I had been watching the old house tip over for about three months now. It was one of the eighteenth century farmhouses in our region of Virginia, a carryover from the Germans who made their way to Octonia County from Pennsylvania and stopped here before settling in more numbers over in the Shenandoah Valley.
The building was a thing of beauty – a stone foundation, graying timbers, solid, hand-hewn doors, and a porch that opened with a view to the Blue Ridge. But like many other big houses in the area, it was just too much upkeep for too little return. A couple houses of similar size nearby had been converted into event spaces for weddings and one as a conference center, but by and large the families around here needed smaller structures. So houses like this one, they were becoming scarce as they caved in on themselves.
So when I heard through the historians’ grapevine that is made up of social media and police scanners that the house was going to be taken down, I looked up the owners and asked if I could come salvage what I could. I offered them the highest price I was able, but they quickly refused money and said they’d just be happy to see parts of the house used elsewhere. Turns out, they were only taking it down because they were afraid it might fall down on their grandkids.
I knew next to nothing beyond what I had learned on Barnwood Builders and Salvage Dawgs about how to take down a house, so really I knew nothing. But fortunately, my dad knew something about old buildings, and even more fortunately, his friend Saul knew everything about taking them down. He was the first person I called when I got permission to salvage.
“Beef up your insurance, Paisley-girl,” Saul said as soon as I told him what I wanted to do. “High as it will go. You can’t be leaving that boy without his mama.”
“That boy” was my almost-three-year-old son Sawyer, and Saul was right. I was doing this work because it kept my schedule flexible to be with Sawyer as much as possible while also providing us much-needed income when I sold the salvaged wares. Thus far, I hadn’t gotten behind on any payments, and my list of newsletter subscribers was growing, which meant that I might soon be able to leverage some of this work into other work.
But a higher insurance package wasn’t part of my budget, and I guess Saul heard the hesitation after his suggestion because he said, “Okay, then, you’ll lead one of my crews. Welcome to the team. Come down to the yard and sign the paperwork as soon as you get the chance.” I heard the phone drop into the cradle – Saul didn’t believe in cellphones – and sat there on the dead line for a minute.
“What is it?” my best friend Mika asked. I had made the call from the wingback chairs at the front of her yarn store since I was there to fulfill our agreement for Saturdays. I helped with customers and straightened up the store, and she held me accountable to get some work done instead of just surfing the internet and buying a million (more) cross-stitch patterns.
“Saul just hired me,” I murmured.
“I’m sorry. Did you just say my Uncle Saul just hired you?” She sat down hard in the chair across from me, her black hair bouncing hard against her shoulders. Mika was one of those people who looked great in the latest fashion trends, which meant she looked like she wasn’t even aware she was being trendy. With her peachy porcelain skin and a spattering of freckles across her nose, she was gorgeous without pretense or effort. She was beautiful, and while she knew it, she didn’t really care. “Tell me I misheard you?” she said.
I pulled my headband down over my face and then slid it back up to tuck my wayward strands into place again. Unlike my best friend, I had never mastered the latest styles or trends in fashion or in hair. I tend to just wear it down or throw it up if it gets in my eyes. Combine my casual hair with the slight gray pallor to my complexion that was brought on by late nights of work and full days of parenting a robust toddler, and I felt anything but robust myself. Still, I did feel beautiful because, for the first time in my life, I was doing just what I wanted to do with my life instead of building my life around someone else’s . . . well, except the someone else who stood just over three-feet tall and made my day with his laugh. But I was okay with that, more than okay, in fact. Gleeful, even at forty-six when parenting a toddler was just about at the edge of my physical limits, it was still the most amazing thing I’d ever done.
“Your uncle just hired me. You heard me correctly, but I can barely believe it myself,” I replied.
