Page 6 of She Was Made for Me

“A few years.” I scribble some notes in my notebook with a frown. I’m pretty sure we can’t salvage the floors, and they’ll be expensive to replace. I look back up at the ceiling. That will need to be ripped out, and the insulation will all need replacing too.

“And you do the work alone?”

“Uh-huh.” Well, that’s not entirely true—I have the occasional contractor who does jobs that aren’t in my area of expertise, like plumbing and electricity, but for the most part it’s just me.

“Must be lonely,” she murmurs.

I glance at her over my notebook. Is it lonely? I guess I try not to think about it. I keep myself busy enough to get through my days, and the physical labor means I always sleep solidly at night. I have my own beautiful cabin on the waterfront, and a cold beer at the end of a long day. It’s a different life from what I had in the city, and that’s intentional. If I occasionally miss having someone to wake up next to as the yellow rays of the sun warm my bedroom ceiling each morning, that’s a small price to pay.

I shrug, stepping back outside to check the foundations. There’s definitely a lean to the place—I could feel it as we walked around inside—and as I crouch at the back of the cabin, I can see why. The entire back sill is rotted through, so soft I can scoop the wood out with my fingers. It’s too close to the ground, and snow piles up during winter, damaging the wood. None of these old cabins have pressure-treated timber, so they simply rot.

I rise to my feet with a sigh. This place has pretty much everything you could imagine wrong with it. Most of my jobs have at least one or two of these issues, but not all of them at once. She’d be better off tearing the cabin down and starting from scratch.

I thank Muriel for her time and tell her I’ll be in touch with a quote for the work, but I’m not sure I want to take on the job. It’s a lot of work for one person, and would take me forever to complete.

I take the scenic route home along the lake, stopping in at the market to grab some fresh produce for dinner. When I finally roll down my gravel driveway, I’m tired. It’s been a long day finishing up a job on one site before meeting with Muriel at the house of horrors. I’m ready for a beer and a long sleep.

I take the steps two at a time up to the screened-in porch at the side of the house, and smile looking out over Lake Cobbossee as I kick off my work boots. I bought this cabin when I first came up here, four years ago. It wasn’t in great shape—though nowhere near as bad as the place I just saw—and it took me months to painstakingly restore, learning everything as I went. Now, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

I grab myself a beer from the fridge, casting my gaze around. The kitchen and living room are open-concept, with a cathedral ceiling, supported by huge, rough-cut hemlock beams spanning the space overhead. There’s a bathroom and bedroom downstairs, and a lofted bedroom above them, looking out over the living space below. The entire front wall of the cabin is made up of windows, framing an expansive view across the lake. In winter, I warm up by the wood-burning stove after an afternoon of ice fishing, and in summer, I have the windows open to let the breeze blow through—when I’m not in the water.

It is, in a word, paradise.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I retrieve it with a chuckle, knowing it’s Rich following up from our earlier call.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

My friend’s voice is confident in my ear. “What do you think?”

I lean back in my chair and prop my feet up on the coffee table in front of me. It’s made from local pine and took me hours to sand and polish to bring out the natural grain of the wood. It was one of the first projects I finished when I first moved, and reminds me of why I left the city. Up here, in the beauty of Maine, I don’t have the stresses of corporate life that nearly killed me. I spend my days working with my hands, restoring neglected cabins in Kennebec County to their former glory. When I became an attorney years ago, I did it because I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. I still do that now, but in a way that doesn’t cost me my health—or my sanity.

“I think you’re a pain in my ass,” I say good-naturedly, and Rich laughs.

“I try.” His voice turns serious. “I want you on this project, Kyle. I’ll pay you twice your normal rate.”

I sigh. At forty-nine, Rich is six years older than me, and has always done this big brother thing—more so over the past four years, since my life fell apart and he scraped me up out of the gutter.

“You know I get plenty of work up here,” I say gently. Though when I think back to the cabin I checked out this evening, I grimace. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need—”

“It’s not that. I know you’re busy, and sure, it’s not your usual job, but… you’re the only guy I trust to do this.”

I look down, brushing sawdust off my work shorts. The thought of going back to New York churns my stomach, but Rich has always been there for me, no questions asked. If he needs me, I’ll have to make this work.

“You know this is too much for me to take on by myself,” I tell him.

“Of course. I’ll get a team together, and I’m in the process of getting a project manager as we speak.”

I frown. I don’t need a project manager to keep me organized, but that’s the least of my problems right now.

“So you want me to start right away?”

“If you can,” Rich replies. “I’m hoping we can get the whole thing done in a couple of months.”

“Let me get this straight. Instead of spending summer at the lake, you want me to spend it in the city, sweating my balls off?” Richard barks a laugh and I continue. “Where will I even find a place to stay at this late notice?”

“You’ll stay in the guest room at our place. We’re out of town for a couple weeks over summer anyway, so you’ll have the place to yourself for a while.”

I contemplate this. A few months in the city, working on something different to help a friend.

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