A Roof Over Their Heads

by M. K. Stelmack

  Not if she had anything to say about it. Bryn returned to the game but Matt watched Seth leave, his face bright with worship. Okay, time to nip this in the bud.

  When Seth cleared the top step, he kept coming until he was right beside her, positioning himself so he could look at her and the kids at the same time, mirroring her pose. It unsettled her how naturally he did it, as if he was used to backing up others, being that second set of eyes—or hands.

  “Connie’s back in town. Just got through talking with her.”

  From his clipped tones, Alexi surmised it hadn’t gone well.

  Seth continued. “She basically said she can’t afford to carry on with the renovations.”

  Alexi’s heart sank. She slipped her phone out of her back pocket and held it tight. She’d found that if she simply did that during the rough spots throughout the day and if she slept holding it, she could trick herself into feeling connected to Richard. And yes, she knew she was no better than Callie with a stuffie.

  Seth’s green eyes flicked to her phone. “You need to make a call?”

  Trust him to zero in on her weakness. “Uh...no. I—” She returned her phone to her pocket, its hard flatness pressing through her shorts into her backside, and engaged her hand with the string ties on her blouse. There, she thought, satisfied?

  Apparently he was because his focus was on the kids when he said, “She did make me an offer. Said that if I did the work you could pay me your rent check for the next six months.”

  “My rent money as wages? That wouldn’t cover it.” Providing she could even produce a rent check.

  “That and I’m already swamped with work,” he added. “I told her as much.” He grimaced. “It didn’t end well. Thing is, I help you, I help my sister. And I don’t want to help my sister.”

  “So you’re saying you won’t help.”

  At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “I understand.” And she did. “You’ve already done more than I could’ve hoped for.” The truth again, even if it wasn’t easy to live with.

  Seth said nothing. Instead he frowned at the kids, like a foreman not pleased with the progress at a construction site. Matt was directing his siblings on how to crawl or step or jump or hop through the laser beams of binder twine, a construct he’d dubbed “The Matrix.”

  “How will you manage?”

  His sudden question threw Alexi, not the least because she detected an undercurrent, as convoluted and frail as the orange strings in Matt’s maze, of genuine interest. He kept his attention on the kids, so there was no way to tell. As for his question, she couldn’t even see her way beyond August. She needed his help but he’d flat out told her he wasn’t going to give it. Living here wasn’t an option so...

  “I’ll start looking for a new place.” Just saying it made her sag. Wouldn’t that please the new caseworker? Another move. Another strike on her file.

  “Not many places with a yard like this one,” Seth commented.

  “I know. It was the clincher for me,” Alexi said. “That and the fence. It was...perfect.”

  Seth made a noncommittal sound, a kind of grunt that probably meant he’d heard and that was enough. No long conversations into the night with him. Not that... She felt herself grow even hotter in the daytime sun. She just missed Richard so much. Her hand strayed to her back pocket where her phone was.

  Seth caught her in the act. “You can’t live without that thing, can you?” Another question with an undercurrent she couldn’t quite figure out.

  She pointed to the one attached to his belt. “Who can?”

  “Yeah, for calls or music. To hear it ring or sing. You hold it like a kid with a stuffed toy.”

  Her breath caught. He’d nailed her dead-on. “Yes, I expect I do,” she mumbled.

  He took the hint. “Not that it’s any of my business.” He looked back at the kids and shook his head. “All the twine’s going to fall to the ground the way Matt’s got it knotted.”

  He removed his baseball cap, scratched his hat-flattened hair, set the cap back on, a classic gesture of agitation. He clearly wanted to get in there and sort things out for Matt. Not for his sister, not for her, but maybe...

  No, it was a sneaky idea, one she instantly hated herself for. Then again, what was a little self-hatred to one as desperate as her?

  “Can I be honest with you, Seth?”

  He slanted her a look. “You haven’t been so far?”

