A Roof Over Their Heads. M. K. Stelmack

about Spirit Lake, how it didn’t make any sense given that he was pretty sure he didn’t know anyone there. But that his gut wanted him to go there the same way it had pushed him to go to Walmart where he’d found them all.

      Something sparked in her eyes and for once it wasn’t tears. Right then and there she made him a deal. If she and Bryn and Amy and Callie all ran away with him to Spirit Lake, would he stay? As soon as she said it, his gut felt warm and skippy. This was it. This was right for him...and his family.

      Two months later, and exactly one year after Daddy-R was killed in a head-on crash, they were here in Spirit Lake. And his gut was flip-flopping like crazy.

      He’d really thought the tent idea would work and he’d tried to help Alexi. But she’d had to find the tent and bend the poles into place and pound in the pegs. She’d done everything. He wasn’t Richard, wasn’t even a close substitute.

      She needed somebody to help her, to be all the things he couldn’t be.

      His gut stopped churning, calmed and spoke to him. Seth Greene.

      He’d brought Bryn back and kept their family together for another day. The man had stood there with the bat that looked like a fence post and watched them all, but mostly he’d watched Mom. Let her be, but stepped in when he could help. He’d got rid of the cop, he’d persuaded Bryn to give back the shirt and he’d let Mom unload on him.

      She’d talked to him, not all square-shouldered like when she was with the bank manager or caseworker, but with her hip jutted out and her hand mussing up her hair even worse, like she did when working out a problem with Daddy-R. Once, she’d touched his arm. And when Seth Greene had found out she was alone, he’d wanted to help. Mom had turned him down but...

      His insides were settling now. No one could replace Daddy-R but someone like Seth Greene would work. That must’ve been why his gut wanted him to come to Spirit Lake. Because Seth Greene lived here.

      Thunder vibrated through the wood and joined the beat in his gut. This was it. Things were supposed to go wrong so Seth Greene could make them right.

      * * *

      SPIRIT LAKE AT dawn was a kind of ground zero. As Seth drove the truck with Mel through the streets, the scene was of full-blown vandalism. A maple tree, a cloud of bright green leaves, had fallen across the street, and they detoured onto a different street where the truck tires crunched over twigs and broken glass and hail. They swerved around a kid’s lawn chair and an overturned flowerpot, pink blooms strangely intact, bumped over a flagpole and vinyl fencing. Holes in siding and punctured windows made houses appear like the target of gang warfare. Every single parked vehicle was dented, every single windshield busted. One big plus for the underground parking at the two-bedroom apartment he rented with Mel.

      “Think of the roofs,” Mel crowed. “I bet there isn’t one in town that doesn’t need to be fixed, if not replaced.”

      His brother was right. They’d hit the jackpot. Worst hailstorm in sixty years, according to the news. Worse than anything in his lifetime or even at fourteen years Seth’s senior, Mel’s. Their dad would’ve been a kid during the previous one. About the age of Matt.

      There he was again, thinking of the boy for no reason. He’d woken last night, hail pelting against his bedroom window, and immediately wondered how the family was doing. Matt, he figured, would be listening to the thunder splintering the air, scared but not wanting to show it in front of the others, curled tight with his knees to his chin, blanket drawn so only a breathing hole remained, an animal playing dead. The other three had probably burrowed under the covers with the mother on her big mattress. Only the mattress, Seth had imagined as he lay alone on his king-size bed, because she probably hadn’t had the time to assemble the frame. She must’ve been bone tired. Hard enough to take care of four kids on a good day but on a moving day...at least on a night like this, he’d concluded, sinking back into sleep, they had a decent roof over their heads.

      “After Tim Hortons, we’ll swing by the lumber store and place an order, okay?” Mel said. “There’ll be a run on materials, let me tell you.”

      For Mel, a coffee was incidental to a trip to the coffee shop. It was all about the captive audience. Sure enough, as soon as Seth had them in the drive-through lane, Mel hopped out. “Get me my usual.”

      Seth watched through his rearview mirror as his brother cut in behind the truck over to the driver’s side and went two vehicles down to a gray crew cab. It was Pete, owner of Pete’s Your Man. The handyman lived seven miles west of town and could give a detailed damage report. Seth eased the truck forward and the vehicles bumped along behind him; Mel walking beside Pete, their voices mingling with the idling motors.

      Weather permitting, Mel scouted for information this way most days, and most days, Seth didn’t mind. It gave him a few minutes of solitude and satisfied Mel’s addiction to facts and figures, and every tradesman eventually got used to Mel’s tap on their window.

      But today it felt...wrong. It was one thing to fix a roof at the end of its days, but another to profit off struggling folks, insurance notwithstanding. It wasn’t like Mel to feel so excited about making money off the misfortunes of others, yet he’d been raring to go from the second his feet hit the floor. Hadn’t it occurred to Mel that they’d have to work harder at a job Seth had long ago lost interest in?

      Maybe that was it. Maybe the problem was him, not Mel.

      Him lying awake, thinking about a nameless widow and her scared kids, instead of how to make himself some real money.

      At the outdoor menu board, he placed the order. “One large coffee, dark roast, one cream.” Then he drew breath and let it rip. “Extra-large iced cappuccino. Half the ice. Double the sugar. Whipped cream. Caramel and chocolate swirl. Spoon, no stirring stick. And twenty Timbits. At least four need to be cream filled. None with icing sugar.”

      To the clerk’s credit, she didn’t ask him to repeat it. Memorizing Mel’s morning order was probably part of national training to work at the chain.

      Seth checked his mirror again. Mel was trotting over to another truck in the queue. Ron’s Siding read the lettering on the truck door. He and Ron had exchanged plenty of customers over the years. Seth rolled up the line and opened his Facebook to see pictures of golf ball–size hail in town and north, a grainery toppled south, a horse struck dead by lightning east eight miles.

      And one person dead. Frederick Stephensson. Struck in the head by a hailstone the size of the baseballs Seth had tossed around last night. His niece had posted the news, and it had been shared and shared again until it was now in Seth’s feed. Seth didn’t know him.

      But he knew the brother, Stephen Stephensson. He was the one who’d hired his dad to roof his house. The roof his dad had fallen from and broken his spine.

      Now, twenty years later, there had been another death out there.

      Seth was overcome by a sudden urge to get out. Get out of the truck, get out of the line, get out of the work piling up like the vehicles behind him. He pressed his fist to his temple. He started, stopped. Three more vehicles. Start, stop. Two more. Keep it together, Seth. This line will end, you won’t be trapped forever.

      At the take-out window, Mel hopped back into the truck. “Isn’t just the town,” he said as he flipped open the box and examined the donuts.

      “Hail’s flattened everything between here and Pete’s. Broke three windows and took out his wife’s garden. Ronnie said there isn’t a stalk of grain standing between here and his place. Some storm. Get this, they’ve both had calls this morning, people needing repairs done. Ronnie said we should keep in touch, work together. This could go big. You get any calls?”

      Seth shook his head and swung out of Tim Hortons onto the street to Tim-Br-Mart. “Frederick Stephensson’s dead. You hear that?”

      Mel stopped with his spoon of whipped cream halfway to his mouth. “Really?”

      “Hailstone to the head. I saw it on Facebook.”

      Mel