Her cell phone beeped, and with a frown she looked down at it. Her mother. She considered not answering, but she knew her mother too well. She would call and call and text and call until Dani answered. With a swipe she had it on, and exhaustion plummeted over her. “Hello?”
“Dani? Where are you? I came by your house, and it’s locked up tighter than a drum.”
The sigh hurt. This would not be fun. “We went to Ridgemount, remember? We’re just heading back. We’ll be there in about 20 minutes or so.”
“Oh, good. You are not going to believe this. You are not. Your father has run off with that… that… woman to Cancun! Can you even believe that? Mitchell called me a little while ago. He thought I knew. Why would I know? How should I know? Did you know…?”
Dani closed her eyes and willed them not to start crying. No. She didn’t know, but that wasn’t going to help one little bit. “Mom, he’s a free man. He can do what he wants to do now.”
“That is not the point, Danisha. How will it look? Him gallivanting around like that. The ink isn’t even dry on the divorce decree!”
Honestly there wasn’t much arguing with that. Dani hated the situation too, but she could find nothing to do about it. She felt Eric glance over at her, and that sent irritation drilling into her. Once she got her mother pacified, they would go a round or five about it as well. How one spirit could be so tired and not crack right in half, she had no idea. “I know, Mom. I know. I just…” But there really was nowhere to go with that statement.
Eric had heard enough to know that they had a guest waiting for them at home, and he was not disappointed. It was nearly ten when they pulled past the curb and into their driveway. The little white car sitting there told him he would be the one to take care of getting Jaden ready for bed. “I’ll probably head out around six in the morning. Caleb said they’ll be starting about nine. I don’t want to be late.”
In the other seat Dani just nodded, gathered her things, and slid out when the vehicle was parked in the garage.
“How late do you think she’ll stay?” he asked, but she just shrugged and shook her head wordlessly. That’s what he was afraid of.
The conversation at home hadn’t been any better than the one on the phone except that Eric could hear the majority of it. When her mother finally left, Dani dragged herself upstairs to try to find enough energy to get herself into bed. It wasn’t easy.
In the bedroom she found their luggage lying next to the dresser, unopen. One more thing to do tomorrow. The shower was going, so she simply changed in the bedroom and got into bed. She needed a shower too—with a sandblaster, but that would have to wait until the morning. Right now, if she didn’t get some sleep soon, she was going to break down completely, and that was not something she really wanted to live through.
When he came out some time later, she had already drifted off, but she heard him moving about the room. She drifted off again only to be awakened when he got in the bed. Somehow between that moment and the one he clicked off the light she had fallen asleep again only to be awakened by the plunge into darkness. Exhaustion clawed at the edges of her being even as her mind started down the laundry list of tomorrow’s to-do list. Dry cleaning, February, the permits for Scotland… Frustration poured through her. She hadn’t put the laundry in the washer, and with that thought she was asleep.
Eric was up before anyone else the next morning. Dani would be up and getting ready by six, but he would already be on the road. He quietly got ready and glanced only once at her sleeping frame as he let himself out. He grabbed breakfast and coffee and was on the road before the clock even hit six. Funny how this felt so exciting. He couldn’t wait to see what the day would bring.
Slowly Dani made the bed. She hadn’t heard him get up or leave. Not that it would have mattered, but she didn’t just the same. It was time to get herself in living mode again, but just how she would accomplish that was anyone’s guess.
Driving east, Eric got the full effect of the sunrise, and it was glorious. He didn’t remember ever having seen it like this, and as he sipped his coffee, he relished the feeling. God was indeed good. Reaching over, he turned the radio and flipped the station to one he had found that played Christian music. He would never have pictured himself listening to such a thing, but it lifted his spirits in ways he couldn’t explain. Of course, he still had the pre-sets on the ones he normally listened to in case someone else rode with him. No use to appear weird to them.
He thought back to the sermon the day before. He remembered Caleb, standing there, turning away from God. How he couldn’t see “God” because he was the one who had moved. “God,” Eric whispered in the silence between songs, “I’m sorry I moved. I know I was the one that did that. Please help me learn to turn back around.”
Taking the coffee once more, he took a drink. If he had a shot at it, he was going to ask Caleb about that Bible Study group again. Maybe he could swing it on a Saturday when they came to work on Attabury. It was worth a shot.
By the time Dani got to her desk, she was two threads away from completely giving up. Jaden had been late for the bus, so Dani had to take her in to school. She hadn’t gotten the dry cleaning, nor had she thought to throw the laundry in. Mitchell called to say he was sorry he had told their mother about Cancun, but Dani didn’t even really know what to tell him other than she was sick of all of it.
“Clear your schedule,” Elise said as Dani headed from the elevators to her office.
“Oh, no. What now?”
“Joel says we’re on a conference call at 8:30.”
“Oh, joy. Could this day get any better?”
The sheer number of people milling about Attabury surprised Eric. The camera truck, waste truck, pickups, construction trucks, and people in every stripe and color jammed the little road, and he was glad they were out of town rather than in, or there wouldn’t have been room for them all. Carefully making his way through everything, he went in the front door which was open and found Caleb in a knot of decision-makers—Derek, Aaron, Greg, and two construction guys.
