A Roof Over Their Heads

by M. K. Stelmack

  “It would be easier to just ask her,” Bryn suggested.

  Seth and Matt exchanged quick smiles of understanding. When Seth turned to include Alexi, he caught her frowning, the corner of her mouth down turned. What had he done wrong?

  She smiled again, though now it looked like a superhuman effort. “What brings you here today?”

  “It’s raining. Thought I’d see what I could do.”

  “It’s all good. The guys seem to have a handle on it. They’ll probably come by in a bit.”

  Was she trying to brush him off? “No, not today. I already told them I could get a few things done, so they can move on to other jobs.”

  “Well,” she said, with a sweep of her hand around the kitchen, “as you can see, most everything is done.”

  She had to be kidding. Sure, there were cupboards but the doors were stacked. There were no tiles on the floor, so the subfloor was still exposed.

  “When’s the tile getting laid?”

  “Not sure.”

  “The rest of the appliances?”

  “Maybe tomorrow. The stove is on back order.”

  “For how long?”

  Her face tightened under his barrage of questions. “Okay, I could do with help.”

  “I’ll help,” Matt said.

  “No,” Alexi said at the same time Seth said, “Sure.”

  “Why not?” Matt challenged. Good question.

  “It... I...” Her gaze collided with Matt’s and she stopped. Seth knew she was feeling the exact same way he had with the fridge. She couldn’t refuse his happiness. “I guess you and Seth could pull up the carpet in your bedroom.”

  Matt shot off. Seth lingered, wanting Alexi to give a straight answer to Matt’s question. Instead she got busy with a box of what looked like rags to him. “While those two are busy,” she said to the other three kids, “how about we sort out my business materials?”

  Seth took the hint and headed down the hall. Matt’s bedroom turned out to be his old one. To be exact, the one he’d had for the first dozen years of his life before moving to the basement. What an unholy mess. It looked as if Connie had tried to pull the carpet up herself. In one corner, slabs of carpet were piled high with most of the underlay rolled away to expose the old subfloor. The boy’s mattress was tucked into a corner. Beside it was a storage tub with a flashlight and the book, Guinness World Records 2013. Put the whole setup under a city bridge, and it would make sense. No way was this place going to be ready for any caseworker anytime soon. They needed another two weeks, at least.

  “Time,” Seth said, “to get started.”

  Matt turned out to be not a bad worker, even if his job consisted of hauling pieces of carpet out front to a large disposal bin Seth had ordered the day he promised to help. He could write it off as a company expense.

  In between trips, Matt kept the conversation rolling. “How many roofs have you done, do you think?”

  “A few hundred.”

  “Wow. Aren’t you scared to be up that high?”

  Seth lifted a corner of the carpet underlay with a box cutter blade. “No reason to be,” he said, because that was the truth. “There’s a harness to keep you safe.” The harness Mel had insisted they must all wear right from the day of their dad’s accident. Harness with rope that tripped him up a half-dozen times a day.

  “I’d be scared anyway.”

  “I’m not up there alone,” Seth thought to point out. “I work with my brother and a friend.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “Yep. An older one. His name is Mel.”

  “Cool. Let me get this out to the Dumpster, and then you can tell me more.”

  Seth smothered a smile at Matt’s adult-speak, and let him go. He took a mighty heave on the underlay. To reveal dark rotted boards. Crap. Where had this come from?

  He called from the doorway, “Hey, Alexi?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you come here for a minute?”

  As soon as she entered the room, he pointed to the floor.

  She groaned. “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t look like mold,” he said. “I’ll need to lift off the rest of the underlay to check that the damage is contained. Then I’ll have to cut out and replace this section of the subfloor.”

  “That’ll take time, won’t it?”

  “More than you got.”

  “Couldn’t we just lay carpet over top for the time being? Until after the meeting?”

  “And then have to redo it? Let me see what I can get done today. With Matt helping—”

  “I don’t want Matt getting in your way.” She pulled out her phone and set it tapping against her chin. Her worry signal.

  “He isn’t. He’s actually a help.” Seth dropped to his knees and tugged on some more of the carpet. More rot but not as deep, so maybe it was contained.

  Alexi stood there still, phone tapping away. Maybe he hadn’t sounded sincere enough. He’d been accused of that before. He sat back on his haunches and looked squarely at her. “I’m happy to have him around.” Her mouth twisted.

  “I’m sorry, Seth,” she said. “But you’re not to have anything to do with Matt, understood?”

  In her tremendous blue eyes, filled with fear and resolve, he didn’t forget everything but remembered. He tumbled through life events, bounced and skittered past his good deeds, his organized parties, his “good guy” business breaks for widows and low-income seniors, his upkeep of his mother and the house, past every time he rescued cats and dogs and bumblebees, past all that to the one stain on his life he could not erase and what she, new to town and too busy to become involved, must’ve discovered through her government connections.

  She had found out about his criminal record.

  * * *

  “IT’S NOT WHAT you think.”

  Alexi and Seth stared at each other, each having spoken the same thing at the same time. Alexi had watched the sadness wash over Seth’s face when she demanded that he stay away from Matt. She hadn’t expected that powerful a reaction, and she’d only wanted to reassure him that it wasn’t personal when he’d blurted out the exact same thing.

