Chapter Two
Owen
You learned a lot about someone when their house was basically falling apart ever since they bought it.
The first thing that came to mind when I thought about Willa (‘Willow’ on my checks, but she’d introduced herself as Willa to me the first time) was that she was stubborn as hell.
Fine.
The first thing that came to mind was gorgeous. Because there was no way a man didn’t notice that right off the bat.
She was tall and a little willowy, with a sunny, delicate face, full lips, and gorgeous blue eyes. Her hair had changed on and off—sometimes a chestnut brown, sometimes a little more golden or blonde. No matter what shade, though, she was stunning.
But when it came to her house, yeah, she was stubborn. To her own detriment.
Anyone who paid what she must have paid for such a sprawling place shouldn’t be stuck repairing things left and right. But she refused to pack up, buy something else, and sell her money pit to some other sucker.
And, yeah, I easily learned that she had an eye for design and a liking for luxury but cozy fixes.
But I meant the smaller things too.
Like she liked her coffee (and all the various syrups that went with it), took out her ponytail or claw clips all over the house (even, occasionally, in the guest bathroom), liked soft singer-songwriter playlists, and never had spots on her mirrors.
More than that, though, you got to see the changes in their lives.
In Willa’s case, I noticed when there were suddenly two mugs in the sink, when there was a bottle of expensive whiskey next to her wine on the bar cart, then, of course, when those things were suddenly missing again.
I noticed bedroom nightstands covered in tissues.
Then a wastebasket with four pregnancy tests.
Prenatal vitamins on the counter next to her espresso machine.
Baby detergent in the laundry room.
Piles of tiny clothing.
Cribs, changing tables, and swings that needed to be put together.
Eventually, a rounded belly.
All the while, no extra toothbrush in the primary bathroom, no second mug, no men’s clothes in the house, no signs that there was anyone else in the picture but her.
And the baby that was coming.
It had been months since something in Willa’s house needed fixing.
But the call came at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning.
“I’m so sorry. I know it’s early. And it’s… it’s the weekend, right? I think so. I’m sorry, but—”
Willa sounded anxious, borderline panicked.
A baby was crying its lungs out in the background.
“What’s broken?” I asked, taking my coffee with me through my house toward my bedroom to get dressed.
“A pipe burst. I know that’s probably a job for a plumber, but you fixed my sink the last time, so I thought—”
“I can fix the pipe,” I assured her, my voice exaggeratedly calm to contrast her rising anxiety.
I marketed myself as a handyman, but I’d worked as a contractor for years and held certificates in just about everything from plumbing and electrical to HVAC.
I figured that if I was going to run my own business, it needed to be evergreen.
And people were always looking for a plumber, electrician, or HVAC guy they could trust. If they could have all that in one?
Great. If that guy could also come and fix a hole in a wall or remodel their bathroom? Even better.
“Oh, thank God. I’m sorry it’s the weekend—”
“Don’t worry about it. Is the water off?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. I’ll be over in half an hour.”
“Thank you,” she said, sounding as close to tears as her baby was.
I hung up, tossed on jeans and a henley, then grabbed an extra in case I got soaked, and jumped in my van to drive from my sleepy suburb to the ritzy gated community of mini-mansions, privacy greenery, and the kind of spotless driveways that made me make sure my van was never leaking any kind of fluids.
Willa’s house hadn’t changed much on the outside since she bought it. The same old maple trees and gardens full of ornamental shrubbery. The same white house and black shutters.
The only thing that was different was that her mailbox door was hanging open, the inside stuffed so full that there was no way the mailman could fit another letter in.
I paused, grabbed the mail, then grabbed one of my toolboxes before making my way to the door.
I barely stabbed my finger into the bell before the door whipped open.
And there she was.
Drenched from head-to-toe, her soaked hair half hanging out of her ponytail. She had a thick blanket thrown over her shoulder and a baby pressed against that blanket to keep the newborn from getting wet too.
The baby was whimpering.
