Page 31 of Hand Picked
“Sure you did! You could have asked a professional!” he shot back. “You could have bought a decent-sized ladder.”
“What professional? And how would I pay them? And how would I transport a ladder anywhere with my little car? Criminy, I’m doing my best!” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
I prided myself on my patience, but the second I was around this man, it seemed to evaporate.
“Besides,” I said in a more moderate tone, “this whole place is a safety hazard. The roof and the door are just… a drop in the bucket.”
Webb gave me a look of patent disbelief, and I sighed. “Go inside. You’ll see.”
With one last glare, Webb stepped over the remains of the door and into the entry hall. I watched his eyes track over the buckled stairs and ripped wallpaper before he stepped into the living room. He swore under his breath when he saw the small mountain of plaster and the hole in the ceiling, but I caught the sleeve of his jacket before he could go in and inspect it further.
“I don’t think the living room’s safe. That hole goes all the way to the roof, and more might fall any minute. That’s why I was trying to get a tarp up there.”
Webb blinked at me. He shook off my hand to brush past me in the other direction, through a second parlor, where he ran a hand over the deep cracks in the plaster walls. Finally, he stepped into the kitchen, where he made a strangled, distressed sort of noise.
Seeing the house through his eyes, I felt a creeping sense of shame, even though the condition wasn’t remotely my fault.
“I, um… I reinforced the back steps,” I informed him proudly. “Figured out how to pour the concrete and everything. And there were some floor joist issues in the basement that I got taken care of. Oh, and you should see the barn. I upgraded the electrical all by myself and got the water tank working for the sheep.”
He ignored me and headed for the back staircase, but I grabbed his arm again to stop him. “The second floor was really weak in spots even back in July, and I haven’t even tried to get to the attic.”
“Fuck.” Webb ran a hand over the blackened brick of the kitchen fireplace. “I had no idea. It wasn’t remotely this bad last time I was inside here, but… that was a long time ago.” He chewed the inside of his lip for a second, then sighed. “I keep telling myself I don’t wanna hear this story, but I guess I probably do. How’d you get the land, then? Ben ran a contest, I know that much.”
“He did,” I agreed. “And I—oh,lawsy.” A cold draft blew down the chimney, and I shivered hard in my snow-covered clothes. “Sorry, what was I saying?”
“Jesus. Go change into something warm before you die of hypothermia and my family never speaks to me again,” Webb ordered, sounding weary. Then he frowned. “Hang on, are you sleeping in this place?”
“In here? No way.” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he thought I was an idiot, but I was pretty sure the answer was yes. “There’s a perfectly fine trailer out there.” I nodded toward the kitchen door and the yard beyond. “That’s where Ben slept, too.”
“Thank fuck forthat, anyway,” Webb muttered, grabbing my elbow. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before anything else happens to you.”
ChapterEight
WEBB
“I can walk on my own,” Luke protested, but once again, I ignored him. There was no way I was letting him go when this house was clearly a death trap.
I opened the back door and led him down the stairs with one hand clutching the bag of ice cream and the other locked around his arm.
We took several steps in the direction of a junk heap before I realized it wasn’t a junk heap at all. It was Death Trap Junior, a clear case of tetanus if ever I’d seen one. The old travel trailer was a collection of rusted metal parts held together with dying vines.
My heart rate reached danger levels as I reared back. “Thisis your perfectly fine trailer?”
“Hey! Don’t be rude. I know it’s not the prettiest, but it’s dry and mostly warm.” Luke moved around me to open the door. “And at least I don’t worry that it’s going to collapse on me… much.”
I climbed in behind him, trying my best to step lightly in case I caused a catastrophic collapse of the old tin box.
Luke scrambled to tidy up. He hung his coat on a hook by the door, turned on the heater, and moved a towering stack of books and a shoebox full of kitchen sponges from one side of the camper’s pleather dinette booth to the other before ushering me to sit.
I lifted an eyebrow and nodded at the sponges. “Planning to use those to repair the roof? Because I have a feeling they might not work.”
His cheeks went adorably pink. “No. Obviously not. They’re for an experiment to help teach the kids about hydroponics. Do you know, hydroponics can greatly increase plant yieldsandresult in ninety percent more efficient use of water—?”
“I wouldn’t say anything isobviousright now, Luke,” I said, not meaning for it to come out as harsh as it did. “Not after seeing that fucking house. Not after seeing that you’re living in this tiny trailer. Not after witnessing the tarp incident.” I hesitated for a second but finally set the bag of ice cream on the kitchen counter next to his charging cell phone and hung my coat beside his.
“You didn’t witness it,” he pointed out. I could tell he was trying to keep calm. Maybe he was embarrassed by the situation. “You only caught the aftermath.”
“The aftermath was plenty bad enough,” I muttered. I wedged myself into the small spot he’d cleared and looked around at his tiny, hopefully temporary, home.
