Two trucks turned in off the road inside a minute of each other, the way they always seemed to, as though his brothers coordinated their arrival for effect.
“There he is,” Reno called, swinging down out of the cab.He buckled a tool belt around his hips, low like a gunslinger.“The cover model, doing his own demolition.The magazine’s going to eat it up.”
“They’re photographing a gown,” Hank said flatly.
“A gown on your porch,” Reno retorted, “which currently looks like a shipwreck.Good thing we came to bail you out.”
Dillon came around the back of his truck more slowly, carrying a circular saw and a thermos.He surveyed the wreckage with a woodworker’s experienced eye.“Joists bad, too?”he asked.
“Two of them.Maybe three.”
“Mm,” Dillon said, which from him amounted to a whole paragraph.He set the thermos on the one stretch of railing still trustworthy enough to hold it and reached for his hand-held nail pry-bar.
They fell into the work without much being said, which was how the three of them usually worked.Their granddad had taught them the same lessons on the same lumber and, after thirty years, they still reached for a board in the same order, passed the correct tool without being asked, and knew from the particular grunt a brother made whether he wanted the far end of a joist lifted or left alone.
Reno talked the whole while.He always did.And Dillon said about one word for every hundred of Reno’s.Hank ran somewhere in the middle, directing the work.
Hank measured and marked.Dillon cut because his cuts came off the saw square enough to set a level on.Reno carried and fastened.He also supplied, free of charge, a running commentary on everyone else’s technique.
It was the same division of labor they’d used as kids, and there was an ease in it Hank felt nowhere else on earth.His brothers knew him all the way down.They’d seen him at his lowest and worst and stayed anyway.He supposed that was the definition of being family.
“While we’re hauling this wood to the dump, we ought to throw this thing in too,” Reno said, nudging the aluminum porch chair with his boot.“Do the magazine a favor and toss it.Do the whole town a favor.”
“Leave the chair,” Hank said.
“Hank.It’s held together with one bolt and spite.”
“Leave it,” he said again, in the voice he’d used to end arguments since Reno was in diapers.
Reno scowled, but left the chair alone.
Reno was getting married in the fall.Dillon and Tessa hadn’t set a date yet, but Hank expected it would be soon.With both his brothers paired off and pointed at a future, he was the last single Steele, the odd man out with no one to walk down the aisle at Jenna and Sully’s wedding.
He’d made his peace with that.He told himself he had, anyway.
The doctorly voice in the back of his brain murmured that a doctor ought to know those were not the same thing.
“Grace wants to do the flowers herself for our wedding,” Reno said, driving a screw.“She’s already bargaining with a flower supplier in Bozeman over the order.”
“She’ll win,” Dillon said.
“No doubt,” Reno agreed.“She always win.People take one look at her and think she’s a soft, sweet pushover.Little do they know.”He added proudly, “She’s tough as nails under that fragile looking exterior.”
Dillon set down the saw and looked at Hank thoughtfully.“You know there’s no rule that says you have to stay single.”
Hank was startled.Where did that remark come from?Aloud he replied, “My life is pretty good already.I’ve got Madison and my medical practice.This house.I’ve got plenty.”
“Mm.”Dillon packed the single syllable with deep skepticism and picked the saw back up.He didn’t push Hank.None of them ever pushed each other.
But Dillon’s not-pushing today had a weight to it, the patience of a vet waiting out a stubborn animal that would come around on its own eventually.
They had the rotted joists out by noon and the new ones sistered in by two.As they started laying the new floorboards, the talk wandered around to the children, to the Carter horde tearing up the back yard, and then to Madison.
“She looks good,” Dillon said.“Like she’s starting to unwind from that tight knot she came to you all tied up in.”
Reno agreed.“She looks happier than I’ve ever seen her.Granted, that’s a pretty low bar.”
Hank said quietly, “She unpacked her boxes.”
