Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Nelly couldn’t believe that she had actually done it. She’d talked to the other Secret Saint, and they had decided to work together! She was pretty much walking on air the entire next day. Some of her kids noticed and commented that she seemed happier than usual.
She even let the kids stay out an extra ten minutes at recess.
She had walked around the tree on her morning walk, although she hadn’t stopped to check it on the way past to begin with.
Rather, she kept a lookout for anyone who looked like they might be about the same height and build as the man she had talked to last night.
She believed him and trusted him, but…trust and verify? Something like that.
Regardless, she hadn’t seen anything, so on her way back, she’d gone to the tree and looked in.
There was nothing there, and she couldn’t stop the little stab of disappointment.
Not that she wanted there to be. She didn’t want any changes at all to the plans that they’d already made.
And she didn’t have anything to leave, so she hardly expected anything from him.
She walked away from the tree and continued on her walk.
She’d swing by again in the afternoon, and maybe she’d even check as she walked by the first time.
She thought the notes in the tree and meeting at midnight were really great ideas and was looking forward to working with him again.
Thankfully, her grandmother had another good evening, and they had some wonderful conversation as they worked together to make supper.
She had read online—and she had talked to the doctor in town, Dr. Terry, who had agreed—that when an older person was fighting off a cold or virus, sometimes they got a little confused.
She didn’t remember her gram having any kind of symptoms of a cold or anything, but maybe she had been on the verge of getting one.
Whatever it was, she had been lucid for a really long time—for a lot of days in a row—and Nelly couldn’t stop her feeling of anticipation that perhaps her gram wasn’t going to be suffering from dementia after all.
She knew she was probably wishing on rainbows and unicorns, but she couldn’t help grasping at every positive straw she possibly could.
She took a small nap in the evening after supper but was up by 11:30, dressed and ready to slip out of the house.
She hadn’t told her gram that she was going anywhere and hoped that her gram would sleep soundly all night.
She felt like it was better for her to do as little talking about the Secret Saint as possible, even though her grandma seemed like she was doing well. Now that there was someone else involved, she had extra incentive to try to keep everything under wraps.
After considering that, she stayed with her decision to not tell her grandma about her partner in that endeavor. At least, if her gram accidentally told someone about her, she wouldn’t be destroying his cover as well.
As she made her way to the Kowalski house, she tried to pick his figure out in the shadows.
But she could not. However, she saw a truck parked in the alley behind the house, and she assumed that the supplies on the back were the ones that he was going to use to replace the shutters and possibly some of the gutters.
“Hey there,” a voice said, low and soft.
She had walked right past him and hadn’t seen him. “I’m sorry. I was looking at your truck. Looks like you have supplies.”
“I sure do. I hoped maybe you would give me a hand carrying them to the house as I need them. Normally, I would have parked right where I was working and wouldn’t worry too much about banging things around, but since we need to be quiet…”
“Of course. I’ll help.” She was a little worried that he was going to be doing all the work and she would just be standing around twiddling her thumbs. There wasn’t much fun in that.
Except, he wouldn’t know that tonight the Kowalskis weren’t going to be home if it hadn’t been for her, so she was contributing something.
They went to the truck together, and he told her what he was going to need first. He grabbed one end, she grabbed the other, and they carefully carried it around the house without making any noise at all.
The neighbors’ houses weren’t particularly close, but they were close enough that if they started making too much noise, they had a good chance of waking someone up.
“I actually put a cloth over my hammer, because while this shouldn’t take too much hammering, it’ll take enough, and that should muffle the sound,” her partner said as they set the first piece down.
“That was really smart,” she said, knowing that she wouldn’t have thought of that, but she wasn’t exactly a handyman either.
They worked in silence for a little bit with their natural division of labor and efficient coordination seeming to come without them thinking about it at all.
“I never thought I would be doing this at any point in my life,” she said at one point.
He was working on straightening up one of the shutters, and she was standing guard, to make sure that she didn’t see anyone coming.
He grunted. “Me either. My siblings would never believe that I’m here right now doing this.”