Her mother had red-rimmed and puffy eyes that suggested she’d spent the half an hour it took me to drive over crying with her baby.
“Owen. Thank God,” she said, sniffling. She moved back a step, inviting me in.
“Want me to go back and grab booties?” I asked.
“Why?” she asked, brows lowered. She’d never insisted on it before.
My gaze dropped to the baby’s mostly-bald head, just a few wisps of light brown hair.
“Oh! Oh, no. No. It’s not like she’s on the floor yet. But thanks.”
I gave her a nod.
I wanted to congratulate her.
But she looked so exhausted and vulnerable that I wasn’t sure the words would land right.
“I grabbed your mail,” I told her, placing it down on the nearest console table. “Want to point me in a direction?” I asked.
She looked particularly pained at that.
“The primary bathroom.” I must have given her a look, worried it was something I’d already fixed. “The shower this time. It’s probably throwing a tantrum because I haven’t used it enough lately,” she said with a sad look.
“Alright. Let me go check out the damage,” I said, giving her a small smile as I made my way toward the center stairs.
The house was different than it had been before the baby. Blankets were thrown everywhere: over the railing, stacked on chairs, in a giant, overflowing laundry basket at the top of the stairs. The sink was full, the counters cluttered.
Motherhood had eaten up her housekeeping time.
Her own bedroom was strangely neat, though. Like she hadn’t been inside her own bed in days. She probably hadn’t.
Inside the primary bath, my boots slapped into the water puddles on the floor that Willa hadn’t managed to sop up with the towels and sweaters she had piled in the bathtub.
I walked further in, catching sight of myself in the mirror. I turned, noticing my shaggy, dirty blond hair, stubbly jaw, and brown eyes. But more so than that, I noticed the spots on the mirror.
I couldn’t tell you why, but my first instinct wasn’t to go into the shower and triage the problem.
It was to walk over to the vanity, grab the glass cleaner wipes from beneath, and wipe those spots away.
So that was what I did.
Then I turned to the glass-enclosed shower with its white marble and subtle black veins, its black fixtures, and the collection of shampoos, conditioners, and body washes she took out of their original containers and put into aesthetic black ones instead.
I hated to have to be the one to tell her, but a whole shower wall was going to need to come down. Rationally, the whole thing would need to be taken down to the studs to make sure mold didn’t grow.
It meant all her fancy tile had to go. And, given the placement, the glass door as well.
It seemed like the last thing she needed was bad news. But there was no fixing a pipe behind a wall without busting it open.
I set down my toolbox then made my way back out of the bedroom.
At the landing, I grabbed the basket and carried it down to set it in the doorway of the laundry room before I started looking for Willa.
“Shit. Sorry—” I said when I walked into the living room to find her sitting on the couch in her wet clothes, a blanket draped over her shoulder, and the baby nestled beneath, nursing.
I whipped around to give her privacy.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m… decent enough,” she said, exhaling. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
I turned back around.
“It’s not good. The whole shower should come down. If you want to save some money, I could try to just dry out the—”
“The money isn’t an issue,” she cut me off.
She’d never been worried about it before. But I didn’t know how much a baby and maternity leave might impact that kind of thing.
“Then I would recommend it all coming down. With your luck with this house, you’d get black mold.”
“That would be my luck,” she agreed with a huff of a laugh. “So… that means the tile and everything…”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said, shrugging her one shoulder. “I guess that isn’t the worst thing. I kind of hate that tile. They used it everywhere in this house.”
They had. Each of the bathrooms and the kitchen. Even the laundry room had quartz backsplashes behind the washer, dryer, and sink.
It led me to think that the house had been in rough shape and flipped by some amateurs who thought they could just slap pretty finishes up, and no one would notice all the rotting beneath.
“The floor doesn’t really need replacing.”
“I mean, if you have time for the job, if you’re going to do the shower, I would like to get it how I want it if it has to be fixed.”
“Okay. We can do that. If you don’t have ideas, I can bring some books and samples tomorrow.”