  “Yes, of course. But I need to tell you something that right now is none of your business but that I would like to make your business.”

  He eyed her phone.

  “No, it’s Matt.”

  “What? Matt? What’s wrong with him?”

  Just as she thought, Seth liked him. “Nothing. The thing is, Matt is the oldest but really he’s our fourth child. He came to us about a year and a half ago. Richard found him. Or Matt found Richard. That’s another story. Anyway, we decided to adopt Matt, just like we adopted the other three.

  “Matt’s case was complicated to begin with. There was other family involved that took sorting out. And we needed to prove our eligibility. The usual paperwork. Then Richard—then there was Richard’s accident.”

  “They said you couldn’t adopt because you’re a single mom?”

  “No, no, that’s not the issue.” A single mom without an income was, however, not that Seth needed to know that. “But more paperwork meant a delay, then Richard, when he...” Why couldn’t she spit out the word? “Richard’s passing was hard on Matt, and his behavior caused more delays. I decided to move because it was what Matt wanted, and what I believe he needs. I knew that would translate into more delays in paperwork, and that there would be a new caseworker. What I didn’t count on was showing her this reno wreck.”

  She sucked in her breath. “There is a very real chance that if she sees this mess, she’ll order us to leave immediately because it isn’t safe for Matt. Frankly, I’ve no place to go.”

  Seth looked past her and through the kitchen window. “When’s she coming?”

  “I don’t know exactly. My old caseworker was going to hold off on the paperwork but likely in the next couple of weeks.”

  Seth pulled off his cap, scratched and replaced it. “Exactly how good does this place have to be?”

  “It’s mostly Matt’s living space. His bedroom, the kitchen. It doesn’t have to be perfect but—”

  “Running water might be a good idea,” Seth said, his mouth twisting with sarcasm.

  “Yeah. Something less...Third World,” Alexi said. “How about if I help? I don’t know how to tile or anything but you could—”

  “I’m not tiling. Tiling’s a big job. You know how much cutting has to be done in a kitchen? You need a tile cutter and which one of us is going to pay to rent one?”

  She didn’t answer his questions because she didn’t think he was really asking. Another awkward silence fell between them. Short this time. “Look, I want to help you out but what you’re asking is a full-scale intervention.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I had any choice. I know I could never repay you. I mean, I would try but—”

  Seth waved his hand. “No. You’ve got nothing to give me.”

  He might as well have slapped her in the face. The sad truth was she had nothing to offer a man.

  “Don’t you know anyone to help you? Friends from Calgary?”

  She didn’t. She knew people, of course. Parents of her kids’ friends, members of the craft group she’d belonged to when Richard was alive, a few of the neighbors but no one well enough she could turn to for help. The one thing worse than asking for help was having no one to ask.

  She shoved her hands into her front pockets to stop herself from reaching for her phone. “I wouldn’t be asking you, if I did.”
<
br />   He crossed his arms, shifted on his feet. He was getting ready to reject her.

  “I’m not asking it for my sake,” Alexi said in a rush. “I’m asking it for Matt’s sake. If Matt has to leave us, I know for a fact he’ll run.”

  “Run?” Seth looked at the boy who was manning one string after another, reefing on them so they were stretched tight so his siblings could skip between them, all the while shouting and gesturing like a coach with his team.

  Yes, she saw what he must see, too. A boy who built a game so his brother and sisters could have fun. A boy who watched over his foster mother when strangers like him came near. A boy who bought his family slushies. A boy who, if he ran, it was to rescue his naked bro. She had to make Seth see what would happen if Matt lost this home.

  Time for more truth. Truth she wasn’t supposed to share. “Seth, Matt ran from his mean drunk of a mother to his father, a three-hour drive away, by hiding in the back of four different pickups. He was seven. Then when his father was stabbed to death in a drug fight, he hitchhiked to his grandfather’s place in Calgary. When his grandfather died, he was placed in a foster home. When he had enough of that, he found Richard in Walmart.

