AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe fixing up other people’s houses wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life, but there was still something comforting about the smell of pine sawdust and the feel of the solid wood against my hands. I hefted another board into place, holding it while my father drilled in the screws. He stepped past me to the other side to repeat the task and then nodded.
“There. That’s the end of that.” He motioned to the truck parked in the driveway. “Would you grab the first packs of insulation?”
“Are you using that scratch as an excuse to slack off?” I said jokingly. A bandage was wrapped tight around his left wrist. The truth was, from what I’d heard, it was more than a scratch. He’d needed ten stitches where he’d lost his grip on the saw for a second. If his reflexes had been any slower, he could have lost his whole hand. But he’d ribbed me enough growing up that I figured it was my job to pay him back when I could.
He grinned at me. “Doctor’s orders! I have to admit it’s easier to take it easy when you’re around.”
His voice was light, but a prickle ran through my chest at what he’d left unsaid. I hadn’t been there to actually see his accident because I’d dropped down to three days a week working with the family business instead of five. The other free days I’d been spending my usual work time visiting property offices, checking out blueprints—basically digging up everything I could about every property the Frankfords and their known associates owned. If there was a gap we could exploit to expose them there, I was going to find it.
But that had meant Dad was relying a little more on the apprentice he was training in.
I hefted a bale of insulation out of the truck and carried it over, setting it with a thump by the frame of the addition we were building. Right now the structure didn’t look like much more than a wooden skeleton, but when we were done, the Nelsons would have a whole new family room off the back of their house.
They’d scheduled the reno for while they were visiting relatives out of state so they didn’t have to deal with the noise and the mess while we did our work. There were positives and negatives to absent clients. No spontaneous offers of free coffee or donuts, sure. But also no one peering over our shoulders making suggestions based on approximately zero knowledge of construction.
“What have you been up to the last few days anyway, Seth?” Dad said as he joined me. “I know something’s obviously keeping you very busy.”
I weighed my words before answering. Kyler had mentioned our mom laying into him a bit about the time he’d been spending with Rose—and that he’d hinted I might be seeing her too. She’d probably passed that information on to Dad. But he wasn’t the type to outright pry about my love life.
“Just some independent projects,” I said. “Pretty intensive stuff, but mostly research and planning at this stage.”
“Not anything you can discuss with your old man?” he said a little teasingly.
“That’s right,” I said, matching his tone. “Top secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
He laughed and pulled up his mask as he leaned over the bale of insulation. It muffled his voice, but I could still hear him clearly enough. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found something of your own to occupy yourself with. I can’t imagine you really wanted to spend the next twenty years with your dad for a boss. But I do miss having you on hand for some of these jobs. You’re still the best employee I’ve ever had.”
A knot of emotion formed in my chest. “You’ve been a damn good boss too,” I said. “The whole dad thing aside. But do you really figure you’re still going to be at this in twenty years? What about retiring?”
He laughed. “Oh, Lord, can you imagine? I’d be so bored—I’d drive your mother crazy around the house. I can already picture it. No, I’ll make it thirty more if I can still handle the tools well enough when I’m eighty.”
I rolled my eyes at him with a shake of my head, but I was smiling behind my own mask. Itwashard imagining Dad just sitting around at home without anything to build or remodel. He’d probably end up refitting the whole house. They’d end up with five stories and ten additions and no more back yard.
We worked in silence for several minutes as we fitted the insulation into place along the one wall. The sky was overcast but not too thickly clouded—just enough to press the summer heat down on us. My breath turned the air inside my mask even more humid. Sweat trickled along the side of my face and down my back, only cooling me a bit in the sluggish breeze.
“We’ll want to cover this whole area up before we leave tonight,” Dad said, stepping back to survey our work so far. “That haze could turn into storm clouds in a blink.”
“The extra tarp is in the truck,” I said.
He pointed a playful finger at me. “This is why I need you around. You think of these things.”
He took another step backwards, turning to where the new back door would be, and the frame shifted with a sharp cracking sound.
“Dad!” I leapt toward him instinctively, but the whole back end of the addition was already collapsing in on him. Several pounds of hard wood battered his head and back. He lurched and crumpled under them.
One of the boards clipped my shoulder. I dodged and threw myself forward again, grasping the fallen slabs at the top of the heap. The splintered ends rasped against each other.
Dad groaned. I tossed one and then another board aside, heaving them off him as quickly as I could. My lungs were so clenched up I could hardly force air into them. “Dad, are you okay?” I called.
He didn’t answer me. His face had gone slack where he was slumped on the ground. His chest was still rising with halting breaths, but blood was seeping from a blow to his temple where his head had hit the concrete foundation, and more was trickling through his hair from wounds I couldn’t see. My heart stuttered painfully. No. Fuck, no. We’d just been talking about thirty more years.
I hauled the last few boards covering him out of the way. He still hadn’t moved. I moved to kneel beside him, to grasp his arm, and then hesitated. What if I hurt him more by accident?
I fumbled in my pocket, almost forgetting to yank down my mask before I whipped my phone to my ear. 9-1-1. I’d never needed to use that number before today.
A responder answered with a decisive even voice. “What is your emergency?”
“My dad. We were doing some construction work, and a bunch of the frame fell on him. He’s unconscious—bleeding…” I couldn’t tell if I was making much sense.
