came almost at once—a thumbs-up, then: Good. It’s been too long, Dad.
Dave knew it had been. Mark had taken a promotion in Polson a year ago.
Between the long hours Mark’s new job demanded and the resort eating up most of Dave’s daylight, the two of them never seemed to have a weekend at the same time.
A month would pass, then two. Dave would tell himself he’d visit Mark once things settled down. They never did.
He put the phone away and walked through to the storage area.
The front door banged open and Hank’s voice rolled in ahead of him. “I’m telling you, Rosa nearly had a heart attack over the price of coffee at the gas station. Four dollars. For one cup. You’d think they were grinding it with gold.”
Dave turned around and met Hank and his crew in the main events area. “Morning everyone,” Dave said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been here since dawn.” Hank placed a box of tools on the floor. “One of these days you’ll learn to sleep in like a normal person.”
Dave just smiled. His quiet hour was over, and a part of him was glad of the company.
Tonight he’d go home to the white weatherboard house Carol had chosen the moment she’d seen it. He’d make himself something for dinner, watch his favorite TV shows, and probably read for an hour before bed.
It wasn’t a bad life. It was just quieter than it used to be.
But on Sunday, he’d drive to Polson to see his son. And that was something worth looking forward to.