  “He followed Richard and me and the kids out to the van, and got inside as if he was already part of the family. Buckled himself up and waited for us to take him home. All he’d tell us was that he wasn’t going back. So...so we took him home.”

  She touched his arm and it immediately tensed. She didn’t remove her hand. “Seth. I hate, hate asking for charity. Maybe even more than you hate giving it. I have no one else.”

  Her hand was suddenly off his arm and in his hand. Her fingers held by his in a tight, full grip. This was nothing like his handshake. This was the hold of a man who felt her pain and wanted to bring her through it. “I’ll do it,” he said, his voice raw. “I’ll help. Just—just don’t beg me. I don’t want you thinking that I’m anybody other than a guy with a hammer.”

  What a strange thing to say. He was more than that. Anybody could see that. She gave him her biggest smile. He cleared his throat. “Besides which, Matt’s a good kid. You don’t have anything to give me, but Matt—well, you’re the only one who can give him what he needs.”

  For a solid year, she’d had to prove that to teachers, caseworkers, neighbors, the police. And on the worst nights, she’d lain curled on her side of the bed, knees to chin, with only the light from the phone, wondering if maybe she was wrong. To hear it now from a man who hardly spoke and when he did, it wasn’t ever complimentary, well...she bit her lip.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. She forced herself not to say it more than the one time.

  He nodded once, released her hand and crossed to the stairs. “Hey,” he called to Matt, “let me show you how to make a knot that lasts.”

  As Seth closed the distance between Matt and him, Alexi watched the consequences of securing Seth’s help unfold. She saw Seth take the string easily from Matt’s fingers, saw them crouch together, knee to knee, the smaller hand pulling, the larger tying, one holding the rebar, the other pounding it solid. She’d given Seth reason to become attached to Matt. Worse, she’d given him the right.

  It also didn’t help that she still felt the warm pressure of his hand as if he’d never let go.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Seth left the house in the early evening, he called Pete, the handyman, and brokered a swap of a rush kitchen reno job for a rush roof job on Pete’s house and barn, for which Mel gave him no end of flak the next morning on their new job.

  “We’ve already made commitments elsewhere,” Mel said and paused from mounting an anchor on a ridgeline to take out a sheet of paper from his front pocket. “Here, take a look.”

  Seth angle-walked from his anchor point on the roof of a five-thousand-square-foot house in Spirit Lake’s exclusive lakefront community, the owners being willing to pay the hefty rush job fee Mel had just implemented, and took from him what turned out to be a spreadsheet. It itemized the customers, the estimates, the approved jobs, the projected expenses, and the expected start and completion dates of twenty-two jobs.

  Seth didn’t even know Mel could navigate a computer beyond calling up The Weather Network. He didn’t even own a phone. “You did this?”

  Mel finished driving an unnecessary screw into the anchor clip before answering. He always built the safety system strong enough to support elephants. “No choice. We’ve got to get ourselves organized. And you—” he shook his hammer at Seth “—aren’t helping.”

  “I’m helping our sister,” Seth said.

  Mel started to drive in one more pointless nail. “Not from where I’m sitting. No love lost between you and Connie. Looks to me as if you want to help a pretty widow.”

  “I didn’t say she was pretty.”

  Mel squinted up at Seth from underneath his cap. “Is she?”

  Long legs, a life-loving smile and the best pair of eyes he’d ever stared into. “Not bad. Anyway, it’s not her I’m doing it for. It’s her oldest kid.”

  “How’s that?”

  Seth said nothing, not wanting to betray Alexi’s confidence.

  Mel grunted. “I rest my case. We’re not running a charity here.”

  “If there’s anyone who has a right to complain about money, it’d be me.”

  In the six months since their mother’s will was read, Seth and Mel had not discussed how the funds were distributed. Now, in less than a week, they’d each brought it up.

  Mel pulled another screw out of his belt.

