Chapter 2: What an Estimate Costs

The morning had started at four, when the dark had turned the walls gray and the creaking had gotten too loud to ignore. She'd dressed in yesterday's clothes and made coffee she didn't drink, then walked the cottage's perimeter like she was cataloging damage for an insurance claim. The porch had a soft spot near the stairs. The living room had a water mark on the ceiling that probably meant something was rotting in the walls. And the deck—she'd known the deck was bad, but standing in front of it in the predawn, running her hand over the sponginess along the edge, she'd realized it was worse than bad. It was urgent.

She'd found the shovel around five. By six she'd worked up enough momentum to stop thinking, which was the point. The first few boards had been stuck, but this hour into it, somewhere around eight o'clock, the wood had started to give way easier. The one she'd just levered up came out like it had been waiting for her to try. She could see where the rot had traveled, following the grain of the wood, patient and methodical. The joists underneath were going the same way. It was all connected, one failure spreading into the next, everything tied together in slow decay.

The deck board came up easier than Ivy expected, which meant it was worse than she thought. The wood was soft along the edges, punky where the rain had gotten in, and the joists beneath it were going gray at the corners. She'd found a flat shovel in the garage and was using it as a pry bar, levering up the next board when the truck pulled into the drive.

She didn't look up. She knew who it was.

Noah Callahan stepped out of the F-250, moved toward her without hurrying. He was wearing jeans and a Henley the color of weathered stone, and he had a leather portfolio under one arm that probably contained the estimate she'd been trying not to think about since yesterday. He looked at what she was doing and said, "You're going to hurt yourself."

"I'm not," Ivy said, and pushed the shovel handle down hard enough that the next board cracked at one corner. She didn't care. "Also, you're early. It's not even eight."

"It's eight-fifteen." He was still moving toward her, deliberate. "You've been at this for a while."

"Couple of hours." She didn't mention that she'd woken up at four, that the cottage had felt like a dark, creaking box around her, that the work had felt better than being still. "There's no point having you look at the deck if I'm taking half of it apart anyway. At least I know what I'm dealing with now."

"You're dealing with a fall," Noah said. "You're standing in the wrong spot for that pry. And the joists will take you down if you're not careful."

She set the shovel down and turned to look at him. He was bigger than the cottage had made him seem yesterday—broader in the shoulders, the kind of solid that came from actual labor instead of a gym membership. His eyes were the color of dark honey, and they were steady on hers in a way that made her want to look away, which meant she made a point of not doing it.

"Do you have the estimate?" she said.

"In the truck. Let me look at this first."

She wanted to tell him no, that she didn't need him to look at anything, that she had it handled. But he was already stepping down into the depression where the missing boards had left a gap, and if she sent him away and he fell through—that was a liability issue. So she watched while he crouched at the edge of the joists and ran his palm along the wood, testing it. His movements were slow and certain, like he was reading something in his fingertips that she couldn't see.

"Two of these will need replacing," he said. "Two you can reinforce. And you want new boards all the way around—can't patch this. The water's been in there too long."

"How long?"

"Three years, maybe four."

She'd been in New York three years and four months. The cottage had been sitting here, rotting slowly, while she was calculating derivative exposure and pretending she liked expensive restaurants. The thought made something hot rise in her chest.

"Can you just give me the estimate?" she said.

He straightened. She hadn't realized how close he was until then, until he was standing and she wasn't, and the morning sun was behind him making him just a shape. "Come inside and I'll walk you through it."

The kitchen was small enough that when he opened the portfolio at the table and spread out the itemized sheets, their elbows nearly touched. Ivy pulled out a chair and sat instead, making him have to lean over the table to show her. It was petty and she didn't care.

The estimate was detailed. He'd broken everything down: materials, labor, timeline. The roof repair was nine thousand, two hundred. The deck was thirty-two hundred. The kitchen wall reinforcement and the rewiring in the bedroom and the bathroom work—it all came to a total that was exactly what she would have paid for a decent contractor in Manhattan to spend two weeks. Which meant it was fair. Which meant it was terrible.

"This is fair," she said, hating it.

"It is."

"No cushion. No buffer for unforeseen issues."

"I built in twenty percent contingency on materials." He pointed at a line. "Here."

She'd been ready for him to overcharge her. She'd been ready to feel justified in her anger, to have a solid reason to say no to his help, to decide she'd do this alone. She'd spent six weeks thinking about whether she could afford to fix this cottage, and the answer had been no—not quite. But with an overpriced estimate, she would have had a choice. She could have felt like a martyr, refusing the robbery. Now she just had the debt.

"I need to think about it," she said.

"Okay."

He was so patient it was infuriating. He didn't push. He didn't offer financing or some rushed timeline to pressure her. He just folded the estimate back into the portfolio and waited for her to tell him what to do next. Ivy stood, and the movement brought her close enough to catch the smell of him—sawdust and something clean like laundry detergent, nothing fancy. It would be easier if he smelled expensive. It would be easier if he seemed like the kind of guy who took advantage of women with crumbling houses and bad timing.