Mika’s Uncle Saul was one of my favorite people on the earth, and he hung the moon as far as Mika was concerned. But he was a gruff guy. Mika had once told me that he didn’t believe in barbers and cut his own wiry silver hair with his pocket knife. From the look of the gray stubble against his leathery skin, I wondered if he also shaved with that knife. And the people – mostly men – who worked for him were, let’s just say, not exactly primed and ready for a day at the country club. The idea of me working with that group, well, it was pretty laughable. Beyond the fact that I loved good overalls and comfy flannels, those guys and I had little in common.
“Yep. He wants me to come and work for him so that I’ll be covered by his insurance while we do that house job I told you about.” I picked up my glass of white wine and sighed. “If I was smart, I’d take him up on it.”
Mika stared at me for a minute and then sighed. “That man will do anything for anyone, but for you, he’s offering space on his crew. That’s really something.” Saul had given Mika the seed money for her business, told her it was a no-interest loan with no due date, and every time she paid him back a little of the sum he loaned her, he sent one of the women from his office into the store and bought exactly the amount she’d given him back in stock, which he then gave to a group of local knitters who made slippers for women and children in shelters through the Pink Slipper Project. And of course, he donated the yarn in Mika’s name.
So each time she paid him, he paid her back and then doubled the gift. It was something Mika didn’t talk about much because she really did wish he’d just accept her payments, as a matter of pride, but mostly because she knew Saul wouldn’t like it.
I stretched out my legs and put my feet on the small ottoman between the two chairs and said, “Actually, he offered me the chance to lead one of his crews.”
Mika sat up. “You’re kidding? Man, that guy just doesn’t know when to quit.” She was smiling, but I knew she was also worried. I could see the concern in the way the furrow between her eyebrows deepened just a little. We’d been friends since college, since before either of us had that permanent wrinkle in our foreheads, and I knew my best friend. She was worried.
“You don’t think I can lead his crew?” I asked with every desire to keep defensiveness out of my voice. I thought I did pretty good.
But then Mika laughed. “And clearly you don’t either.” She reached over and began to rub my foot. “You are so good at so many things, Paisley Sutton, but leading, not so much. You’re more of a lone wolf kind of worker.”
I probably wouldn’t have objected to her comment anyway because she was right, but she was working out a week’s worth of single parenting and money stress with her thumbs. I didn’t want to cross her and risk jeopardizing my massage, so I stayed quiet.
“I, however, know most of those guys from poker nights with my dad.” She stopped rubbing my feet and took out her phone. “When’s your salvage job?” she asked without looking up.
“I have no idea, Miks. I just found out your uncle is giving me a crew.”
“Great. Tuesday and Wednesday it is. I’ll ask Mrs. Stephenson if she can watch the store. She’s been looking for some part-time hours, and I could use the help anyway. This is a great chance for me to trust someone else with the store.” She shivered a little as she said it.
I had about a million objections, including the fact that I would have to ask my dad and his wife Lucinda to watch Sawyer for two full days in a row. But Mika was kind of bouncing in her chair as she looked at me, and the fact that she was willing to let a good-souled but extremely bossy knitter like Ms. Stephenson staff the store told me she was more than eager. I didn’t want to disappoint her, and Saul had offered me a crew. Plus, I really needed the potential infusion of cash that the sale of the wood would mean.
“Okay, Tuesday and Wednesday it is. Now, I just need to learn how to tear down a house.”
Fortunately, Mika was actually a great leader, and the next day she took it on herself to get together with her Uncle Saul over dinner and, apparently, some apple pie moonshine. By the time they were both pretty lit, they had a safe and solid plan for taking down the old house. And Monday morning, after Mika sobered up, the sketches for the process arrived in my inbox.
Sawyer, who had been entirely engrossed in cooking me a three-course meal that included kiwi, snake, and ice cream from his toy kitchen immediately sensed that I was focusing on something and climbed into my lap at my computer. “What that, Mama?” he asked in his still-toddler but getting-less-so voice.
“It’s pictures of a house Auntie Mika and I are going to take down,” I said. It’s always a question for me – how to tell the truth without over-telling.
Sawyer jumped up, ran across the living room, and then climbed back into my lap . . . with his toolbox. “I ready.”