  “Enough with the screws,” Seth snapped. “Hope you factored their waste into your pricing.” He scrunched up the spreadsheet and tossed it at Mel.

  Mel caught the paper ball against his chest and smoothed it flat. He nodded once, his head down. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I get it. You take whatever time you need.”

  Now Seth felt like a jerk. “I don’t need time. I need...”

  Mel looked up, waiting. For specifics, probably.

  Seth spun away. “I need to get back to work.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ON EACH OF the next seven days, Seth got a call from Alexi, updating him on the progress Pete and his crew were making. She continued to thank him—she couldn’t seem to stop herself—the way you would with a stranger, but surely by now, he had to count for someone different, someone you’d not feel in debt to for every single act of kindness.

  No way could he explain that to Alexi without sounding as if he was coming on to her. Which he wasn’t. He took her daily calls because he was interested, and not because of the soft roll to her words or the fact that she was using her most treasured possession to talk to him.

  In the early morning of the eighth day since promising to help Alexi, a solid roof of thick clouds rolled over Spirit Lake and let loose thick rain.

  “Guess I’ll get caught up on some paperwork,” Mel said, firing up his laptop at the dining table. “You might as well go to Tim’s by yourself, seeing as how it’s too wet for networking.”

  Fine. This way, he wouldn’t have to explain why, in addition to the regular order, he was picking up four lemonades and a large coffee.

  When Seth returned with Mel’s whipped coffee and Timbits, he set them on the dining table and turned to go.

  “Where’re you going?” Mel asked.

  “Out,” Seth said and left before his nosy brother shot off another question.

  This time at the house, Seth remembered to knock. Matt opened it. “Hey, Seth Greene. Mom!” he yelled up the stairs. “Seth Greene is here.”

  Seth had never noticed before that the boy called him by his full name. Weird. Then again, he hadn’t made it clear how he wanted to be addressed.

  “Hey, Matt. You can just call me Seth. Or Mr. Greene, if you prefer.”

  Matt shrugged. “I haven’t figured out what to call
you, actually. Until then, I prefer to stay on a full name basis.”

  “I’m not sure—” Seth began when Alexi called from the kitchen, “Seth! Come, look!”

  There she was, modeling the kitchen like a game show assistant. Her hands flared open to the cupboards, caressed the countertops and flicked on—“It’s magic!”—the water taps in the fully installed sink.

  Matt jumped in. “Look at our new fridge!”

  Seth hadn’t taken it in, seeing as how his eyes were riveted on Alexi. But now he saw the behemoth. Stainless, double door, freezer drawer on the bottom and—

  “Look, Seth! An ice maker!”

  So this was why Connie couldn’t afford contractors. Wasted it on something way beyond her price range, while he was having to do favors to get the work done. Then he caught Matt’s expression. He wore the wide-eyed, hopeful look of someone who had pinned their happiness on making sure the other was happy.

  “Do you like it?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I like it. It’s...awesome.”

  Matt beamed. “It came yesterday. You can have ice cubes or it’ll crush the ice. Last night I made everyone smoothies with juice and old bananas. It was as good as you get at a restaurant.”

  “Those lemonades for us?” Bryn cut in.

  “Yes. And the coffee’s for your mom.”

  “Oh!” Alexi said. “Thanks.” Her blue eyes lifted to his, and it hit him again how blue they were. She must’ve gotten a ton of compliments about them. He wondered if Richard had paid any attention. Yeah, he would’ve, because looking into them would make a man forget everything else.

  “My pleasure,” he said. And meant it. He got coffee for Ben and Mel and the temporary help because that was the right thing to do. With Alexi’s bunch, it was like playing Santa Claus. “Double cream, no sugar. I hope you like it that way.”

  Matt looked up from his lemonade. “Whoa. That’s exactly how she has it. How did you know?”

  He hadn’t. It just felt like what she’d want. “I lucked out. Good thing. Otherwise, I would have to keep bringing her coffee different ways until I got it right.”