A Roof Over Their Heads. M. K. Stelmack

Seth’s side of the exchange she gathered someone was inquiring about getting a roof repaired. Bryn and Amy dashed back in the kitchen and reappeared with pizza and juice boxes, resuming their place as if her conversation with Seth was a TV show they didn’t want to miss. Matt took three short sips from his box and handed the rest to Callie, his eyes on Seth the whole time.

      After the call, Seth started to type a message. A good opportunity to get him turned around and out the door.

      “Looks as if you’re busy from the storm,” she said. “I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure something will work out.”

      He reattached his phone to his belt. “How do you figure that?” He looked at her, grimaced and glanced away, doing that looking while not-looking thing. Was there something on her face?

      She was shifting Callie in her arms to check when Matt piped up. “But, Mom, the landlord won’t talk to us. Your phone is dead, anyway. And we can’t afford to fix it.”

      Alexi felt her face grow hot. It was bad enough that a stranger knew she couldn’t afford a repairman, but that he had to learn it from her kid was even more shameful. It meant she couldn’t hide her poverty from her own kids.

      “And Seth Greene offered to do it. This is the right thing to do.” He squared to her. “I feel it in my gut.”

      Her own gut screamed something else. If Matt had got it in his mind that Seth was who they needed—heaven help them all. She needed this man out of her house now. But how? She couldn’t even call the police. And what did it matter? He was chummy with them, anyway.

      He pointed to his temple. “What happened to your head?”

      What? She touched her forehead and discovered a huge bump and, as she felt more carefully, a cut. Dried blood flaked onto her fingers. That explained his odd way of looking at her.

      “I guess it was a hailstone. I—I was out getting the sleeping bags.”

      “You didn’t know you got hit?”

      “I felt something. It was dark. It didn’t hurt, really. I thought it was rain, not blood.” Why was she explaining this? She felt the wide eyes of the kids on her like bright bare bulbs. Why hadn’t they said anything? “It looks worse than it is, I’m sure. I bruise easily.”

      “What were you doing in a tent with a storm forecasted?”

      “It was my fault,” Matt interjected. “I suggested it because the place stunk so bad.”

      “You suggested it, not decided it. Therefore, it’s not your fault,” Seth said.

      Which implied it was hers. “You’re right,” she said, her voice squeaky with frustration. “I should’ve checked. It—it was a good thing it worked out as well as it did.”

      Seth stared at the bruise on her head as if it were an enormous, hideous wart. “Why is your phone dead?” he said, jumping to another deficiency.

      “The battery ran down and she can’t find the charger,” Matt explained.

      Were there any more ways to display her incompetency? “I’m sure it’ll show up,” Alexi said.

      Seth tipped his head down the stairs. “It’s in the box by the front door.”

      There were ways. “I—I forgot that I’d brought it in.”

      “I’ll go get it,” Amy said, running down the stairs.

      “I get to plug it in,” Bryn said.

      Callie slid down about to follow, then reconsidered and wound her arms around Alexi’s left thigh. Matt didn’t budge, and there was no subtle way of dismissing him.

      Seth turned to her. “I hate—no, loathe—home renovations. Frankly I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

      And she had better things to do than hear him gripe. “Then get doing them.”

      Matt gasped, but she was beyond caring how rude she was. Could he think any less of her, anyway?

      Seth merely shrugged. “I was until I saw your busted tent from the roof I was on. And I saw the roof here I’d put on three years ago, banged up but still good and I’d wondered why you’d chosen a tent over it. Then I remembered you saying it stunk inside and then I wondered if you got the water running. I’ll be making plenty from this storm. I figured I’d take a few hours to help out before it gets crazy. Like Matt said, it seems like the right thing to do.”

      So. He saw her as a charity case. A victim in need of services. Exactly what she’d been for a third of her life. From age seven to the day she turned eighteen, she’d lived in foster care. Only when she’d married Richard had she been someone else. A wife. A mother. A full member of society. With him gone, she’d reverted to her childhood status.

      Except now she had four children under her care. Their well-being, not her pride, was what mattered. As for how Matt’s proximity to an adult male would play out, well—well, no water was also a complication she’d have a hard time explaining, too.

      She swallowed. “Okay, I do need help. I accept your offer. Thank you.”

      “Yes!” Matt jabbed his fist in the air and tore into the kitchen, shouting the news to Amy and Bryn. The solid pressure of Callie disappeared as she broke away to join her brothers and sisters.

      Seth grimaced at her swollen temple, and she touched it self-consciously. “A man died last night from a hailstone,” he said quietly. “Him and my dad...knew each other. So when I see you like that—” He broke off. “It can end so fast.”

      Old familiar pain, the never-healing bruise on her heart from Richard’s death, swelled inside her. No, this was not the time, not the place and definitely not the person. She looked him in the eye. “I know that.”

      He went still, then worked his jaw from side to side, shifted on his feet. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

      He hadn’t? Had they overlooked introductions yesterday with everything happening? No, she’d learned his name and then not extended him the same courtesy, the man who’d brought Bryn back, kept her day from crossing into a living nightmare. Now he was here again today, willing to help someone he didn’t know the name of from the goodness of his heart. His grumpy heart, but still...

      She dropped her hand from her temple to hold it out to him. “Alexandra Docker. Alexi, for short.”

      “Alexi,” he said and gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze before letting go. His own hand felt warm and solid—and gritty, like a sandpaper block.

      “Alexi,” he repeated and then added what made no sense at all given that he was the one doing her a favor. “Thank you.”

      * * *

      SETH RESTED THE drainpipe against his shoulder as he wrestled to get the fitting on, one shoulder brushing against a stud, his head bent to clear a copper intake pipe that ran across the utility room. This was a two-person job really, but the only handy person was Alexi Docker and she was the last person he wanted to face.

      Literally, to face. Seeing her all banged up had rattled him, and then when he’d heard how it had happened, it felt like the fresh death of Stephensson was there before him, and he’d come off—well, a little harsh. He’d made it worse with his boneheaded comment about losing others suddenly. She’d shut down just like yesterday when the subject of her dead husband had come up. No room there to explain that he understood how she felt, that his own father had died unexpectedly, too, even if it was twenty years ago, not one.

      “Hello?”

      At the sound of Alexi’s voice, he jerked, which shot the pipe out of place.

      “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” She stood at the entrance to the utility room, her long legs set apart enough for Callie with her pink-framed glasses to peep through. The second Seth made eye contact she slipped