Page 108 of Never Forever

“Carrie?”

“Jonah?”

The big blonde contractor we’d hired to do the renovations set down the stack of supplies he was bringing into the house.A bucket full of sledgehammers. A folded tarp. His tool belt. He was six feet tall and six feet wide. He looked like a cartoon fireman, or something.

He put everything beside a sleeping bag he had in the corner.

And he glared at me.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“It’s my house. What are you doing here?”

“Your Gran made me promise I’d stay out here. I wasn’t going to do it, but then I started to feel guilty for breaking my promise to an old woman.”

“You don’t need to. I’ll be here,” I told him, wishing I was wearing something else. Anything else. Last night I opened one of the tubs of clothes Mom and Gran left behind and pulled out one of Gran’s house dresses. Knee length. Pink and green flowers. Big buttons down the front. Very handy pockets, one of which had a joint in it. It smelled like being a kid again. Like home. Like safety. It had been comforting last night.

This morning it probably looked a little ridiculous.

“You’re living here during the renovations?” he asked, his big face folding into lines of disbelief. “You never said that.”

“The really heavy stuff doesn’t start for a while,” I said.

“Demolition starts at the end of September.”

That was less than two weeks away.

“If I stay in one room upstairs-”

He pulled a face. A face that said no.

“It’s my house,” I said.

“Aren’t you rich?” he asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not sure why anyone who had a choice would choose to live in an empty house about to be renovated.”

“I’m rich and eccentric?”

“How incredibly Piedmont of you.”

I grinned. It was, wasn’t it?

“You want to put down that gun? You remind me of your grandmother.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, and put the gun down on the mantel piece. There were no bullets in it. Hadn’t been for decades. It was all for show.

“I meant it as one.”

I noticed the broken glass behind him. One of the windows around the door was smashed. “What are you doing breaking windows?”

“The door was locked. It wasn’t supposed to be locked.”

“Don’t you have a key?”

“There’s a key?” he cried. “Your mom said there hadn’t been a key for decades.”

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