He had siblings. She tucked that information away without meaning to.
“That’s not your reputation?”
“Not in my family. Older siblings have a tendency to look down on the younger ones and think they’re immature, no matter how old you get, you know?”
“I guess I don’t really know. I’m an only child.” Her grandma had raised her for most of her life. Her mom had been in and out, rather unsteady, and her dad had been nonexistent.
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s too bad.”
“Actually, I enjoyed it.” She looked at his shoulder. “I guess you don’t know what you’re missing when you don’t have siblings. And actually, the idea is a little…not fun. After all, you’d have to share everything for one thing.”
“Yeah, but you always have a playmate for anything.”
“Did your siblings always want to play when you did?” she asked, knowing that it was true in the classroom—even best friends didn’t get along all the time.
“No. Good point.” He sighed. “I just can’t imagine not having my siblings. But you’re right, you wouldn’t have to share, and sometimes you didn’t have playmates, even if you did have siblings, and they did take some of your parents’ attention away.”
“Yeah. There’s that. I got full attention from my grandma, and I really benefited from that, I think.
I was always a little bit more mature than other kids my age, I think.
” Except for her competition with Roland, but she didn’t want thoughts of Roland to ruin her time with her Secret Saint partner, so she shoved that aside.
Everyone was entitled to a little bit of immaturity, right?
“I was probably less mature than other kids my age. Although, I don’t know. There definitely were lessons that I learned in a big family that other kids didn’t learn, so it probably balanced itself out.”
If those were lessons in how to be a handyman, he certainly had learned them well. He had the shutters fixed and straightened and reattached, and the gutters all fixed, along with replacing one section that had rotted out at the bottom.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while. I’m so glad that you knew that they wouldn’t be home today. It irritated me every time I saw it. Not because it was an eyesore, but because I knew I could fix it, I just didn’t want to do it as myself, you know?”
“Being a Secret Saint kind of spoils you. You…enjoy doing kind things and just clutching the knowledge close to your chest without sharing it with anyone. At least I do.”
“I agree with you completely. I wouldn’t want to do anything with my name attached to it, although…somehow you get suckered into doing different things for the community anyway.”
She laughed, thinking about how she got suckered into volunteering to head the church play. That wasn’t so bad, but doing it with Roland… She didn’t even want to think about it.
“I know what you mean. Although, I suppose it’s probably good to do things where people can watch you too, because kids need role models, you know?”
“That’s true. Your nieces and nephews and children if you have any.”
She laughed. “I’m not married. And I don’t have any children.
” Unless one counted the kids she had in the classroom, which she almost said, and then she clamped her mouth closed.
She didn’t want him to figure out who she was, and if she said she had kids in the classroom, that would narrow it down to the teachers at the school.
It would be pretty easy to figure out at that point, because there weren’t that many teachers who weren’t married and didn’t have any children.
That was a close one. Although, the more time she spent with him, the less concerned she was about him knowing her identity. She…trusted him.
“All right, I think that’s pretty much it,” her partner said just a half an hour later.
She was a little disappointed that their time had come to an end, although she was getting tired again.
“I have a few ideas of what our next project could be.” He rattled off a few people who they could help. “Let’s think about it and meet tomorrow night at midnight to talk about it. Okay?”
She nodded, agreeing with him about several that he mentioned and then being surprised at another one. She’d have to check that one out. “That sounds good to me. I’ll see you tomorrow night at midnight.”
He nodded. “And if I hear anything about the Kowalskis’ reaction, I’ll be sure to let you know then.”
Wow. She wasn’t expecting that. “Thanks. It’s always so much fun to hear that it was really a blessing.
If I hear anything, I’ll be sure to let you know too.
” Since tomorrow, or actually today, was Saturday, she wouldn’t have as many contacts as she usually did at school, but she would still be taking her walk and possibly talking to people.
She’d definitely keep an ear out, because it wasn’t just her that was benefiting anymore.
It was actually even more fun to work with someone and share the fun and contentment and satisfaction of making people smile with them.
To her surprise, she was sad as they walked away from each other.