“We’ll pull this down,” Caleb said as Eric stepped up, “and see what we’ve got holding the second story up there. Then we’ll brace it as best we can and then sister all of those joists.” He looked up and smiled at Eric. “Hey!” Putting his hand out, he shook Eric’s. “Everyone, this is our homeowner, Eric Richardson.”
He shook the two hands of the guys he hadn’t already met. “Nice to meet you.”
“We want this to go smoothly, but safety is our first concern,” Caleb continued, and the others nodded seriously. “That tub upstairs is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Once we get it so it’s not going to crash down here, we’ll make some decisions on what comes next.”
Thankfully, the tub did not crash into the living room. The ceiling had come down, dusty beyond belief but without the joists giving way as well. They got the thing braced up and the crew was diligently working on sistering the entire thing, nail guns popping like corn on steroids. Caleb didn’t want to take the chance of doing only part of it, and Eric agreed. In fact, other than the wooden ceiling in the parlor, they had decided to sister every part of the ceiling they uncovered.
At lunch, the camera and construction crews left, and Eric sat on the floor in the kitchen with the others for sandwiches and tea.
“So what do you think?” Caleb asked Eric. “Pretty good start?”
“As good as we could’ve hoped for. I can’t wait until you get that staircase fixed so we can go up there and see that. How long you think that will take?”
“I was going to talk to you about that. Greg and I were looking at it, and I think we can save the railing, sand it, refinish it, and reuse it if you want.”
“That’d be great.” Eric nodded as he munched on a chip. “One of the things we don’t want to lose is the character of the place. That handrail is as old-school as they come.”
“And we talked a little about the ceiling in the parlor. Well, what will be t
he dining room.”
“Yeah, we definitely want to keep that too. When will the windows be here?”
“Late next week. Some of the windows are odd sizes, so we had to special order a couple of them, but it’ll be nice to get the boards off and get some natural light in here for a change,” Caleb said.
“How’s Rachel doing on the things she took?” Derek asked.
“Good. The little desk is something else, all secret compartments and stuff,” Caleb said. “Aaron’s going to go out there for a while after lunch and get some shots of what she’s doing.”
“Cool. That’ll be good,” Derek said.
There was a lull in the remodeling conversation, and Eric’s heart jumped at the thought of saying what had been on his mind for hours. He glanced around at the others and then behind him to make sure no one else was around. “Hm. You know, Caleb, you were talking about that Bible Study thing with the pastor. I was just wondering if you were serious, if that was happening or not.”
“Oh.” Caleb jumped as if he was startled by the question. “I don’t know. I’d just said something to the pastor jokingly about it, but…”
“Yeah. I just thought if you were thinking about it, Saturday morning would be great because I’ll be here, and everything.” He glanced around again, wishing he hadn’t asked. “But if you don’t, that’s cool too. It was just a thought.”
Caleb tipped his shoulder. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask him.”
It wasn’t until Wednesday night that Eric really thought about the idea again. It had been a week of texts, calls, and emails back and forth from Ridgemount. The stairs hadn’t cooperated quite the way they had hoped, though in that was a blessing because they had been smart enough not to try to use them any more than they already had. As it turned out, several of the steps had rotted and taking a tub down them would have ended in disaster.
They did get the handrail out intact. It was now at Rachel’s being restored with the other things. In fact, they had managed to rescue most of the spindles as well, and Rachel was sure she could craft replacements for the ones they had lost.
Eric was glad of that both because he liked the look of the staircase and because he could never have done this project on his own. He was in his chair on Wednesday night when the call came in from Caleb, and he happily clicked it on, knowing Dani was busy giving Jaden a bath. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“Good news. We don’t have to file any Worker’s Comp claims.”
“Worker’s Comp? What happened?”
“Oh, well, we got the stairs out finally. That was a pain and a half. We’re going to have to rebuild the floor underneath it. Don’t ask. It was bad.”
“I won’t.”
“But I wasn’t calling about that. We’ll get it. No worries.” Caleb paused a second. “So, were you serious about the pastor thing?”
Puzzled, Eric shifted in the chair. “Pastor thing?”
“You know about doing a Bible study while you’re here?”
That both opened Eric’s eyes and made him shift again, uncomfortable now that they might be moving from possible to it’s-happening. “Oh. Uh… I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Yeah, well, I talked to the pastor about it this morning, and he’s game if you are. Luke’s in and Derek when he’s here. They were going to mention it to Greg, but that may be it.”
Eric had to slowly breathe down the absurd panic. “Uh, okay. So…”
“We figured we could do it on Saturday morning at six. You guys are coming this weekend, aren’t you?”
How was he going to tell Dani this one? “Uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s the plan.”
As it turned out Eric managed to wait until two and a half hours of the trip back to Ridgemount had passed on Friday evening before getting up the courage to and finding the words to let her know he would be leaving early the next morning. “Oh, by the way, I was going to tell you,” he said as if just how to say this hadn’t been churning through his mind and across his heart for fifty-plus hours, “me and some of the guys are going to get together in the morning.”
