Chapter 8 MJ #2
“Oh, it is. But spring is my favorite time of year,” she said.
“There’s always this one day in late May when I step outside and the world takes my breath away.
The peaks of the mountains have snow, but everything is turning green and coming to life.
I want to spin around and do what my late husband called my ‘full Julie Andrews’ singing, ‘The hills are alive!’” She didn’t sing, but he threw his head back with a hearty, appreciative laugh.
“Tell me about George,” he said, his voice low and interested. “He must have been wonderful.”
She felt warmth in her cheeks, and not because she’d nursed a second glass of wine. Because he seemed like he cared, and that touched her deeply.
“He was wonderful. We were married almost thirty-eight years. We were so happy, but…” She heard her voice thinning despite her best efforts.
“He had a stroke five years ago. At the dinner table, of all places. We thought—we thought we’d caught it in time.
He went to the hospital, they did all the things, stabilized him, gave me hope.
Overnight, he had another one, and—” She swallowed.
It had been a long time since she’d tried to put the awful simplicity of it into a sentence. “He never woke up. He was fifty-seven.”
“Oh, MJ. I’m so sorry.” There was no pity in his face, just genuine, heartfelt sympathy.
“Thank you.” She reached for her napkin for the tears she certainly hadn’t expected to shed tonight. “I don’t usually—” She gestured to the air. “Sorry.”
“For loving your late husband?” He set his hand on the table between them, palm up, silently offering support. The simple gesture made her eyes sting again. “Never apologize for that.”
She put her fingers on his in gratitude for the sympathy.
“And something tells me you haven’t been out much in these past five years.”
She just smiled. “Do I look like the ‘go out on the town’ type to you?”
“You look like the most trustworthy, nurturing, kindest, and sweetest lady I’ve ever met.”
The compliment took her breath away, so overwhelming, she eased her hand away. “And what about you?”
He lifted his brows in question.
“Have you been married or…”
He nodded. “Twice, actually. Once, when I was quite young, and it didn’t last. No kids, no hard feelings, just a mistake.
I waited a long time to try again, and did when I was just past forty.
I married a woman named Diana who had three daughters and so many opinions, I didn’t know where to go to be safe.
” He chuckled. “We stayed married for fifteen years, then about ten years ago, we split up. Again, not acrimonious, but now…” He looked uncomfortable for a moment, and MJ leaned closer, instinctively knowing this was the kind of insight and information she needed.
“But now?” she urged when he simply didn’t finish.
“Now, I’m here, in Utah, at this spectacular restaurant with a charming lady. Would you like dessert?”
And…just like that, he changed the subject. Why?
“Gracie brought home some cream puffs,” she said.
He lifted a brow. “Yes, please. Let’s go.”
And that, she knew, was the end of that moment of revelation.
For whatever reason, Matt Walker, who’d engraved his Rolex with the first name Graham, who paid in cash for everything—including this dinner, she noticed, as he slyly slipped a few hundred-dollar bills into the bill folder—was just not forthcoming about his past.
Stepping into a kitchen lit only by the light under the stove and the Christmas trees outside the window, MJ slowed and felt her whole body tense. She heard it before she saw it—a slow, treacherous plink of water falling from the ceiling to the floor.
A leak.
“Oh, no,” she murmured.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked, his ears probably not that trained to a problem at the lodge.
“Listen.” She tapped the pendant lights over her work island, eyes up on the ceiling to search for the source of the sound.
“Eesh. I know that sound,” he said. “It’s…there.” He pointed to the mudroom, a drip from the seam in the ceiling falling onto the tile floor.
She grunted in frustration, already moving for towels. “You must think this place is on the verge of extinction. Which wouldn’t be wrong.”
“What’s above this?” he asked.
“Roof. And there’s an ice dam somewhere.”
“Not something we have in Florida,” he said.
“The snow slides and then refreezes, and the water has to find a way out,” she explained, stress squeezing at her. “We’ve patched and repatched and we cannot afford a new roof right now and—”
“Okay.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Breathe. Do you have a ladder? A snow rake? Anything like roof cement?”
“No cement, but the rest is in the stable,” she said, turning one way, then the other. “I need more towels. I should change. I need—”
“You need to stay right here and let me go up there and handle it. Where in the stable?”
“You can’t—”
He put a finger on her lips. “I can. In fact, that is my middle name. Is the stable locked?”
“No. The roof rake is bright orange and the ladder is the heavy one with the duct tape.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. But I want to. Let me figure it out and you make tea and dessert. We haven’t finished our lovely date.”