  Only he couldn’t have meant the same thing, right?

  He gestured, like a gentleman holding open a door, for her to explain first. She plunged in, needing to convince Seth before Matt returned.

  “You know Matt runs but he doesn’t run away as much as he runs to,” Alexi said in a near whisper in case one of the kids overheard. “When Matt ran from his father it came out later that he’d already planned to go to his grandfather’s. When his grandfather died, he didn’t have a plan. He told me later that it taught him to always have one, or otherwise other people could control where he ended up. The foster home turned out not to be ideal. There was—”

  Alexi stopped. No need to go into that.

  “At any rate, it gave Matt time to figure out a plan. We discovered later that Matt didn’t happen upon Richard, that he’d been scouting for months before he found Richard.”

  The front door opened, and Alexi paused, waiting to see what Matt would do.

  “Hey,” Seth called out. “Your mom and I are working some measurements out here. Could you haul out the pile Pete left in the kitchen?”

  “Okay!”

  “Thanks, bud.”

  As soon as the front door closed again, Alexi hurried on. “The point is, he’d already planned to come to Spirit Lake. He’d already found this house from Kijiji. The reason I packed us all up was because I knew Matt would come here anyway.”

  Seth looked dubious. Alexi pushed on.

  “It’s not just that. There’s a pattern. Matt wants a father in his life. He left his mother for his father who wasn’t any better than her with his drinking. When his dad died, there was a cousin, a good woman, single but
with two adopted kids from Haiti. She wanted him, but Matt wanted a father, so he went into the foster care system. The father there was absent or if there, never talked to the kids. At all. Matt found Richard because Richard was a father.”

  “Yeah, but the pattern stops here. Connie had the place for rent, not me.”

  “Look at the two of you. You can’t tell me that you haven’t seen him attach himself to you.”

  He frowned, which meant he was seeing it. She pressed her point. “He’s targeting you as his next father. But that won’t help his adoption process. It’ll raise questions about this new man in his life. I’m asking, and I know I’ve already asked a lot, but I’m asking you to keep your distance with him. For his sake, for all of our sakes.”

  Seth reached down and gave another tug on the underlay to reveal more water-darkened subfloor. Both of them groaned. Seth held firm to the huge triangle of underlay as he spoke. “So let me get this straight. You talked me into doing these renos for you so Matt wouldn’t be taken from you, but now you’re saying that I’m the cause of his problems.”

  “Not the deliberate cause.”

  “Because you want me to do something for you and the boy but not get anything out of it. No money, no contact with the boy, nothing.”

  Did he have to put it that way? “It’s not you. Anybody close to Matt right now would catch the wrong kind of attention.”

  He gave the underlay another strong pull, lifting it so close to her feet she had to hop back. He didn’t seem to notice as he glared at the floor. The wet boards were now a lighter shade. The damage was contained.

  “Point is, it is me. Point is, he chose me. Why don’t you ask him to back off until after the adoption? Keep quiet around the caseworker. Seems like a smart kid.”

  “That’s tricky. Because they can ask Matt point-blank if I’ve told him not to say anything.”

  Seth nodded his understanding. “Can’t leave well enough, can they? Haven’t you all gone through enough?”

  A rush of thankfulness passed through Alexi. He did understand. Impulsively she said, “So that’s why it’s so important to me that he become adopted. For him. For the other kids. And yeah, for me.”

  He paused. “A hard kid to say ‘no’ to.”

  She held her breath. “But you will, won’t you?”

  Her cell rang. The Government of Alberta. What now? She was happy to ignore it but Seth had already turned away to tear off the carpet in the closet. As usual, bureaucracy interfering at precisely the wrong time.

  “Is this Alexi Docker?” The voice on the other end was broad and rough, female.

  “Uh, speaking.”

  “Okay, this is Marlene.” She also gave her last name. “Don’t try to remember that. Legacy from my ex. Remember Marlene. I’m with the agency here in Red Deer. So I hear you moved in on my turf, and we need to meet. How about the day after tomorrow? Friday, at nine?”

  Wha—? “I have some work deadlines coming up. Next week would be better.”

  “Work? What kind of work do you do? Says here in the file ‘Little Wonders.’”

  “Yes, I do custom work. Mostly...stuffed toys.”

  “That’s nice. You make enough to pay the bills with that?”

  Yes, this was definitely the one Brenda had warned her about. “So far, so good.”

  “Ha. That’s what I say when they ask about my plan for immortality. I won’t keep you long. About an hour. How about you pick a time and I’ll clear my schedule?”

  Alexi offered what she knew every government worker would say no to. “How about Friday? Say quarter to four?”

  “Sure. I could wrap it up in forty-five. Sounds good.”

  The moment the call ended, Alexi’s mind started to race. How was she going to get things in shape by the day after tomorrow? True, the appointment was in the afternoon, so she had the morning to tidy, but what about this room?

  The thump of carpet behind her made her spin. Seth jerked his head at the cell tapping her chin. “You do that a lot, you know.”

