First Chapter: Homecoming by Rebecca Norinne
Popping up from a crouch along the north wall of what was going to be the formal dining room once my crew finished rehabbing this centuries-old estate into a luxury bed and breakfast, I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm. A small shaving of wood that had been stuck to my sleeve fell into my eye and melted against my cornea.
“Fuck.” I flung my hand out toward where my best friend was standing back to admire his handiwork.
“Hand me that water, would you?”
“Ah, shit.” Mikey passed me the half-filled bottle I’d been drinking from a few minutes before, the plastic crinkling loudly as I tipped it back to pour water into my eye.
Once I managed to flush the shaving out, I dropped my face forward and let the water trickle down my cheeks to fall in a small puddle at my feet. I almost lifted my arm to wipe my face with my sleeve again, but stopped when I realized that was how I’d wound up with an eyeball full of sawdust in the first place.
“Here,” he said, handing me several napkins leftover from lunch.
“Thanks.” I finished toweling off my face and blinked my eyes a few times to test my vision. Satisfied I’d gotten the debris out, I aimed the wadded up paper ball at a trashcan about fifteen feet away. I let it fly, but instead of going in as intended, it bounced off the rim and fell to the floor.
“Your aim still sucks,” he chuckled.
“It’s a good thing I’m a builder instead of a basketball player, then.”
“Yeah,” he snorted, as he began gathering up his tools for the day. “Good thing that basketball career didn’t pan out.”
I smirked as we locked up and headed toward my truck. Mikey and I had known each other since we were kids; he’d been there when I’d been cut from the freshman basketball team for not being able to shoot. We both knew I was never destined for athletic greatness.
We climbed up into my truck and he turned the radio on, futzing with the dial until he found a song he liked. When Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” filled the cab, he fastened his seatbelt and settled in for the drive back to Colebury.
“Want to grab a drink?” he asked. “Speakeasy just updated its beer list.”
It was barely six o’clock on a Friday night, but I was already wrecked, having put in seven twelve-hour days in a row. I should be jumping at the chance for a night out with my best friend, but right now all I wanted was a hot shower, a cold beer, and then to fall face first into bed.
“Nah, man. I’m gonna pass.”
He lifted his shoulder in an indifferent shrug. “No worries. Drop me off though, would you?”
“Sure thing,” I said, pointing my truck toward the old mill where Speakeasy was located. “You’ll find a ride home?”
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Oh, I’ll find a ride all right.”
“You’re such a pig,” I said, pulling into the parking lot.
“I’m a man with needs.” He unfastened his seatbelt and hopped out of the cab. “See you Monday.” He closed the door and strolled toward the entrance with a cocky swagger.
I let my foot off the brake, checking for traffic as I eased back onto the road and pointed my Chevy home.
Ten minutes later, I turned off the highway and drove carefully down a bumpy lane lined with birch, poplar, and maple trees. It was too late to appreciate the view, but earlier they’d have been shimmering in the setting sun. Say what you would about the tropics, in my mind there was nothing prettier than autumn in New England, and Vermont was as good as it got.
The carriage house I was renting came into view, my landlady’s large, rambling farmhouse a couple hundred feet beyond. When I’d first moved from Boston to Vermont, there hadn’t been a whole lot of decent housing options available, so I’d counted myself lucky to have found this place so quickly.
There’d been two other couples interested in it, but when Gloria Mitchell learned that I renovated historic properties for a living, she offered it to me on the spot if I would be willing to help her out around the place. Typically, that meant replacing a burned-out lightbulb that was too high for her to reach, or hauling inside a piece of furniture she’d found laying on the side of the road, but more and more frequently, it also meant joining her for dinner while she talked my ear off about the daughter who’d moved to California years ago and rarely came to visit.
The sound of gravel crunching under my tires quieted as I shifted into park. Climbing down out of the cab, I set my chin in the palm of my hand and twisted my head to the side, hearing the satisfying pop, pop, pop of my neck cracking away some of the week’s tension. When I turned my head back in the other direction, I spied Gloria waving me over.
As I crossed the yard, I noticed that one of the window’s decorative shutters was askew. I made a mental note to re-hang it before it broke away completely, necessitating a bigger, costlier repair. For the first time, I also noticed an old Volvo station wagon parked next to Gloria’s bright turquoise Mini Cooper.
Gloria gestured me closer, her body practically vibrating with excitement. I wasn’t entirely sure how old she was; I guessed anywhere between sixty and eighty. The woman had more energy than anyone I’d ever known. “Rosalie’s here,” she whispered, clasping her weathered hands together in front of her chest. “She showed up today out of the blue.”
“What?”
Technically speaking, I had no reason to dislike her daughter, but listening to Gloria talk about how she had stayed away so long had definitely colored my impression of the woman. And the photos Gloria frequently shoved under my nose depicting a well-dressed ice princess who seemed incapable of a genuine smile hadn’t helped to improve my outlook much, either.
But this wasn’t about me, I reminded myself. I genuinely liked Gloria, and seeing her so happy was really fucking nice. “That’s fantastic,” I said, putting as much enthusiasm as I could muster behind my words.
But despite my best efforts, Gloria saw right through me. “I know you don’t think much of Rosalie, what with all the complaining I’ve done these past few months, but that’s just been the ramblings of an old, lonely woman who misses her only child. If you’d have met her before she married that man, you’d understand.”
I doubted that was true, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good for me to say so. There was just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. Like the fact that she reminds you of your cheating ex-fiancée? my subconscious chimed in.
Okay, so there was that. It wasn’t Rosalie’s fault that her golden hair was the exact same shade as someone I never wanted to see again, but my subconscious didn’t particularly care, apparently.
“How long is she staying?” I asked, my question not entirely altruistic.
I had a lifetime’s worth of experience with women like her to know an old, drafty farmhouse wouldn’t be her first choice for where to live. Women like her typically didn’t like to get their hands dirty. Their manicures were too important. During her visit, I expected nonstop complaints about the house not being up to her standards, and endless phone calls to come fix things that were perfectly fine given this place was a hundred and fifty years old.
Like a bad movie, my mind flashed back to a scene from my past: my ex, Margaux, standing in the middle of the dining room of the antique colonial I used to own. The house had been built in the early seventeen hundreds, and the space had once been the original keeping room. The ceiling was low, the floors were sloped, and the walls were dark. She’d hated it, and had no problem telling me so. In hindsight, her reaction to the house I loved should have sent me running in the opposite direction, but I’d been too blinded by her beauty and charm to pay it any mind.
“Oh! Nothing like that.” The sound of Gloria’s voice pulled me back to the here and now. “What I meant is Rosalie’s moved back. For good. You remember me telling you about the fire at her gallery? Well, it was all the impetus she needed to finally leave that arrogant, no-good, piece of shit man she married.” She bounced on her toes and lifted her fists in victory. “I’ll tell you what for nothing—”
Her tirade was cut short when the screen door opened and a small-boned woman wrapped in an oversized flannel and looking nothing like the photos I’d seen stepped out onto the porch. “Mom,” she sighed, her voice weary. “We talked about this.”
In that moment, my world turned on its axis. Up was down, dark was light, and I was in big fucking trouble.