She commented, “Whoever painted this was trying to make the room look like a room in a catalog.They couldn’t do it, though.The bones wouldn’t let them.”
She showed Madison how to keep the scraper blade shallow and go with the grain, so the wood underneath never had to know it had been rescued.Madison’s first pull was too steep and gouged a little.
Sunny waved an unconcerned hand.“This wood should have dings here and there.They’re proof a place has been lived in.Twenty years from now, you can point out that dent to your kids and tell them that’s where you first started restoring this house.”
Madison smiled a little and tried again.
Her second scrape was clean.By her fifth she’d stopped checking Sunny’s face after each one.
They worked the lower wall together until they’d worked all the way around the room.Then Sunny stood, tipped her head back, and frowned at the ceiling, which was a grid of acoustic tile the dull color of old teeth.
“That,” she declared, “is the single most cowardly thing anyone has ever done to this room.”
“Dad said it was probably hiding wires.”
“Your dad is a wonderful doctor and doesn’t know the first thing about historic restoration.This house was built after electricity was invented and will have been built around wiring already.”She dragged the ladder under the worst tile, right beside the Idaho stain, climbed it, and pushed the panel up off its frame.
Dust sifted down.She turned her face away, waved it clear, and looked up into the dark.
Coffers.A whole coffered ceiling was up there in the gloom—oak beams crisscrossing into deep recessed squares, every joint cut a hundred and twenty years ago by an artisan man who would’ve never guessed someone would install a drop ceiling eighteen inches beneath his best work.
“Madison.”Her voice came out funny.“Get up here.”
Madison climbed the other side of the ladder and looked up.Her face lit with wonder.The careful, guarded expression she wore like armor simply wasn’t there.There was only a fourteen-year-old looking at something old and true and far better than she’d ever expected.
“The magazine’s going to lose its mind,” Madison said.
“The magazine is going to take all the credit.”Sunny pushed up the next tile, and the next, walking the ladder down the room while the coffers came out of the dark one square at a time.“But yes.They are going to be thrilled.”
By the time the last tile came down, the dining room was a dusty wreck—gray ribbons of paint curled across the drop cloths, ceiling tiles was stacked like sad dominoes by the pocket doors, plaster dust was going to paste in the sweat on her arms.It was the most beautiful wreck Sunny had stood in for a long while.
She heard him before she saw him.The screen door squeaked, then the unhurried tread she could already pick out of a crowd, which she chose not to examine any more closely.
Hank stepped into the doorway and took in what they’d done to it.He didn’t say anything for a moment.He had a way of arriving at a thing slowly, the way he took a pulse, and she’d stopped finding the silences uncomfortable.
“You found the ceiling,” he said at last.
“Did you know it was up there?”She came down the ladder.
“I didn’t.”He gazed up at it, and surprise crossed his face.It was laced, though, with caution.She recognized that look from her own mirror.He was afraid to love it in case there was a catch forthcoming.
“Huh,” he said.“And to think, it was up there the whole time.”
“I’m starting to think that’s the motto of this house.”
“There’s a hole where the mantel should be.”She pointed at the chimney breast on the far wall, where a rectangle of rough brick sat naked between two runs of paneling.“Somebody pulled the original out.Probably sold it in a lean year.And there was a fixture in the center of that ceiling once—you can see the patch.The room’s missing its two best décor pieces.”
“Can’t you just—” Hank made a vague gesture she’d learned meantdo whatever it is you do.
“I can’t manufacture a hundred-year-old mantel out of good intentions.I’ll have to find one.”She wiped her hands on her jeans and looked at him with a bright smile.“Both of you.Saturday.There’s a salvage yard in Bozeman that might have what this room needs.But it’s your house.You two will need to make the final decision on something you like.”
Madison went still but practically vibrated with excitement.
Hank looked at his daughter.Then at the naked brick.Then, with the air of a man being measured for a noose, at Sunny.
“I’ll bring the truck,” he said on a sigh.
The salvage yard sprawled across three acres.The main barn smelled of rust and cut cedar and the insides of old houses—a mingling of soot, beeswax, and time that Sunny would have worn if anyone bottled and sold it.
