Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ETHAN
The Galveston house has a problem nobody wants to talk about.
It's not dangerous. Yet. But it will be if nobody addresses it, which nobody has, because the previous two owners either didn't know or didn't want to know, and those are the two categories most homeowners fall into.
I always want to know.
"You're doing the thing," Cole says.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you find something the previous guy did wrong and you get that look."
"I don't have a look."
"Ethan." He appears beside me, thermos in hand, and looks at the wall the way a person looks at something they're being asked to care about and are making a good-faith effort.
"You absolutely have a look. It's somewhere between disappointed and personally offended.
Nate calls it your someone built this wrong face. "
"Nate should mind his own business."
"Nate is currently minding the Hendricks job so you can stand here having feelings about shear panels." Cole takes a drink of his coffee. "What's the damage?"
I walk him through it. The fastener spacing, the load path, what it means for the renovation scope, what we tell the Galvestons.
Cole listens the way he does when the information is actually relevant to his job, which is different from how he listens when he's just being Cole, which is with his whole body and too many opinions.
When it's technical, he goes quiet and pays attention.
It's one thing I rely on him for, even if I'd die before saying so out loud.
"So we're adding scope," he says.
"We're adding scope."
"You want me to call them or you?"
"I'll do it." I make a note on my phone. "They'll want to hear the structural explanation, and you'll try to soften it, and then they'll be confused and call me anyway."
Cole considers this. "That's fair," he says, which is one of the things I genuinely like about my brother — he has a complete absence of ego about being right. He's just interested in the accurate version of things.
We walk the rest of the kitchen, checking measurements against the plans.
The house is a 1960s split-level, good bones underneath the questionable 1987 addition and the 2003 renovation somebody did in a hurry.
My job is to find what's actually there and work with it, not against it.
You can't build something that lasts by pretending the history isn't there.
"You eat?" Cole asks.
"This morning."
"That's not what I asked."
"I had coffee."
He gives me the look that's the Cole version of disapproval, which involves a particular angle of the head and a quality of silence our mother would recognize. "I'm going to Denny's. Come to Denny's."
"I have three calls this afternoon."
"The calls will still exist after eggs."
We go to Denny's.
Not because Cole wore me down, which he'd say happened. Because the shear-panel problem means I have to revise the Galveston scope and budget before I call them, and that's easier at a table with food in front of me than standing in a half-framed kitchen on an empty stomach.
That's my position and I'm keeping it.
The Millhaven Denny's is on highway 10, which isn't the most convenient location for anything but has the advantage of Bev, who's been a server here since approximately the Carter administration and brings your coffee without asking because she already knows.
She sets mine in front of me before I've fully sat down.
"Ethan," she says.
"Bev."
"You want the usual?"
"Please."
She's already writing. Cole orders something with three components that have no business being on the same plate, and Bev doesn't blink, and this is one of the things I appreciate about Millhaven — the unpretentious familiarity of it. People know your order and don't make a thing of it.
I moved back here five years ago, and it took about two weeks to remember why I'd been vaguely homesick for it the entire decade I was gone.
"So," Cole says, when Bev has moved on. He wraps both hands around his mug with the energy of someone settling in. "The Holloway cottage."
I look at him.
"The new job," he says. "Elm Lane. You got a text back this morning."
"I got a text back. It's a roof inspection."
"From Elise Holloway's granddaughter, who, according to Mags, just went through something significant."
I put my mug down. "When did you talk to Mags?"
"I stop in most mornings. You'd know this if you ever left a job site before seven p.m." He says it with little judgment. "She mentioned that Delaney, Elise’s granddaughter, might be coming to stay at the cottage for a while. And that the circumstances weren't great."
I consider this. I know who Delaney Hart is the way you know people in a town this size, not personally, but by context.
Elise Holloway was a fixture in Millhaven for forty years.
Good woman. Sharp, warm, the kind of person who showed up when things needed doing and didn't require acknowledgment for it. My dad always spoke well of her.
Her granddaughter came for the funeral back in the spring.