“Is the water going to be off until tomorrow?” she asked, eyes going wide and panicked.
“No, no,” I said, holding up a hand. “The actual fix will take just a few hours. Then the water can be back on. But the ordering of supplies and the work…”
“Okay. That’s all right then. I have other bathrooms to use. It’s not like I’m showering much these days.”
“It’s gonna get noisy,” I warned her. “I have to cut into that wall…”
“That’s okay. She seems to hate silence almost as much as she hates noise. So it’s not going to make a big difference.”
“You good with me starting now?”
“Yeah. Just, you know, move freely. Like usual.”
Except on usual trips, she was typically at work, and didn’t look like she was one small piece of bad news away from a breakdown.
“Okay,” I agreed.
Then I went to my van to gather supplies, walking as quietly through the house as possible, despite knowing the sawing was about to shake the damn walls. But there was nothing I could do about that. Nor the way the baby wailed as I got started.
Eventually, though, the worst of the noise-making was over, and I cleaned up as best I could before bringing in the fans and dehumidifier.
The damn room sounded like a wind tunnel when I was finished setting it all up. But when it came to water damage, the most crucial step was drying things out as quickly as possible.
I needed to talk to Willa about ordering a dumpster so I could finish ripping down the walls around the shower, so I moved out of the bathroom. Only to stop short when I saw a baby lying on the center of the king-sized bed, wrapped up like a burrito.
But out cold.
The walk-in closet door flew open, bringing out a wide-eyed Willa. Like she was terrified the baby stopped breathing because she was finally quiet.
She’d changed out of her soaked clothes, changing into a plum-colored matching pajama set with a snap-down front for, I assumed, easy nursing.
“She’s alright,” I said, my voice calm.
Willa froze, looking between me and the baby.
“I think she likes the fans,” Willa said.
“Makes sense. White noise. My sister used a white noise machine in all her kids’ nurseries.”
“She doesn’t like it,” Willa said, looking over at me. “I’ve tried. I guess I need to invest in loud fans.”
“These will be here for a few days until all the moisture is gone. I can’t do much else, repair-wise, until it’s dry. The last thing you want is to trap the moisture behind new wall and tiling.”
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“I’m going to need to order a small dumpster to do the tear-outs.”
“Of course. You can have them put it anywhere.”
“Until I can do the actual work, I should probably stop by here and there to check how the drying-out is going.”
Really, I only needed to do that once. Maybe twice. I had no idea why the hell I suddenly wanted to drive out to her neighborhood to check on the progress.
I tried to tell myself it was because the dehumidifier was going to need to be emptied, and I didn’t want to overwhelm her any more than she already was. But it wasn’t exactly a lot of work to pull out the compartment and dump it down the drain.
“Sure. We’ll be here,” she said, waving to the baby.
“If you want, I can grab the samples so we can get something ordered for the tile.”
“Yeah, that’d be great,” she agreed.
“I’ll be right back.”
The only problem was… in the five minutes it took me to turn the water back on to the house, grab everything from my van, and walk back upstairs, Willa had climbed on the bed and passed out with her daughter.
There was no way in hell I was waking up someone as tired as her, so I crept back out of the room and down the stairs.
The dining table was empty, so I went ahead and laid everything out for her there to browse when she’d gotten some sleep.
But from that angle, I got a good view right into the kitchen. And that overflowing sink.
It was wrong.
Borderline creepy as hell, even. To move around someone’s space when they weren’t aware, to touch their things without permission.
That didn’t stop me from walking over to unload and restack the dishwasher, from putting in the packet of cleaner and setting it to run.
Maybe she’d be mad.
Maybe she’d even fire me.
But at least she’d have a dish when she reached for one.
With that, I found myself doing a quick sweep—making sure the burners were off and the fridge was closed, things a scatterbrained, exhausted new mom might miss—and made my way to the door, making sure it was locked before I closed it.
Then I went ahead and didn’t analyze the way some part of me wanted to go back into that house and take care of the two girls inside.
Because what the hell was that about?