The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,100
cost? And how long will it take to install?”
“Don’t know,” Lorne said. “I put a call in to Tony. It won’t be as much as the big panel but, Celia, we don’t need it! The new panel is plenty big. I swear, Fitzwaller is deliberately jerking us around and I don’t know why.”
“Well, should we lodge a complaint? Take it up with the city?”
Lorne sighed. “Up until now, I didn’t want to make waves: that kind of thing can backfire on you. But . . .” He paused to think it over. “I think we have to. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Maybe you could call Trey?” I suggested. “Ask him for help?” But when Lorne broke my gaze, I knew that the task would fall to me.
I hadn’t exactly been avoiding Trey since that day in the restaurant; we’d talked on the phone a couple of times. But I’d made sure to keep the conversations short, businesslike, and to the point, and resolved to avoid face-to-face meetings with him unless absolutely necessary. I had good reason.
In the two months and then some since I’d returned to Charleston, I’d seen Trey Holcomb, what—seven? Maybe eight times? And yet, on two of those occasions, for reasons beyond understanding, I had opened my mouth and impulsively spewed out extensive details of my private life, including the strange story of my strange family that I’d never told anyone else. What was it about Trey? Why did my social veneer disappear in his presence?
That was embarrassing enough, even a little humiliating. But the thing that truly bothered me was that Trey never returned the favor, never offered up a hostage of his own, not even after I’d freely and openly handed over mine, and more than once. When Calvin first explained the principles of the whole trading hostages thing to me, he said that exchanging hopes, secrets, fears, and failings, things you wouldn’t have wanted to share with the world at large, was a way to get to know someone very well, very quickly. But as I now understood, it was also a way to grow a relationship, to develop trust. Love and trust go hand in hand. As I’d learned too well from Steve and the long line of heartbreakers who had come before him, you can’t have one without the other.
For all that was good about him—intelligence, competence, devotion to justice, and amazing eyes—Trey Holcomb obviously had trust issues. Even if I hadn’t already picked up on that during our exchanges, or lack thereof, and taken note that he refused to talk about his own past even after I’d told him everything about mine, not even when I’d pressed him, the fact that his own brother didn’t even feel comfortable calling to ask for his help was a huge red flag. I liked Trey, a lot. In the right circumstances, I was certain we could be friends, maybe even more than friends. But the circumstances weren’t right and, for once in my life, I had resolved to take my own good advice and avoid seeing or talking to him unless I absolutely had to.
Now I did have to. We needed help.
“It’s okay, Lorne. I can call him.”
“Thanks, Celia,” he said, looking relieved. “I’d do it myself but, you know how it is, Trey and me . . .” He looked away, poured a little more coffee into a mug that was still fairly full, and changed the subject. “We’ll get started on the dining room drywall today. I planned on doing it all at once, after the kitchen, but I don’t want the guys just standing around. Don’t worry, Celia. We’ll get it done, one way or another.”
“I know you will. Thanks, Lorne.”
He touched his fingers to his forehead, gave me a little salute, and picked up his coffee mug. “Well, I’ll get back to it. What are you up to today?”
THE ANSWER, AS it turned out, was a whole lot of worrying.
The afternoon before, Pris and I had grabbed the handle of a rusty, cracked, and incredibly heavy cast-iron Dutch oven, the last item from the last box of junk, counted off one-two-three, swung it over the side of the dumpster, and then smacked our hands in double high fives before going into the house to celebrate with White Claw seltzers and red velvet cupcakes from Sweet Lulu’s Bakery. We were almost giddy with joy. I told Pris to take the next day off with pay as a reward. The