Just for Nice

by H M Shepherd

  “The contractor I’m working for now is doing a flip for a couple, and they’re upset that we’re a week overdue and the work isn’t all. He’s been keeping us later and later, trying to get finished. I’m really not supposed to leave Ellie alone for so long, but I thought she was mature enough to handle it.” He laughed ruefully. “If the officer who responded hadn’t been a friend of mine, she probably could have called Ellie’s caseworker and had her taken away. What I did was stupid, and it can’t happen again. But I have to work too. She can’t come with me to sites all summer either.”

  “You want me to watch her?” Nick guessed.

  Sam nodded and looked relieved that he didn’t have to ask. “And in return I’ll help you with all this,” he said, waving a hand around to indicate the whole house and Nick’s admittedly shoddy work.

  Nick weighed his options. On one hand, he was no babysitter. He still had work to do aside from the renovation, and it would be difficult with an undoubtedly surly teenage girl around. Not to mention all the questions he had about where Ellie’s mother was and why Sam was apparently fostering her. And yet—

  “I’m planning on opening this place as a bed-and-breakfast. Could you help me get it done and up to code before this fall?”

  “Of course.”

  Mentally Nick pushed away the questions and rejoiced at the idea of never having to pick up a godforsaken paintbrush again. Outwardly he kept his face set in stone and offered his hand to shake on it. “It’s a deal, then.”

  Sam tossed the plaster trowel to his left hand and took Nick’s, holding it tight with his own much larger, far more calloused hand. The explosion of butterflies in Nick’s stomach was difficult to ignore, and he added one more reason to his list of why he should not have agreed to this arrangement.

  SAM HAD hated Nick on sight.

  The old Yoder house had been for sale for at least a year without a single offer, and it had been a good six months since anyone even wanted to walk through it. The only person who had seen the inside that entire time was an old friend of Sam’s, who went over about once a week to keep it clean, and even then, her visits became fewer and further between.

  One day she’d called Sam in a panic, saying that someone had requested to look at the house and that it had been weeks since she’d even dusted the place. With only one night to get it spotless, she’d wheedled Sam into helping, promising a case of Yuengling in exchange.

  It hadn’t been difficult, to be honest, but the real estate agent was so pleased with the assistance that she made a point of calling Sam over when he went out to check the mail, waving to him from across the street, where she stood with a tall, dark-haired man in a three-piece suit.

  “Sam, I just wanted to thank you so much for your help!” she said with a wide grin that indicated things had gone well. “And I wanted to introduce you. This is Sam Hildebrandt, and Sam, this is Mr. Domenico Caratelli—he just put an offer in, so you two may end up neighbors!”

  “Maybe,” Nick had countered. “I want a friend of mine in real estate to look into zoning ordinances, but if things work out, then, yes, I’ll be putting in an offer. And just Nick, please.”

  Sam had nodded shortly, forcing himself to be polite. The house was old but still beautiful, in good shape, and on a gorgeous piece of land. It had been a farm once. The Yoders had been forced to sell it off parcel by parcel until all that remained was the house and a few outbuildings, which they had been resolute in keeping. The thought of some city boy sending in people to tear down what was left and split it into lots broke Sam’s heart as much as it infuriated him. It didn’t even matter if that boy happened to have large dark eyes and a sad, sweet smile.

  To his surprise no demolition team showed up. A small U-Haul stopped by and had offloaded some boxes and a few pieces of furniture into the guest cottage one day, and the week after, a small team did some sort of work inside the big house, but the demolition crew he was expecting never showed up. Everything else Nick had done on his own. Sam had taken to spying out the front window and had watched as Nick began to single-handedly remodel the old house. Or attempt to do so, anyway.

  Eventually Ellie had caught on. “Hey, Sam! He’s outside digging up the garden in jeans and a tank top!” she’d tease, and eventually he stopped looking out of embarrassment. He’d considered offering Nick the use of his truck in lieu of Nick’s own little hatchback as an excuse to strike up a conversation, but had ultimately abandoned that plan after wavering for too long.