Her face puzzled, Dani swung her gaze over to him from the midst of her laptop. “At Attabury?”
The center of his heart completely stopped beating. “No.” He let out a long breath to get the words to continue. One glance and he knew that he couldn’t hold her gaze, say the words, and drive. He let his focus fall and stay outside at the passing motorists. “They’re doing like a Bible study thing, and they asked if I wanted to join them.”
Okay, so that was a not-quite-true retelling of the situation, but Caleb had asked.
Her puzzlement fell into annoyance with a hint of anger. “Bible study?” She laughed a hollow disbelieving laugh. “The guys are getting together to study the Bible?”
Eric shrugged, feeling every sting of the arrows she was shooting his direction. “Yeah. I just… I feel like I should. They’ve done so much for us.”
Dismissively she laughed again and went back to her laptop. “Yeah. Whatever.” She shook her head and clicked down the page.
He wanted to ask what that meant, but he glanced in the rearview mirror at Jaden and decided that if they did have the discussion which would surely turn into an argument, now was not the time. However, anger and resentment crawled across his spirit just the same. Dani could be maddening to the core when she wanted to be, and these days, that was happening more often than not.
They only made a quick stop in town to drop Jaden at Rachel’s. Peter, one of the pastor’s sons, would be watching the kids while they all went out to see the house. Dani wanted to ask about the boy’s qualifications and if he knew all the numbers for those he might need in town, but Eric and Rachel didn’t really give her a chance. For her part, Jaden seemed thrilled to see the littler two, so Dani gave up the control-freak mother thing and just went along with it.
Rachel rode out to the house with them, saying she didn’t want to take her car and she could just ride back with Caleb. On the way, she talked about how much the house had already changed and how excited everyone in town was about the project. “We’ve gotten a little feedback from H&H, and everything seems to be going good on their end. I think they were planning to do the show like Derek’s where they do one house per episode, but this one is just such a big project, they’re talking about doing it more as a short series. So each house we do like this will be three or four shows instead of one.”
“That’s probably good for Caleb,” Eric said, sounding infinitely more into this than Dani felt. The closer they got to the place, the more her breathing constricted. This time she couldn’t blame it on a cold.
“It totally is,” Rachel said. “Really takes the pressure off of doing it fast. There’s no way this one could have been done in a couple of weeks.”
They pulled up to the house, the road out front still strewn with randomly parked vehicles although there weren’t nearly as many as on Monday. From the front Dani’s gaze went to it, still boarded up and crouching behind the snarled trees. Foreboding would have been a step up.
“But the living room looks so different, and that handrail is going to be amazing when I get it done. It’s unreal how intricate it is. That someone did it by hand is just amazing. I wouldn’t have the patience.”
“How are the other pieces going?” Eric asked as they all got out.
“Well, I had to stop on them to get the handrail done, but the desk is really coming along.”
Every step took willpower as Dani followed them across the road and around the back.
“I think next week they’re going to start on the outside,” Rachel said, “if the weather holds out. Caleb says that front porch really needs some reinforcing and redoing before he’ll feel good about using it very much.” She went in the back and called to whoever was making all the racket beyond the center wall that did not afford a view to the living room. “Come on. They’re in here.”
Carefully stepping around the tools and saws, Dani followed
Eric. The sight of the non-existent staircase took her breath away as they crossed from what would soon be the office into the center hallway.
“Wow!” Eric said, stopping. “This… whoa.”
“I know,” Rachel said. “Different. Right.”
“So different. I had no idea there would be so much space.”
“Caleb says once the stairs are back in they’ll get to work on that far side with the powder room and little coat closet.”
“Nice.”
Going through the large opening and into the living room was like slamming full-speed into a solid, brick wall. For one thing the room was absolutely enormous. For another the new sheetrocked area was amazing to behold. “Wow.”
Dani wasn’t sure who said it, but she felt it go through her as well.
“Whoa,” Eric said, turning slowly. “This is incredible.”
With a grin, Caleb came over to shake their hands. “Glad you could make it.”
Although Eric shook his hand, the shock didn’t leave. “So you got everything braced up then?”
“Pretty much had to rebuild it, but yeah. Once we get those stairs in, this place should be rockin’ and rollin’ in no time.”
That should have been good news, but it hit Dani like a punch. She managed to smile just as her cell phone went off. Reaching for it, she saw the name and knew she’d be better off emotionally just answering it later. However, she looked at Eric even as she hit accept. “It’s Mom.”
Eric nodded, his awe at the house dimming a few watts. The calls from her mother had been nearly incessant this week, one worse than the last. It was as if Dani was her mother’s only source of entertainment, and she was about to run that well dry. As he followed Caleb around listening to him explain what all they had done, Eric’s attention kept sliding back into the little hallway, wondering how long this conversation would last.
Raising Attabury: A Contemporary Christian Epic-Novel (The Grace Series Book 5) Page 16
