Eight MonthsLater
“What, um—” I peered up through the giant gaping wound in the living room ceiling, through the second floor and the attic beyond, to where a few snowflakes leftover from last night’s blizzard drifted across the twilight sky. “What happened here?”
The man-child beside me coughed lightly. “Well. I, ah… I think you’ve got a brand-new hole in your roof, Mr. Williams.”
I nodded slowly. “Yup. Thank you, Murray. Yes. Now that you say it, I do believe itisa hole in the roof.” I stared up some more. “Any insight into how it might have gotten there?”
“Oh. Well.” Murray pulled his hat down more firmly over his ears and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He was tall—half a foot taller than my five-eight frame, at least—but still just nineteen and gawky as all heck. He craned his neck and peered up also, like the answer might be written in the heavens. “Uh, I figure… I figure it’s ’cause this bit of roof ain’t where it’s s’posed to be?”
He kicked lightly at the large pile of snow, plaster dust, and rotten wood that stood like a miniature Matterhorn in the middle of the wide-planked hardwood floor.
Murray was not wrong. The plaster and lath were not where they were supposed to be. Nor where they’d been just the day before.
But then, many things seemed out of place in the postapocalyptic “fairy-tale adventure” I’d “embarked on” last summer… including, I sometimes thought,me.
“Uh-huh.Uh-huh,” I agreed gravely, staring down at the pile of junk. “Murray, excellent observation.”
He beamed. “Do you know, I’m kinda starting to maybe understand why old Ben Pond gave his house away in that essay contest last year?”
I chuckled ruefully. “Yup. Funny how that happens, huh?”
I hadn’t understood it either when I’d first won. I’d been too excited at the prospect of living in ahistorical treasure, owning acres of land where I’d raise sheep and host fiber arts retreats, and having a whole town full of new friends, to really question why a man would just give away his family’s property to a stranger and leave town.
My friends back in North Carolina had wrinkled their noses and said if things sounded too good to be true, they probably were… but I’d known better. Unexpected good things happened at least as often as unexpected bad things, especially if you worked hard and kept an eye out for them.
That was why, when I’d first parked my old hatchback out front last summer, I’d thought I’d found my own little slice of heaven. The building looked incredibly square and incredibly sturdy. Three stories of cream-and-gray stone were capped with a slate roof and four—four!—chimneys that stood like sentries looking over the yard. Ivy grew lazily up the columns that supported the portico over the mammoth front door.
The yard had been a bit overgrown, sure, but I wasn’t foolish enough to expect perfection. In fact, I’d been gleeful at the idea of getting my hands dirty before school started in the fall—clipping the bushes, mowing the grass, getting the barn ready for the three rare breed Romeldale sheep that were due to arrive in just a few weeks’ time.
I’d sent a picture to my mom, and she’d immediately replied, “You got your Happily Ever After, baby! Congratulations!” which was exactly how I’d felt.
I thought I’d found my place—the place where I could make a difference and have a purpose. The place where all my half-formed dreams were waiting for me. I’d found a ready-madehome.
Then I’d unlocked the front door with the big skeleton key the lawyers had given me.
It had opened with a creak… and the entire doorframe had fallen into the front hall with athud, startling a flock of birds that had flown out of the house and directly at my face, resulting in a manic do-si-do that had left me sunny-side-up in the yew bushes beside the front steps.
I’d gotten wise pretty quickly after that.
“Have you thought about maybe getting the roof… fixed?” Murray suggested tentatively.
Something about his hesitation made me smile. “I have, I promise. It’s the next item on my list. But it’s a very long list. But I’m a man with a short bank account.”
“If you want, when I come take care of the sheep tomorrow, I can bring you over a big tarp, just in case it snows again,” Murray offered. “Can’t hurt, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said tiredly. “That’d be great.”
“I can try to put it up for you, too?—”
“Oh, no. Heck, no. That’s dangerous. I’ll take care of it.”
I wasn’t sure how the fudgeI’dget a tarp on a three-story-high roof either, especially on my own in the snow, but I was sure I could figure something out.
“And don’t forget to tell me how much I owe you for the last two weeks, okay? I know you’ve got a tuition payment coming up.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Williams.”
I squeezed Murray’s shoulder in acknowledgement. And since the front door still didn’t have operational hinges, I steered him toward the back door through the ruins of the kitchen—a room which managed to pair cracked Formica and a crumbling, soot-stained brick fireplace in an aesthetic I was calling Early Eclectic Hovel, which was gonna become trendy any day now.