  If a silver lining was to be found in the aftermath of Ellie’s stupid party, it was that Sam had been given another chance to start over and make a much better impression.

  It had worked more effectively than he’d hoped. He did need help with Ellie—that part wasn’t a lie—but he hadn’t expected Nick to agree so readily. He especially hadn’t expected Ellie to react with anything short of blind fury, for that matter. But she genuinely didn’t seem to mind beyond a single insistence that she didn’t need a nanny, which was easily countered with a reminder that she’d managed to have the police called on her less than a week into her summer vacation.

  “Can I get a job now?” she asked as they cleared up after dinner. Sam turned from the sink and raised an eyebrow at the question. “Well, Nick has a car—”

  “Mr. Caratelli, until he tells you otherwise.”

  “Mr. Caratelli has a car, and he doesn’t have a job, or not really, anyway. He said he was a lawyer, but he doesn’t seem to go anywhere. I’m sure you’ve been watching enough to have noticed that, though.”

  He had, but that was neither here nor there. “Your point?”

  “Well, you said I couldn’t get a job because there was no way for me to get there. Now I have a way, so can I get a job?”

  Sam began to ladle leftover potpie into a plastic bowl and asked Ellie for a lid. “You’ll need to speak to him about it, I suppose,” he said. “It’s his car and his time.” No doubt she’d already put in an application at one of the local stores. Ellie had a bad habit of doing as she wanted and asking for permission afterward.

  Ellie handed him the lid he’d requested and sent an anxious look in Sam’s direction. “Do you think, maybe, he’d be able to take me to visit Mom?”

  “No!” Sam said a little more forcefully than he meant to. “That’s our business. We don’t need to discuss it with strangers.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she jerked away from him, edging toward the door. “Look at me. Look, I’m so sorry. I know I keep promising you, and I know I’m not keeping that promise. Next time I have a day off, it’s yours.”

  “You never have a day off,” she muttered.

  “I will soon. The house in Hamburg’s almost all, and if we stay on track, I’ll have a few days before I start my next job. We’ll go see your mom then.”

  They finished cleaning up in mostly silence after that. Before putting the leftovers away in the fridge, Ellie filled another, smaller plastic container full of potpie. “You should bring some over to Nick,” she said, snapping the lid on and passing it over to Sam.

  “He’s probably already had dinner.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Then he can have it tomorrow.”

  “You can give it to him. Why don’t you head on over now and I’ll finish—”

  “Nope. You do it.” Her tone brooked no argument.

  As soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, they headed out the door and across the street. Sam knocked on the door of the guest cottage first, but there was no answer. He was just about to send Ellie up to the big house to see if Nick was there when they heard him call, “I’m out here! Just a second—stop, stop! No! Hey!”

  Before Sam had a chance to wonder who he was talking to, a small black puppy charged around the corner of the house. It ran past Sam and Ellie and stopped short, its back end continuing forward until it flipped into a somersault. This failed to deter it, however, and it began to bark at them in a futile attempt to intimidate the intruders. Ellie’s delighted squeal only made
it worse.

  Nick, apparently having gone the opposite way around the house, appeared behind the puppy, taking one careful step at a time. His hand shot out and caught it by the scruff of its neck, and he gathered the puppy in his arms. “Could you…?” He held out a leash to Sam, who fastened the attached collar around the puppy’s neck, ignoring the needlelike teeth that gnawed fruitlessly on his wrist.

  “Christ,” Nick muttered, “I should name her Houdini. I’m so sorry—did she bite you?” He struggled to hold her close as she wriggled around to lick his face.

  Sam shook his head; there were a few angry red scratches, but no cuts or blood. “Nothing to worry about. When did you get a dog?”

  “This morning. I went to the shelter in Reading just to look last week, and they managed to sucker me into filling out an application. Told me she’d been adopted and brought back in less than a month because she was such a handful, and I was stupid enough to think they were exaggerating. I just picked her up today.” He checked that the collar was secure and put her back down, where she proceeded to wrap the leash around his legs chasing a firefly.

