Page 8 of Ten Hammers

“Hey, that ‘treehouse’ was a masterpiece of engineering.”

“It barely held up my stuffed animals!”

My brothers and I were full of ambition but without any carpentry skills.

“It was a disaster,” I admit

“It was,” she agrees with a small laugh. Then she links her arms around me and squeezes. “But it was our disaster.”

She lets out a breath and then says, “I just got a call from the probate lawyer and a real estate agent. Someone wants to buy the house as a tear-down for the land.”

Her voice trembles. She’s talking about the house where she grew up with her grandmother across the street from us. That is, until her Gram passed away just after she started high school, and her rarely present deadbeat dad settled in for good, treating her like trash and filling her head with garbage thoughts about herself. After he died during his final stint in prison a few years ago, she inherited the house.

“I’ve just kind of been pretending it doesn’t exist and now I have to make a decision.”

She isn’t kidding when she says she’s been pretending it doesn’t exist. And we’ve all been helping her with that. We never go home to celebrate the holidays. Instead, we pick a spot on one of our bucket lists and fly our parents out every year to celebrate Christmas there. And all of us gathering at Winnie’s cottage for Thanksgiving has become a can’t miss tradition.

“What do you want to do?” I ask her, softly.

“I want to tell them just to do whatever and send me a check when it’s done and I’ll donate it to charity or something. But…”

“You feel like you need some kind of closure?”

“My mom grew up in that house. It’s all I have left of her. How can I just let them bulldoze it?” She nods against me. “But on the other hand, how can I go back there? It would be like stepping into a time capsule of awful feelings.” Her voice sounds heavy, as though weighed down by her memories. “I used to dream about living at your house, where it was warm and welcoming, everything Gram’s wasn’t.”

She lifts her head off my chest to glance around the room. “Our show and all of our renovations have always represented a fresh start for me. A chance to leave the wreckage of the past behind and create something beautiful.”

“And you’ve done an amazing job. You’ve turned so many homes into sanctuaries, proof of your resilience.”

She peeks up at me and her eyes are two warm pools of blue in the soft glow of the lights. “You think so?”

I squeeze her tighter in my arms, not wanting to let her go anytime soon.

“It’s true. You’re incredibly brave, Winnie.”

The disbelieving smile she flashes cracks my heart in two. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to face that house again.”

“You are. And I hope you know I’ll support you every step of the way.”

Though I hate to see her hurting, I suddenly have an idea how I can keep us all together for at least a while longer. How we can help her get some closure.

But first I have to talk to my brothers.

No way will I be able to convince Win to go for this by myself. I’m going to need all ten Hammers to get the girl on board.

Chapter 4

Winnie

Two days later, it’s the final, final day of our show, the day of our grandest reveal, and I thought or well, I hoped the guys and I would spend every second of it together. Instead I’m in the living room alone, and there’s nary a Hammer to be found. Where are the guys?

Pretending to be content, I karate-chop a pillow with more force than necessary while Jonesey, who has been assigned the thrilling task of filming me, slowly dies of boredom.

Finally I turn around and break the fourth wall.

“Do you know where the guys are?” I ask him.

He shrugs. Since I lost it on him the other day, his interactions with me have been reduced to silent gestures. Shrugging. Nodding. The occasional lackluster thumbs up.

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