Page 15

By the time Spencer walked up to the Brown Street house, it was a hive of activity. “This looks really great,”

he called to Cat as he made his way up the steps to the newly reconstructed porch.

“Obviously,”

Cat yelled from where she was cutting pieces of siding to length on the lawn.

Spencer had kept the tapered Craftsman-style columns in the design and asked that they be reconstructed. There was something about it that was a little too early, or a little too European, for this house, but he liked that the original owner had asserted their taste in that way, and he didn’t want to lose that.

From the porch he saw Caesar’s truck pull up to the curb and Cat heading over to meet him, safety glasses pushed up into her hair. As Spencer watched the windows starting to come off the truck, he imagined the outside of the house complete, the siding up and glass where plywood was currently covering the window framing. The siding was going to be painted white. The house had always been white, as evidenced by the few scraps of original siding they’d found under the vinyl, and there was no reason to change it. It was a classic New England look. Once the windows were in, Spencer imagined the house looking incredibly quaint, prim and manicured like it had when it was first built.

The crew started walking past him carrying windows between them, and Spencer realized he was only in the way standing on the porch, so he went and joined Cat on the lawn by her miter saw.

“We should be done with the siding by the end of the week if you want to schedule the painters.”

Jorge came up and handed off a scrap of paper with lengths of cuts jotted on it. Cat stuck it in the chest pocket of her overalls.

Spencer pulled out his phone. “I’ll check the weather.”

They didn’t get a ton of rain in the summer, but the last thing he needed was wet paint being washed off the house.

“We can also start getting trades in once there’s daylight in there.”

“I need to call Mark and Hector. Terry is finishing up the electrical at Tyler Street next week, so I’ll ask her when she wants to come over here.”

Cat nodded. “Are you coming to my place for dinner tonight, or are we going out?”

“I could use a soft pretzel. What about you?”

“Read my mind.”

———

A week later, the painters had started on the outside of the house, and more of the crew was able to move inside. Spencer found Mark on the landing taking very precise measurements of the railing balusters with a caliper. He was sitting on the ground, sketches and notes scattered around him, detailing various measurements as he went. Spencer had worked with Mark a few times in the past on projects that required missing woodwork to be replaced, and he knew that Mark didn’t need any help from him. “Everything looking good up here?”

“I’ll probably be another hour or so. I’ll text you sometime next week when I have stain samples mixed up.”

“Thank, Mark.”

Spencer squeezed his shoulder as he passed by on his way up to the attic.

Cat’s crew had framed a wall to divide what was going to be the bedroom from the bathroom, and they were working on the walls around the perimeter of the room. Spencer found Hector in what was going to be the bathroom. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this.”

“Come on. The ceiling is eight feet tall at the peak. It’s basically a standard room.”

Spencer squeezed into the space behind him.

Hector rolled his eyes, then visibly fell into professional-plumber mode. “It would have been much easier if you’d designed this so it was directly over the bathroom downstairs.”

He pointed with the extended end of his measuring tape across the attic to where the second-floor bathroom was below them.

“But then I’d lose all the light from that window in the bedroom.”

Spencer pulled the folded plans out of his back pocket and handed them to Hector.

Hector clipped the tape measure to his belt and chewed on the end of his carpenter pencil while he looked them over.

“The back half of the room will be a wet-room-style shower, so you get the full height of the room.”

Spencer motioned to where he wanted the shower to be.

Hector nodded, still looking at the plans. “That’s almost not annoying.”

“That’s because I’m not up here yet.”

Cat poked her head through the framed-in doorway.

“Did you try to talk him out of this?”

Hector shifted his shoulders in an effort to make himself smaller. The room was getting crowded now that there were three of them in there.

“Nah. I wanted to see how upset you’d be.”

Cat stuck her tongue out at Hector, and he whacked her on the head with the bathroom plans Spencer had given him.

“Spence, are you and your man coming over on the Fourth?”

Hector asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry, only Spencer and Ian are invited?”

Cat baited.

“You just show up whether I invite you or not.”

“I’ll ask him if he’s free. I’m not sure what his work schedule is.”

Spencer should have anticipated that Hector would invite Ian.

He had a barbecue every Fourth of July, and he’d never met a person he didn’t want to invite.

Spencer pressed his hand to his chest and focused on breathing, trying to blink away images of his ex with his former friends in New York, the way Spencer had basically just stopped coming around to protect them from how obnoxious his ex had been.

Inhale. Exhale. This wasn’t that.

Hector poked Cat with his tape measure, and that was Spencer’s cue to step between them before they had an OSHA complaint on their hands.

“Alright, let’s get out of here.”

Spencer pushed past Cat and hoped they both followed him downstairs.