I squeezed my sweet boy close and said, “Yes, you are, Love Bug. Why don’t we practice with some blocks?”
He furrowed his brow and looked at me. “Okay. But then we do house.” He wasn’t asking.
I climbed down to the floor, which seemed to be getting further and further away the deeper into my forties I got, and opened Sawyer’s bag of blocks. “Love Bug, you can’t come when we take the house down. It’s dangerous.”
“One minute. I have idea,” he said as he held one finger in front of my face and then ran up the stairs to his room. When he came back, he had on a little blue hard hat that I’d picked up at a yard sale. “Now, I ready.”
I laughed. “Smart move, Little Man. Smart move.” I let the house plans disappear as we built towers that were repeatedly demolished just as I was getting proud of them.
But once Sawyer was fast asleep, in his bed for his nap, I opened my laptop and studied the plans. That’s when I realized I was in way over my head. Thank goodness for Uncle Saul and thank goodness for cross-stitch and Broadchurch or I would have worried all night.
Fortunately, I was starting a new cross-stitch project – a snow-covered barn pattern – something I’d picked up because it reminded me of my mom. So I spent the evening getting my counts ready and sorting the thread into a piece of cardboard that would keep it from tangling and let me find the colors easily. Each time I picked up a hank of floss, my Maine Coon Cat, Beauregard, swatted at it, and eventually, I had to pry him up off my lap and onto his very own fleece blanket on the other end of the couch. The cat was entirely lazy unless he could be entirely annoying.
The next morning, Sawyer and I were up bright and early for bacon and pancakes, from scratch, since Sawyer really wanted to cook. He poured the flour and dry ingredients, cracked the eggs, stirred in the milk and chocolate chips, and even told me when the butter was melted. But of course, he didn’t eat a bite of his pancakes. Still, I figured grapes, chocolate milk, and four slices of bacon was an almost balanced meal and loaded him into the car to meet my dad.
Before going to bed the night before, I’d sent my dad a text and then sent the same text, with a preamble, to my step-mom, Lucinda, to be sure my dad got it. Lucinda got right back to me and said, “Your dad says that sounds like a great plan. See you at 7:45.”
So now we were on our way to my dad and Lucinda’s so that we could pick them up and they could supervise Sawyer while his mama tried her best not to get killed taking down a house. Sawyer loved “big equipment,” and Saul’s plan involved a crane, a bucket truck, and a skid steer, so I knew my son would be in hog heaven. My dad, too. Lucinda was just coming along for moral support and to be sure my dad didn’t let Sawyer do anything too dangerous.
My dad was great with his grandson, but his threshold for danger was far higher than mine. Thank goodness Lucinda and I agreed that using a nail gun wasn’t really fitting until Sawyer was in college.
Dad and Lucinda were on their porch when we arrived, and they climbed in the backseat, as usual, to play with their grandson, while his royal highness Beauregard claimed the towel (and the seat warmer) in the front seat. Dad had long ago given up trying to win that battle, and besides, this way, he could tickle Sawyer for the whole drive.
Lucinda had this great quirky sense of style that often meant pairing sweatpants with a nice sweater, a chunky piece of jewelry, and gorgeous, dangling earrings purchased from a fair-trade market. It was kind of like she was always dressed for a Zoom meeting but never had any. The fact that she had married my dad was stunning because my dad was still wearing clothes that he’d worn when I was in high school over thirty years ago. But they were deeply in love, and it made me happy to see them together, especially when Sawyer was so enthusiastic about telling them how he was going to climb up to the top of the house and jump down with Baby, his doll. That boy could tell great stories.
When we pulled up to the house site, Saul and Mika were already there, and behind us on the dirt road, I could see a few pick-ups trucks on their way. We were out in force, and I knew the owners would appreciate the quick work we were, hopefully, going to make of it.
“Building’s sound as can be, Paisley,” Saul said as I climbed out of the car. “Give her a look and let us know what you definitely want and what will be good if we can get.”
