Page 7 of Whiskey Chase
“Well, now you are. Do better.”
I looked down at the list on the counter. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, here’s Estelle. She wants to say hi.”
Gran handed me off to her girlfriend. “Hey, handsome,” Estelle said in her sing-song voice.
“Hey, Stell. How’s your European tour?” I asked glumly.
“Magnificent. We stayed up ‘til dawn yesterday drinking champagne with a bunch of old ladies from Denmark. But I’m worried about you.” Estelle and my grandmother had been together for the last ten years. It had been a complicated transition, even for my liberal parents, but now I couldn’t imagine my grandmother without her skinny, sassy counterpart.
“I’ll be just fine,” I lied.
“Bootleg is a good place for healing,” Estelle said. “Make sure you do some of that and don’t hole yourself up like Henrietta VanSickle.”
“I hate to ask.”
“Henrietta VanSickle lives in a cabin in the mountains and comes down to town once a month for groceries. Rumor has it she took a vow of silence twenty years ago. Never broke it yet.”
Or maybe Henrietta Van Sickle was burnt out on real life and just wanted to be left alone, I projected.
A vow of silence and a remote cabin? I liked that idea enough to store it away as my official Plan B. I had no Plan A for getting my life back. But at least I knew I now had a backup.
“Listen, the tour bus is leaving for the naked cabaret. Do your gran and I a favor and get out once in a while. Maybe take Scarlett with you. No one has more life in her than that girl.”
I made a non-committal noise. “Have fun at the naked cabaret.”
We said our good-byes and disconnected. I stared at the phone in my hand and at the business card on the counter.
“Call me when y’all change your mind,” Scarlett had said chipperly as I hustled her out the front door.
“Fuck.” I muttered to myself.
* * *
“These steps need redone,”Scarlett said, writing more notes on her clipboard and studying the deck stairs. “And that window on the end is rotted out. I can replace it so the place is sealed tighter for winter.”
Twenty-four hours after I’d thrown her out, she was back at the house going over my list of shit that needed fixed and adding her own ideas to it.
I followed her wordlessly around the house wondering if she was this good at her job or if she saw an opportunity to make some money off of an out-of-town asshole.
“And, please for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you’re gonna let me rip out that cabbage rose carpeting upstairs.”
It really was an eyesore.
“You do carpet too?”
“I got a guy. But I can rip the old stuff out and save you some money. Me and that carpet have hated each other since your granny moved in.”
“Add it to the list.” It was one of the benefits of being partner in a family law firm. My paychecks kept coming, even after I’d potentially destroyed my reputation.
She nodded briskly.
The list was getting longer and longer, and at this point, I wanted to say yes to everything just to see what this girl could do.
She didn’t look like any handyman I knew. Granted, it was a sexist observation and entirely unlike me. Despite wearing a tool belt and a headlamp, Scarlett looked more like an elementary school art teacher than a heavy-lifting blue-collar business owner. She was still unsettlingly gorgeous.
I was used to beautiful women. My father had been a U.S. Senator, and we’d spent most of our lives between Annapolis and Washington, D.C., before he retired into consulting. Everyone there was flawless, at least on the outside. Scarlett, by contrast, rolled up in a pick-up truck with dirt on her chin and sawdust and mud on the knees of her jeans. Her very nicely fitting jeans.