  Alexi grimaced. “I have reason. That was my new caseworker. She insisted on coming this week. Friday at quarter to four.”

  Seth shook his head, long steady swings of absolute certainty. “Not a chance. Not even close. There’s no way we’ll get it done.”

  “What can we get done?”

  Seth regarded her. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “That’s not a choice I get to make.”

  Seth continued to regard her, except in an entirely different way. The corner of one eye narrowed, crinkled, into something like a wink, and in so doing, the corner of his mouth lifted into an upturn that might with the slightest encouragement break into a smile.

  She responded with her own lip upturn. That was all it took for him to break through with a full-on grin.

  It was the first time a man had smiled at her since Richard, not because she was a customer or a seller or a mom with paperwork. Yes, she had Richard’s smile on the phone but it was nothing compared to Seth’s very real one.

  “Okay,” he said, still smiling. “If you can’t give up, then I guess I can’t, either.” He looked around. “We could get the carpet laid, I suppose. I’m going to cut out that rotted part of the subfloor. That’ll be some job right there.” He picked up his measuring tape and zipped out a length of it, ready to get to work.

  The front door opened. “One more load, Seth Greene, and I’m ready to help.”

  “Okay!” Seth called back. Alexi’s smile faded. Had he forgotten completely their conversation about Matt? He retracted his measuring tape, the metallic hiss and twang of it scraping on Alexi’s nerves.

  “Seth. I need to know if I have your cooperation.”

  He looked up from his kneeling position on the wooden subfloor. “What does it look like you got?”

  Was he being deliberately obtuse? “I mean with Matt. She sounds...tough. Brenda—the other caseworker—warned I might get assigned to someone not entirely sympathetic. You can’t be here when she comes, okay?”

  Seth shrugged. “I hear you. I’ll be gone by Friday at noon at the latest.”

  “And between now and then? Will you play it cool?”

  Seth sat back on his haunches. The smile was gone. “How exactly do you see this happening? Any second now, he’s going to come here, expecting to help me. Do you want me to tell him to get lost?”

  Alexi had a sneaky suspicion that Matt wouldn’t be so easily deterred. Seth picked up a hammer, tested its heft, and then switched it for one with a larger head. “Because,” he said in answer to his question, “I’m not going to be rude to him. He’d see it as cruel, and there’s no way I’m going to hurt a kid who’s already lost three dads.

  “So, this is what I’ll agree to. I won’t go looking for him but if he comes to me now and again, I will treat him with the respect he deserves no matter what some bureaucratic busybody wants to make out of it. Deal?”

  Not exactly what she was hoping for. Still, in his own pigheaded way, he was sticking up for Matt, and that meant he was on her side. “Deal,” she said, and added, “Thank you.”

  He grunted, selected what looked like a sort of chisel, set it against the nail-studded strip of wood and tapped it with his hammer. The strip sprung away and Seth shuffled forward to continue his work along, from what she could see, the entire perimeter of the room.

  Clearly, their conversation was done. Time for her to intercept Matt. She was at the door when she remembered.

  “Oh, what did you mean when you said to me that it wasn’t what you think?”

  Seth hit hard with the hammer and the wood strip snapped. “Not much,” he said. “Only that I wasn’t trying to interfere.”

  That sounded...off. Especially given his almost devastated reaction. She might’ve pressed it, except that the door opened and Matt sang out, “
Coming, Seth Greene!”

  Seth popped out a length of stripping. “You going to take care of that,” he said, not stopping, “or am I?”

  She left without a word, because they both knew the answer to that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SETH WAS ON the roof of an apartment complex with Ben and Mel by seven the next morning. A real tough seven because he’d only rolled into bed six hours earlier, having stayed at the house to work on Matt’s bedroom floor, which, like every reno job since the dawn of time, took way longer than he’d figured.

  Right at ten when the sun had fully set, he had finally finished prepping the floor and was ready to quit when in came Alexi, Matt having crashed on her bed, who thanked him, cut the ties on the underlay and began to roll it out herself. Nothing for him to do except to drop to his knees beside her and get ’er done.

  “You look warmed over,” Ben said, as he and Seth set up the rope anchors under a steady wind. Mel had landed this new job, no small feat considering Greene-on-Top was a small company. Didn’t help that the wind was strong enough to trip a person up.

  “Yeah, I was carpeting at the house until twelve thirty,” Seth said.

  “You going back there today?”

  “If it rains. She’s got a social worker coming over tomorrow. She’s in the middle of adopting and it won’t look good if the kid doesn’t have a decent room.”

  “Which one?” Mel asked from his seat on a pallet of shingles where he was scarfing down his daily twenty-pack of Timbits. “The naked one?”

  How had his brother heard them from that far away and over the wind? “No, the oldest one. Name’s Matt.”

  “What’s the naked one called?”

  “Bryn. And he’s not naked anymore.”

  “I know that,” Mel said. “But since I didn’t know his name was Bryn, I couldn’t call him that, could I? What are the names of the others?”

  Seth told Mel because it was easier than explaining why he didn’t need to know. His older brother liked to know the names of everyone he met, and the thing was he actually remembered them all.