The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,109

for it.”

“Which is why God invented lawyers. And billable hours.”

Trey chucked a hunk of wood toward the can with a flicking motion of his wrist, as if he were dunking a basketball, and grinned when he hit the target, clearly pleased with himself. Watching him, I grinned too. He seemed so different today, more relaxed. From the first moment we’d met he’d shown himself to be that rarest of creatures, a genuinely good man. He went out of his way to help me and, from what I could tell, just about everybody else who came across his path, a champion of underdogs, a man who really did refuse to go down without a fight. I appreciated that and respected him for it. At the same time, I always knew Trey was holding a piece of himself back, and that bothered me.

But today was different. He seemed a lot more open and willing to talk—at least at first.

“When did you stop working for your dad?”

“The summer after college, when I decided to go to law school.”

“Do you ever miss it? Working with your hands?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “It feels good to get to the end of a long day and know you actually created something people can touch and see and use. But if I had it to do all over again, I’d still pick the law. Justice isn’t always meted out as impartially as it could be, but the law is the closest thing we’ve got to an equal playing field.”

I started gathering the demolished bits of wood and putting them into the trash can one at a time, taking care to avoid bent nails. “So you went off to law school. But what happened to Lorne? Did he stay on with your dad?”

“For a while.”

Trey bent down and started gathering up big armfuls of boards and throwing them into the can, making me feel like a slacker even as I wondered about the date of his most recent tetanus shot. “The company went under. Holcomb Construction was in business almost forty-seven years. My grandpa founded it and then, when he died, my dad took over.”

“After so many years? I’m so sorry. What happened?”

Trey looked past my shoulder, then sniffed and pulled on his nose before putting a hand on one hip, right above his tool belt, and just like that, the door was shut. I could tell by the look on his face the conversation was closed and the wall was up.

“Yeah. Think I’ll start on the next room,” he said, still looking past me. “It’d be good if we can have most of the frames removed before Lorne and Teddy get back. Do you mind finishing the cleanup?”

“Trey? Hey, hang on a second! I wasn’t trying to—”

But Trey was already halfway out of the room and my apology was cut off by the sound of the doorbell.

“You want to get that?” Trey asked without turning around.

His gruff tone and the question itself, a dismissal that reminded me much too much of Steve, who had raised passive aggression to an art form, annoyed me. No. I did not want to get that. I wanted to find out what had happened to his dad’s company, among other things. Why did he get to know all my secrets but refuse to tell me his? It wasn’t just unfair, it was disproportionate! I thought about chasing him down and saying so, but then the bell rang again. I ran downstairs to answer the door.

“Hey, Pris!” She was standing on the porch holding a six-pack of kombucha in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other. “I thought you were working for Polly today.”

“Polly called and told me what happened with the inspector,” she said, “so I called Mom, Felicia, and Caroline. Everybody’s coming over to help as soon as they can but Mom had to finish up a presentation for a new client and Felicia was at the dentist. Caroline went to Harris Teeter to pick up some provisions, but she should be here any minute.” She put the bottles down on the hall table. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you know anything about demolition?”

“No. But it sounds like something I’d be really good at.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Lorne and Trey were in another room, installing the frame around the final window, when the call came in. But the ring of the hammer and whine of the Skilsaw were still so loud that I had to press my phone to my