I didn't meet her, but I saw her across the room at the church — auburn hair, a composed expression, the particular stillness of someone managing a great deal in public.
She'd organized the reception, I later heard.
Coordinated everything. Said the right things to everyone.
And then, by most accounts, quietly disappeared back to Raleigh.
I'd noticed her, that's the thing. Not the way you notice someone and think about it afterward — just the way you notice a person who stands out in a room by not trying to.
Everyone else at the reception was performing grief, or comfort, or both.
She was just working. Moving through the space, making sure plates were filled and chairs were available, and glasses were never quite empty. And then she was gone.
"What circumstances?" I say.
Cole turns his mug. "Mags didn't say specifically. But she said not great with the emphasis that means something significant." He shrugs. "Separation, maybe. Mags had that energy about it."
I file this. It's not my information to examine or share, and Cole knows that which is why he's telling me in the low-register, not-for-general-circulation way he has when he's sharing something out of genuine concern rather than habit.
"She texted about the inspection," I say. "Said she might come to Millhaven herself. Asked if next week worked."
"Does next week work?"
"I can make next week work."
Bev arrives with food. Cole's plate is a geological event. Mine is eggs and toast, which is what I order here because Denny's does eggs and toast correctly, and I've learned not to ask more of a situation than it can reasonably deliver.
"She's going to need more than a roof inspection," Cole says, picking up a fork. "That cottage has been sitting empty since April. Elise kept it up as well as she could, but—" he shrugs. "Emptiness and age are hard on old houses."
"I know."
"I'm just saying. If she's coming to stay."
"I know what you're saying, Cole."
He grins at his plate. He has the self-satisfied expression of someone who's said the thing he wanted to say and is now pretending he didn't. I ignore it, which is the correct response, and eat my eggs.
My phone rings at two in the afternoon when I'm back on the Galveston site, and it's Beck.
Beck Shaw has been my closest friend since seventh grade, which means he's seen me in more undignified situations than anyone except Cole, and has shown over twenty years of friendship a complete lack of interest in bringing them up unprompted.
It's the foundation of a functional adult relationship.
"Got your lumber order," he says. "Also, you left your level here last week."
"I know. I'll pick it up."
"Also, Mags wants to know if you're coming to the thing on Thursday."
"What thing Thursday?"
"The thing at the community center. The preservation committee thing. She's on the agenda, and she wants friendly faces."
"Mags has been on that committee for fifteen years. She doesn't need friendly faces."
"She wants yours specifically. Something about you being the only person who shows up on time." A pause. "Also, I think she wants to talk to you about the Elm Lane property."
I stop what I'm doing. "Why does Mags want to talk to me about the Elm Lane property?"
"Because Mags wants to talk to everyone about everything," Beck says. "But specifically, because Elise's granddaughter is apparently coming to town and Mags is, and well, you know how Mags is."
I know how Mags is. Mags is the kind of woman who sees a situation that needs tending and tends it, with or without an invitation.
She loved Elise Holloway for forty years, and she's going to extend that love to anyone Elise left behind, on her own timeline and in her own way, and anyone who has an issue with that is welcome to take it up with her directly.
Nobody takes things up with Mags directly.
"I'll be there Thursday," I say.
"Thought so." He's quiet for a second. "She's going through something. The granddaughter. I don't know the details, but Mags has that?—"
"Yeah," I say. "Cole mentioned."
"Okay." And that's Beck. He’d said what he came to say, and now we're done with it. “Level's behind the register when you want it."
Thursday comes. The preservation committee meeting is in the back room of the community center, which smells like old coffee and the ghost of every meeting that's ever happened in a municipal building.
Twelve people, folding chairs, an agenda Mags is running through with the efficiency of someone who could do it in her sleep and occasionally has.
I sit in the third row with Beck, who brought the level. The lumber order came in at the right specs. The Galveston scope revision is drafted, and the call with the homeowners is scheduled for tomorrow morning. The day is, by the metrics I use, a functional one.