Page 61 of One Bride for Three Single Dads

“Harrison, I’m done—”

He tries to get away. I step in front of him again.

“I’m not done,” I tell him in an even voice, careful to keep my aggression in check. “How many hours of work do you think this is? Just what we have seen so far?”

He shakes his head. He looks away.

“Ambrose?”

“I don’t know, man…”

“Yes you do,” I counter, hearing the accusation creep into my tone. “About four hundred hours, right? Give or take?”

He doesn’t say anything. Only shrugs.

“And we haven’t even seen the other side of the house. You know the one? The one with no roof?”

“If we push ourselves—”

“We will kill ourselves,” I finish for him. “Not to mention, we left our three children on the side of a cliff with Jolene. You want to work twenty hours a day for the next three months? Just to end up losing money? Or failing?”

He narrows his eyes at me. Failure is not an option. Not for him.

“I guess we need to take another look at the other side,” he growls in warning.

“Yeah, that sounds good!” Boone interrupts optimistically. “Maybe it’s not that bad? Maybe it’s okay?”

Ambrose and I just stare at each other.

“Guys?” Boone continues hopefully. “Want to go take a look?”

“Yeah, let’s,” Ambrose finally says, letting his shoulders down.

Ambrose pivots and walks away from me, and I follow right behind. I can’t help it. Tick, tick, tick. The hours add up in my mind. I’ve been estimating jobs since I was sixteen years old. I know the three of us can’t can do this in three months.

Literally. It’s a physical impossibility.

And I know that Ambrose is slowly coming to the same realization as we head to the rougher side of the house.

This is a two-story section of bedrooms. There is a spacious three-car garage on the first floor with a utility room, I guess. Two other small rooms that are probably for storage, or maybe workout rooms, or maybe more bedrooms. It’s hard to tell when everything is just two-by-fours.

But since these rooms were shielded from the elements, they are still in pretty good shape. The garage has rolls of carpeting tucked away at the back wall. Cases of wood floor and tile floor protected it. If the garage never got wet in the last year, the carpet might still be good.

Tick, tick, tick. That’s five hundred hours right there. And a load of concrete coming up the side of the cliff so that we can finish the garage floor. Oh boy.

The stairs echo under our boots as we climb. The air gets brighter. That makes sense, because I can see the sky.

“Oh, boy,” Boone mumbles.

Ambrose climbs the last stair and then stops to push his hands through his hair. He arches his back as he looks around, fingers laced behind his neck, a deep scowl on his face.

“Pull it out?” I ask him gently.

He doesn’t answer me in words. But I can tell that he knows. He’s looking around at the gray-colored plywood, the warped wall studs, the bits of paper and insulation piled up in corners where animals have made their nests. We can’t salvage any of this.

And no roof. Did I mention that part?

Five hundred hours.

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