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“Shit, someone’s gotta feed you. Have you even left this site in two weeks?”
“Of course I have.”
At least…shethoughtshe had. She seemed to remember going to the superstore for groceries at some point, but a lot of the past month was a blur of humdrum and blah-blah. She was on autopilot mode, marking things off project management checklists, and not really needing to engage very many critical thinking skills. She hadn’t really woken up, so to speak, until that morning when Carine told her that none of the existing home models would actually fit on a particular lot owner’s space.
The tiny corner lot near the pond had an odd trapezoidal configuration and funky setbacks that cut into the footprint of all the home models. She couldn’t easily adjust the plans, and she certainly couldn’t resize the damned lot, so she was starting a new plan from scratch. Lipton would have to approve the design, obviously, but she didn’t see what choice they had. The lot was sold, the owner was required to put a developer-approved structure on the house within a year, and Valerie was the only person schooled on all the aesthetic strictures and what the actual terrain was like. The client had to use the available plans or an alternative devised by Lipton’s representative—Valerie—but that didn’t mean Valerie couldn’t give that lot-owner something amazing.
Finally, the opportunity for somethingamazing. Pending approval, of course.
Kevin reached past her and grabbed a soda out of the cooler she’d apparently parked herself in front of. “Oh! Shit. Sorry. Didn’t mean to drop water on your pad.” He swiped the tail of his shirt across the paper, and then froze, furrowing his brow at the sketch.
“It’s all right if there’s a little smudge,” she said. “It’s just a brainstorming sketch.”
“What’s it for?”
“That weirdly shaped plot by the pond. I have no idea what they were thinking when they parceled off that block. The two lots on either side of it are larger than most at the expense of the corner lot, which isusuallyone of the most sought-after spots on a tract. None of the current plans will fit, so I’ve got to come up with something that will. It’ll be the only house like that in this development.”
“When’s that one going up? Might be fun to build.”
“Depends on how long it takes to get approved. I hope to have some preliminary ideas to show to both the lot owner and Lipton by next week.”
“You plan on being here to build that house?” Frank asked Kevin, chuckling.
“Uh…” Kevin shrugged and grabbed another sandwich from one of the larger bags markedW/ COLESLAW. “I dunno. Maybe. You’d hire me on for good?”
“Ma-a-aybe,” Frank drawled coyly.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kevin said in that non-committal way all teenagers seemed to have down to a science.
Huh.Valerie wondered what someone like Kevin could possibly get out of working asjusta crew member on a construction site. But maybe it wasn’t that odd. His father built things for a living, too, but the question remained of why he wouldn’t go work for Tim. The pay would have probably been better.
“Hey, Kevin,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”
He pulled an earbud from his canal and stuffed it into his pocket. “Sure, I guess.”
Valerie’s grandmother had always had a knack for making Valerie answer questions she hadn’t even asked. She’d probably had to learn the skill to get Valerie and Leah to tell her how they felt after their mother died when they would have rather not talked at all. She was always able to disarm them and make them give up some words.
Valerie didn’t pretend to be anywhere near as good at it as Mama Kay, but the trick came in handy on occasion.
“Where’d you get your boots?” she asked.
Kevin looked down at his work-scuffed Timberlands. “Oh. Had them for a while.”
“How long’s a while.”
“Maybe a year?”
“You know, guys used to wear those back in my day, too. They used to be obsessive about keeping them clean. If they scuffed them, it was almost like it was the end of the world.”
Kevin shifted his weight and broke the seal on his soda. “I know guys like that.”
“Friends of yours?”
“Maybe…they were.”
Huh.
“I was in public school my last three years of school,” he said. “Before that, it was all uniforms and loafers.”