  Ellie finally burst. “What’s her name? Can I play with her?” she asked, her hands clasped below her chin and her eyes open wide.

  Nick handed her the leash. “It’s Maggie, and sure thing. Just stay as far away from the road as you can, and holler if she gets loose again.” By the time he finished, Ellie was already halfway across the yard toward the barn, the puppy bounding along to keep up with her. Nick shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “I’m glad she likes dogs. I probably should have thought about that before I went and got one.”

  “She loves them,” Sam said. “I’ve been wanting to get one, but with my work schedule, it didn’t seem wise.”

  “Same. Pulling seventy hours a week and never being home wouldn’t have been good for a dog. Now that I’ll be working where I live, it should be okay.” His expression turned wistful. “And I just didn’t want to be by myself in an empty house anymore.”

  Sam wasn’t sure if he was expected to respond, and if he was, what he was meant to say. He held out the container of potpie instead. “Here. Leftover soup.” He flushed in spite of himself. “I’m sure you’ve probably eaten, but Ellie insisted. It’s her specialty.”

  “Thanks! I have, but it was just a slice of pizza, and I’ll probably be all night doing paperwork. I’m sure I’ll need it later.” Nick went inside to put it away, and Sam followed, staying in the doorway.

  “You should have dinner with us more often. I mean, if you’d want. It’d be better than pizza every night,” he said, tilting his head toward a trash can that had at least three boxes from Nino’s balanced on the top.

  “I could argue with you there.” Nick paused and appeared to think about it. “But I’d like that. You should do the same—I can cook. It’s just that all I know how to make is meant to feed a lot of people. Can’t make lasagna for one. I tried that, figured I’d split the rest of it into single servings and freeze it,” he said with a wry smile. “If you ever wanted a visual representation for loneliness, that would probably be it.”

  He said it so breezily that Sam wasn’t sure if Nick meant to be funny or not.

  “Before I forget, Ellie’s social worker called.”

  “Yeah, I went to meet with her last Friday. Did I get the all-clear?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Good. I hate to admit it, she made me a little nervous.”

  Sam hadn’t had to meet with the social worker in months, but he still shuddered at the thought of her. Paula Schaeffer was a small woman in her fifties who vaguely resembled Granny from the Looney Tunes, but had the mien of a well-trained Doberman. Before allowing him to take custody of Ellie, she’d interviewed him so thoroughly, he was genuinely surprised he hadn’t been asked if he preferred boxers or briefs, and the way she had stared him down through her impressively thick glasses made him wonder if he should have told her the answer to that without being prompted.

  “She wants to meet with Ellie after about a month or so to see how everyone’s getting along, but she seemed impressed with you.”

  “She could’ve fooled me,” Nick muttered. “But that’s good! Then, when we’re done today with the house, you can let me know when you’ll need me next.”

  “I told you, I can handle this myself. That was our deal.”

  “Yeah, but it makes me feel like such an asshole, you working the whole time while I sit at a desk.”

  “You do plenty. Just because it’s paperwork doesn’t mean it’s worthless. I wouldn’t have the patience for it, anyway.” Nick only smiled and followed him anyway.

  They were starting to paint the parlor that evening. Nick had gone through and fixed nicks and cracks with the plaster, as Sam had shown him before, and had begun to cut in around the top of the wall with a deep blue paint. The ceiling was supposed to stay white, Nick explained, to keep the room from feeling too blocked in.

  “I don’t want to take down any walls. That whole open-concept thing is a mess, anyway. I wouldn’t even do it if this house was supposed to just be for me. The blue is so dark, I thought it would be best to leave the ceiling alone, but….” He pointed up, and Sam saw the fine lines and blotches of blue paint from the brush rubbing along the ceiling. “I guess tape would be the way to go—”

  “No need.” Sam looked around and found an angled brush. He loaded it with paint, dragged each side against the lip of the can, and easily made a clean, straight line across the wall. “And that’s that.”

  Nick stared at the line. “Can you show me that one more time? Little slower, though.”

