"Fair enough," I say, and go back to photographing.
He watches me work with the same focused attention I'm giving the building, turned back on me. I do the south face first, document the undamaged sections for comparison, move to the east elevation and work methodically along it. I note the batten pattern on the tarp, the overlap, the sealing at the joints. I note the chimney flashing has held and the valley is intact, which tells me the damage is wind-driven rather than structural. I say some of it out loud when it's relevant, write the rest down.
"You're reading it right," he says, at some point.
I don't look up. "I usually do."
"Usually."
"Forty-seven storm claims. Twelve commercial roofing assessments." I straighten and look at the roofline. "I've been wrong twice. Once I missed a secondary failure point under intact decking. Once an owner had pre-existing damage he hadn't disclosed." I close the folder. "Neither miss came from bad judgment. Both came from incomplete information. I don't like incomplete information."
He's quiet a moment. "You're telling me this why?"
"So you know where I stand." I look at him directly for the first time since he came off the roof and I immediately understand why I'd been avoiding it. "I'll be back tomorrow with the ladder system for the roof inspection. The policy requires on-site contractor verification for commercial claims at this value threshold. I'll need someone up there with me."
A pause. "What time?"
"Eight, if you're available."
"I'm on-site at six."
"Eight," I say. "I don't climb ladders before coffee."
Something crosses his face that might, in another context, be the beginning of a smile. It doesn't arrive. "Eight," he says.
I drive to the end of the block and sit in my car and open my notes app, because I always capture my first impressions before they fade.
In the side mirror, I can see the hotel roof. He's back on the ridge line.
I put the car in drive.
Eight o'clock tomorrow. Coffee first. Then the roof.
I'm already thinking about tomorrow.
two
Atlas
I'vebeenonroofsin conditions that would make most people cry. Forty below in February, ice everywhere, the kind of wind that removes the concept of warmth from your memory. Wildfire weather in the Chilcotin, the sky the wrong colour, the crew looking to me to say whether we went up or stayed down. Steep pitches with nothing underneath and original 1920s fir sheathing that punishes you for guessing wrong.
Willa Frost with her clipboard is somehow more unsettling than any of that.
I'm working the residential claims today. Five of them are my clients, people I've been serving for years, and I need to know what she's going to do with each file before I know how hard I'll have to fight. That's the thing about adjusters: they write the shape of what's possible. I've fixed too many houses out of my own pocket to be sentimental about it.
She's already at the first property when I pull up. The Hancocks — retired couple, been on Ridgeline Drive since beforeI moved to Silver Ridge, I've done their roof twice. The storm took a four-metre section off their north slope and Mrs. Hancock is on the porch with the face of someone steeling herself for bad news.
Willa doesn't look at me when I get out. She's photographing the north slope, then the southwest corner where the gutter's been pulled from the fascia.
"That fascia damage is separate from the storm claim," she says, apparently to her file. "Pre-existing rot. I'll flag it for supplemental review but it won't reduce the primary."
That's not what I expected her to say.
A carrier-interested adjuster would have used the pre-existing rot to pull down the whole claim value. She's separating it out in the Hancocks' favor without being asked.
I revise something I'd decided about her.
We move through four properties. I catch myself watching her work the way I watch good tradespeople work: looking for the methodology.
