am.”
“Stop. You’ve told me at least twice a day since it happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Still. I grew up with Claire, and just thinking about what could have happened…” He shook his head.
“You grew up with Fin’s mom?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “There wasn’t a guy in school that wasn’t half in love with her, and I guess that didn’t change in college, seeing how Jax is still waiting around for her to come back. Guy hasn’t had a serious relationship since she left. Anyway, I’m really sorry it happened.”
Apparently, oversharing was a bad habit in every southern town.
“I’m just sad that the weathervane’s broken. Seems a shame to lose something that’s been with the house so long.”
“Even if it tried to murder you?”
“Well, stronger things have tried and failed.” I shrugged. “How about this monstrosity?” I pointed to the very large, very visible piling that now ran from the roof through the garage level and into the sand below. Granted, it was a great addition for anyone considering exotic dancing for a living, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the eyesore or the hole they’d ripped in every story of my house during installation. The five-thousand-dollar investment had been driven straight through the master bedroom, not that I’d even fathomed starting that chunk of the remodel.
“It set well, and— Oh, you’re talking cosmetics, aren’t you?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll hide it as well as we can once we start the interior portion of the remodel.” He flipped to the page I despised. “You’re already at a little over fifty thousand.”
Ouch. Not that I hadn’t known I was racking up the charges. I’d signed enough checks, but Lord, that was a punch to the belly—or, rather, the wallet.
“Okay, and that’s for the new roof, the foundations on both the house and the boathouse”—I gestured to the steel pole—“waterproofing the garage level…”
“As much as possible,” Steve repeated. “If that ocean comes up, there’s nothing we can do to keep the water out of that garage. The house is built for water to flow right under it. The boathouse is another story.”
“Right. I understand.” Nausea crept up my throat at the thought of Will’s truck being swallowed by flood waters. “And next?”
“All of the windows have been purchased. I have them stored. Also, the storm shutters and lumber for the new decks.”
“So where does that leave us?”
He flipped back to his calendar. “Deck construction will start once we’re done in Frisco. Should be about another two weeks, and then window installation in three. Feel free to start ripping apart the inside now that your foundation is reinforced.”
Now that your foundation is reinforced.
The phrase ran through my head as we finished the scheduling talk and I walked him to the door.
Standing in the living room a few minutes later, I looked out over the ocean through the open door. The breeze was heavy with salt and humidity but better than the stagnant air inside the house.
A few weeks and I’d have my deck back instead of this rough, wooden X nailed into the lower portion of the doorway baby gate-style. Like I was going to forget there wasn’t a deck there and step into nothingness.
But the pilings were in, ready to support what came next.
The house’s foundation was done. Mine still felt cracked.
“Hey,” Sam said as she came down the stairs, twisting her hair into a ponytail. “Are you ready?”
I glanced at the tiny cassette recorder that rested on the counter next to the refrigerator and cringed.
Tuesday had been brutal. Turned out that the base of complicated grief therapy was telling the story of Will’s death over and over…then listening to myself tell it every single day on that damned cassette player, only to record it again the following week and so on. It was supposed to lessen the emotional impact, which seemed rather like showering before a tsunami. Or, in my case, like the showering actually brought on the tsunami. I still sucked at the now visualize yourself putting the memory away, just like you’re putting away the tape recorder part of the instructions.
“I don’t want to.” Instead, I poured another cup of coffee.
“Right, and you know that I respect your choices, so I’ll give you one.” Sam hopped up onto the kitchen counter next to the tape recorder. “I can hit play on this one or the one I recorded on my phone before I realized we were using that slice of ancient technology.”
That earned her a little side-eye.
“Support person, remember? So we