“It wasn’t…”
A flash in his eyes told her that if she finished that sentence, she would hurt this incredibly kind man and she didn’t want to. “It wasn’t…enough,” she agreed. “You’re right. I’ll make tea and you—”
“Will stop the leak. Gimme some time. Oh, I have an idea. Can you fill a sock with some calcium chloride?”
She drew back. Calcium chloride she knew—every homeowner in the mountains used it to melt ice. But… “A sock?”
He nodded. “A sock. The longest one you have.”
After rummaging around a bit, she filled an old cotton ski sock with the pellets they used for the steps and knotted it, wondering what trick he knew for this.
A moment later, the mudroom door opened and Matt appeared, having changed into jeans, work boots, and a puffer jacket. Behind him, in the shadows, she saw the ladder leaning against the house and the roof rake on the ground.
“Sock?”
She reached out, the stuffed sock dangling from her hand. “Did you find the leak?”
“I found the ice lip that’s causing it. If I can tuck this sock perpendicular to the gutter, it’ll melt the path and stop the leak. For now, anyway.”
“Wait, there, Florida man. How do you know this?”
“I told you—my uncle lived in upstate New York and I spent holidays with him in a really old house. This isn’t an uncommon problem.”
She nodded, accepting the explanation, then looking at the ladder. “Matt, it’s slick up there.”
“I’ve been on a few roofs,” he told her.
“Not icy ones that are older than time.”
He just smiled. “Trust me.”
“I seem to be doing that an awful lot tonight,” she breathed, but she followed him outside, the cold diving down the collar of her coat.
With the porch light splayed over the eaves, she could see it—the glistening lip of ice that had formed above the gutter, snow piled behind it with nowhere to go but into…whatever breach was up there.
He set the ladder and tested it, then tested it again. Then he climbed just high enough to lean the roof rake onto the snow, struggling a bit.
“Something is…” He stretched over the snow, his head disappearing from her view. “What the heck?”
MJ’s heart dropped. “What is it?”
“Just a popped nail.”
“Oh, is that all?”
He didn’t answer, but banged at something, and then began dragging careful loads of snow, creating a narrow trench along the eave.
“Sock,” he called down, and she placed it in his free hand when he reached. He laid the sock across the ice and climbed a little higher, fearless, pressing it into place.
When he finished, he climbed down with easy grace, stepping way back and looking up at the roof with a critical eye, silent and thinking.
“Were you able to fix it?” she asked, wondering why he was so quiet.
“The leak, yes, but…” He screwed up his face and looked from one side of the roof to the other. “Maybe I’m imagining it, but does it look like that side is sagging a bit?”
She followed his gaze over the dining area and mudroom. “Maybe, but I think it’s been that way forever. It’s an old building.”
“Yeah, and that’s normal, but sometimes a popped nail means a support beam is cracked,” he said. “I’m no roofer, but I’d get that checked ASAP.”
She stifled a sigh. Yet another expense. “I will,” she said. “And the leak?”
“If we’re lucky, it’ll chew itself a path and let the water out the gutter right there.”
“What if we’re not lucky?” she asked, hugging herself against the wind.
“Don’t worry, Mary Jane. If there’s one thing I am, it’s lucky.” He smiled at her, the porch light putting a gold rim on him. “Go inside. You’re shivering.”
She obeyed, both of them stepping over the towels on the floor.
“Let’s give it an hour and then I can go back up to check on progress. I don’t want to invite new disasters.”
“There’s always one right around the corner,” she said, fighting absurd tears as she started the motions of making a nice cup of hot tea for both of them.
“Is it that bad?” he asked, perching on a bar stool to watch her.
“It’s worse,” she said, the adrenaline dumping after the spike caused by finding yet another repair. “The estimate for a new roof—which we haven’t had since my mother paid for the last one—is…” She thought of the number. “Let’s just say it might as well be a trillion dollars. We don’t have it.”
“Oh. I knew things were tight, but when something like this hits…it’s demoralizing.”
“The roof isn’t even the first thing we need,” she continued, her head buzzing. Maybe that wasn’t adrenaline. Maybe that was the second glass of wine or the man who’d just swooped in like Mighty Mouse and saved the day.
Maybe she was tired of dancing around an interrogation—which she was terrible at—and just wanted a shoulder to cry on. And the shoulders on the man who was seated at her kitchen island right now were strong and sturdy and available.