I looked at Mika with what I knew must have been a look of panic, but she only smiled and said, “Let’s get to it. Time’s a-wasting.”
I now realized the other reason I was glad Lucinda was along – for my moral support. Clearly, my best friend had begun channeling her wonderful, but abrasive, uncle, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
As uncle and niece glowered at me, I reached back into the car for my to-go mug of coffee. They might be in a hurry, but no one wanted me to make decisions of any kind without caffeine. Mika knew this, so when I stared back at her, she shrugged and even shot me a small smile as she followed behind me with a flowered clipboard in her hand and a pencil behind her ear.
“That one of Saul’s?” I asked as we stopped inside the main door of the bar. I tapped my fingers on the bottom of her clipboard.
She rolled her eyes. “I thought I might as well take myself seriously in this job, you know.”
“Okay, and also it was a chance to shop for ‘school supplies.’” I reached over and took her pencil. “Yep, just as I figured. Sharpened to a fine point and only used on once side so your letters will take on the slanty look of calligraphy.”
Mika snatched her pencil back but then looked at me. “How did you know?”
“Used to do the same thing myself,” I said with a smile and stepped into the house.
“This lintel here,” I pointed to the thick wide beam spanning the house door. “That I definitely want. And same with these beams here.”
As we walked, I pointed to all the major structural pieces of the house that I could easily see and told Mika that I wanted as many of them as we could safely take down. “And the siding, I’d like at least some of it. Dad has some ideas for some tables and things that he thinks we could sell locally.”
Mika scribbled every time I pointed something out, and when we stepped into the second of the two front rooms and stood near a window, I could see she was marking each timber on a 3D rendering of the house. “That’s impressive,” I said.
“Uncle Saul had one of his guys take my sketch and put it in CAD.” She looked at me. “That’s what the software is called, right?”
I shrugged. “You’re asking me about a piece of software?”
“Good point,” she said. “Thanks for letting me help, by the way.”
I smiled. “Letting you? I’m pretty sure I would have been out of luck for work space if I said No.” I pushed my shoulder into Mika’s. “So glad I’m smarter than that, and I’m really grateful to you and Saul. Didn’t he have any other construction projects going on?”
Saul ran a really big construction company in Octonia. His crews built houses and churches, schools, and office buildings. His reputation was impeccable, and he was always in demand.
“Nah. The month of December is usually pretty quiet, he said. Nobody wants to start anything new before the end of the year, and he works hard to be able to give his guys December off, with pay, if they want to take a break.” Mika made a note about the stall wall and said, “This would make a great table top.”
“Sure would,” Saul said as he came up beside me. “You women almost ready? The crew’s here and daylight’s wasting.”
“Yep. Anything else, Pais?” Mika asked
I was about to say we were good to go, when something caught my eye in the corner of the room. Most of my salvage jobs were in houses and stores, places where people spent a lot of time. So I’d gotten good at looking in corners and under cabinets. The best stuff – jewelry, old photos, vintage toys – often ended up there.
Over in the corner beside the window, where the shadows got dark, I could just see the smallest arc of white. At first, I thought it might just be a sunbeam, but the closer I got, the more I could see it had shape and substance. It was small, like a crumpled piece of paper or a pen sticking out of the dirt.
I knelt down and bent low . . . and then I scrambled backwards on my hands and feet. “Oh no!” was all I could manage to say.
Mika reached down and dragged me to my feet. “What is it, Paisley?”
I pointed and then stared at my index finger a minute. “It’s a finger. A human finger.” I took a long deep breath and started forward.
Saul put his hand on my shoulder and held me back as he stepped closer, leaned over, and said, “Time to call Sheriff Shifflett and send the boys home. No work today.”
He took off his hat and stood staring at the finger while Mika dialed the sheriff’s cell number. I thought I could hear Saul whispering a prayer.
Pre-Order Bobbins And Bodies, Book 2 in the Stitches And Crime Series here - https://books2read.com/bobbinsandbodies
Coming April 6, 2021.