"Do you want to see the rest of it?" she said.

"If you're ready."

They went through the cottage room by room. He showed her where the roof was compromised along the kitchen wall, where the water stains on the ceiling mapped the exact path the rain had taken. In the back bedroom, he opened an outlet and showed her cloth-wrapped wiring, old enough to be a fire hazard, and explained it without condescension. In the bathroom, he pointed out where the tile had lifted, where the water had gotten behind the shower surround and turned the subfloor to sponge.

When he checked the structural integrity of the kitchen wall, he asked her to come close and show him what it looked like from her side. She stood in front of him while he held the edge of the doorframe, his hand flat against the wood, and described what he felt. His other hand came up to gesture, not quite touching her shoulder, just there in the space near it. She could feel the warmth from his arm, the exact distance between them measured in inches that somehow seemed significant.

"It's shifting," he was saying. "Probably been doing it for a year or two. I'd want to get it stabilized before the winter."

She nodded, not trusting her voice. This was the problem with living alone in a house that needed fixing—no one to remind you that other people were solid and warm and took up space. No one to remind you that you'd actually trained yourself to be okay with feeling nothing.

They turned back through the doorway. The living room was dim despite the morning light, the windows facing the wrong way for sun, and there was a window seat built into the far wall that Mae must have used for reading or sitting. Noah went to it first, checking the frame, running his fingers along where the sill met the jamb. The paint was old, probably from the eighties—a blue-green that made Ivy think of seasickness. Under the seat there were boxes stacked, and she realized with a small shock that some of them still had Mae's handwriting on the labels.

"Frame's solid," Noah said. "But the sill is where the water's coming in. See?" He pointed to the discoloration along the bottom, the wood swollen and darker. "Probably five, six years of weather."

Ivy wasn't looking at the sill. She was looking at the boxes, at her grandmother's careful print marking the years and contents. Winter clothes. Photo albums. Quilt pieces. Things Mae had meant to sort through and had just left there, waiting.

Noah stepped back, and his shoulder nearly brushed hers. She could feel the space between them like a measuring instrument.

"This one's straightforward," he said. "New sill, new caulk, maybe trim out the rot underneath. It's the kitchen and the roof that are the priority."

She nodded. She didn't reach for the boxes.

When they got back to the kitchen, he left the materials list on the counter. She didn't ask him to; he just placed it there, weighted down with a smooth river rock he'd pulled from his pocket. He must have picked it up from somewhere—the drive, the beach, some unconscious habit of a man who worked with his hands.

"Think about it," he said again at the door. "You've got my number."

She didn't walk him out. She heard the truck start and the gravel shift under the tires, and then the silence came back. The house settled into itself. Ivy stood in the kitchen with the morning light coming through the window and picked up the materials list.

It was methodical. Shingles, underlayment, flashing. Boards—pine, treated, half-inch. Fasteners. Sealant. Waterproof membrane. Each item had a quantity, a unit cost, a total. It was a map of exactly what the cottage needed, itemized and clear.

She read it twice.

The second time, she couldn't say why. The numbers hadn't changed. The quantities were the same. She just found herself starting at the top again, moving down line by line, and when she got to the end, starting over. At some point she sat down at the table. At some point the light shifted and it was past noon and she was still sitting there.

There was no hidden message in the list. No note in the margins. It was just materials and prices, perfectly honest, the kind of thing any contractor would leave behind. And yet she sat with it, reading it twice, and felt something that tasted like recognition and something else she didn't want to name.

Outside, the dock boards she'd pulled up lay in a heap on the grass. The cottage stretched around her, patient and needy. She'd come here to fix it. She'd come here to fix herself. Both of those things required saying yes to help, and she wasn't sure she knew how to do that anymore.

After noon, something shifted. She set the materials list down and stood, her legs stiff from sitting, and moved through the cottage the way Noah had, testing things. She put her hand on the kitchen wall and felt it, not really shifting the way he'd described, but existing in a state of potential failure. She checked the bathroom window where the sill was rotting. She looked at the living room window seat with new eyes—not as something Mae had left behind, but as something that could be saved.

The deck boards were still piled on the grass outside. She looked at them through the window and felt something like clarity, or maybe just exhaustion clearing into decision.

When she came back inside, the materials list was still on the counter, weighted down by the river rock. She picked it up again and didn't feel the same panic this time. It was just a list. It was just money. It was just the cost of keeping the cottage from collapsing around her.

She was setting it on the small desk in the study—the room she hadn't shown Noah, the room that had been Mae's office—when her phone lit up on the counter. A text from a number she'd saved yesterday. Forgot to mention — crew has a gap starting Thursday. After that I'm booked through September. No pressure, just wanted you to know. She checked the date. Tuesday. The boards she'd torn up were still heaped on the grass, the joists open to whatever the sky decided. Thirty-six hours to say yes to something she'd spent six weeks running from. Outside, the wind had picked up off the water, and she could hear it moving through the gap where the deck used to be.