how easy life was with money in the bank. A year earlier, late in the month, before payday, he and his teammates scouted for all-you-could-eat breakfasts at church halls and went four at a time to a Red Lobster, split one dinner and filled up on bread-and-butter refills a waitress brought them. Standing in line at the bank to pick up the cashier’s check to pay Ralph, while a customer in front of him argued about an overdraft, Edward Everett realized he had more in the bank now than he had earned for the entire season five years earlier in double-A ball.
Three mornings later, just after Connie turned the corner from the house, driving first Billy and then herself to school, Edward Everett met Ralph at her house and handed him the bank envelope holding the cashier’s check. As he signed the paperwork for the job, a massive dump truck backed into Connie’s drive and two workmen scampered up to the roof, where they began scraping the shingles off more quickly than Edward Everett could have imagined, pushing entire sections of shingles into the truck’s bed.
He left them there, the workers trotting across the roof with as much certainty as he had jogging on flat ground, and went off to make his calls for the day. He’d scheduled appointments only until two that afternoon because he wanted to be at the house before Connie arrived; when he got there, the workers were using an electric nail gun to attach the ridge cap. Ralph was sitting in his pickup, smoking. “Wanna take a look?” he asked, and led Edward Everett up the ladder to survey the roof. It was beautiful, the tar at the seams glistening. Ralph stepped out onto the shingles, the ceramic grit crunching under his work boots. He crouched and ran a hand appreciatively over the work while Edward Everett stood on the ladder, reluctant to step out onto the roof in his good suit. “You and Con getting married?” Ralph asked.
“I don’t know,” Edward Everett said.
Above them, one of the workers was coiling the extension cord for the nail gun while the other swept nails and cut shingle fragments toward the roof edge.
“You gotta be a helluva lot better for her than Lloyd.” Ralph turned to his workers. “We got time to get to the Chestnut job. It’s small and the daylight will hold.”
Then they were gone, the driveway and roof cleaner than when they had come. An hour and a half later, when Connie returned with Billy, they were both in a sour mood. Edward Everett was cleaning the house, vacuuming the living room carpet, when he saw Connie’s Rambler pull into the drive and went outside to meet them.
“Ed? Is something wrong?” Connie said from the driver’s seat.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, opening her door. Behind her, Billy stared glumly out the window for a moment, then unbuckled his seatbelt and went inside without a word.
“I was worried when I saw you here already.”
“Nothing wrong,” he said. “What …” He nodded toward the front door, which had just closed behind Billy.
“The fucking father from hell strikes again,” Connie said, picking up her briefcase from the passenger seat and getting out. She gave Edward Everett a distracted kiss, all but missing his mouth. “It was Father’s Day. They do it in May because the actual Father’s Day … anyway, they have a lunch and a music program and an art exhibit. ‘Drawings of My Dad.’ Except the asshole …” She let out a muted scream.
Edward Everett glanced at the roof, wondering if he should call it to her attention now or wait until later, when she had vented her rage toward her ex-husband.
“He worked so hard on his drawing. He even had his grandpa bring him teensy pieces of coal so he could glue them to the paper so—” Then she peered past him, her glance upward. “What? Something looks—” She took a step toward the house, then took several steps backward, until she was standing in the street, her eyes narrowed.
“I got you a new roof,” he said.
“A new—”
“The old one—Ralph said it’s a wonder you didn’t have leaks.”
“But I can’t afford to pay you back for this.”
“It’s a gift,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, shaking her head, her voice serious.
“I had the money.”
“It’s not right,” she said.
“What if we were engaged?” he asked, surprised as the words came out of his mouth. He hadn’t even considered the notion seriously to that point;