  Shaking his head, Sam passed the brush to Nick. “You try. Just go under the one I just made.”

  Nick tried, but the line was still wobbly and uneven.

  “No, here.” Before he thought about what he was doing, Sam stepped behind Nick and placed his own hand over Nick’s, fixing the angle and providing extra stability.

  Pressed together side by side, Sam was acutely aware of how much smaller Nick was. Not in height—there was only a fraction of an inch difference between the two of them—but Sam was so broad that he dwarfed Nick’s slender frame. It would be so easy to wrap his arms around Nick’s narrow hips and envelop him—

  “Can I ask you something personal?” Nick asked suddenly, and Sam stopped imagining. What had the social worker said? What could he say to head off any questions Nick could have? Or did he deserve a full explanation? Nick climbed back up the ladder with the paint, and Sam barely heard him as he continued. “The way you speak… I can’t place the accent and it’s been driving me insane.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Sam stepped away, hoping Nick hadn’t noticed the relief in his voice.

  “It sounds German, but it isn’t quite.”

  “Jah, ich schwetz Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsch.” Sam blushed a bit. He hadn’t meant to show off, but Nick’s delighted laugh made him feel a little less like a braggart.

  “That’s amazing! I honestly thought only the Amish spoke that anymore.”

  “The Plain folk tend to more often than the rest of us. My grandmother was an Old Order Mennonite before she married my grandfather. She knew English, but she only used Deitsch with us. We were around her more often than we were our parents.” Sam shrugged. “I guess it stuck.”

  “She sounds like my nonna, except I didn’t pick up Italian quite as well. Just enough to flirt with the waitresses whenever we went to visit the fatherland.”

  Sam could picture Nick on the patio of a sun-drenched café, charming a pretty, dark-haired girl with carefully practiced lines.

  “What do you mean by Plain, anyway?”

  “Like the Amish, sort of. Mostly anyone who’s Anabaptist, though I’m not sure if some of the New Order faiths count.”

  “I thought the Amish didn’t marry outsiders.”

  “They don’t, typically. My grandfather was Fancy Dutch. My grandmother was a Wenger Mennonite and Plain. She met my grandfather while
she was on Rumspringa—sort of like a time where Anabaptist kids get to try the things they won’t be allowed to do once they’re baptized,” he explained at Nick’s puzzled look. “It’s a little more complicated than that. But anyway, she met my grandfather when he offered her a ride home from a party. They kept running into each other, and eventually he asked her to marry him.”

  “Did that get her… oh, what’s the word? Like, excommunicated?”

  “Nah, Mennonites don’t do the Ban, and she hadn’t even been baptized yet anyway. But her father completely shut her out. Marrying outside the faith was bad enough, but she had to go and pick a Brauchers son.”

  “I swear to God, you’re just making words up now.” The work had gone quickly while making conversation, and Nick carefully drew the paintbrush across the top of the wall and to the corner. “And there! Quarter of the way done. Sort of.” He looked around. “I still have to do this around the windows. And the door. And the fireplace. But then I should be able to do the rest with a roller.”

  “Don’t forget the baseboard.”

  “Right, right. We could probably just do that the same color.”

  “And we’ll have to fix what you already did to the ceiling.”

  Nick swore.

  JULY

  AS SAM dragged himself through the front door of his home, he simply dropped his belongings wherever they happened to land, making a neat trail to the couch, where he fell face-first. An idle worry drifted through his mind, something about filthy clothes and stains, but his exhaustion countered that, plus all the furniture was scotchgarded for precisely that reason. He’d just dropped Ellie off at the grocery store, and he had the entirety of her six-hour shift to do absolutely nothing. Cleaning up after himself, along with all of his other adult responsibilities, could wait.

  His phone began to ring.

  He tried to ignore it at first, but even his fatigue couldn’t override his overactive, anxiety-ridden imagination—what terrible, awful thing could have happened that he had to know about immediately?—and he twisted his hip around to fish his phone from his pocket and answered it without bothering to check the caller ID. “’Lo?” he murmured, half his face still buried in a throw pillow.