“You’re a natural,” Dean said, finally turning off the camera. “Maybe I don’t hate you so much for getting Maggie to say yes to your astronomical estimate.”
“Maggie wanted to say yes,” Silas told him. “I just gave her a good enough reason to.”
“How about we do an interview with the two of you?” Dean suggested.
It was perfectly normal. Maggie did it all the time. But this was the first time it had ever felt like a setup.
“I think we’ve got enough footage, don’t you?” she said pointedly.
“No such thing,” Dean insisted with cheer. “Meet me on the front porch in five. I’m swapping out batteries and cards. You can talk about the first impression Sly Sy made.”
“He’s a lot happier in the afternoon,” Silas noted as Dean bopped toward the front of the house.
“The man runs on caffeine and protein shakes,” she said as they picked their way through the backyard and around the side of the house. She spotted Billy scootching carefully across the sunporch roof on his butt. “Has he been in roofing long?” she asked.
Silas followed her gaze. “Billy’s fresh off the turnip truck,” he joked. “He worked in payroll at Canyon Custom Cabinetry. Until two weeks ago.”
“The factory that shuttered?” she asked.
“That’s the one,” he said, taking his hat off again and running a big hand through his hair. “Forty-eight years in business and then bam. Done. The executives hightailed it out of town and had the sheriff’s department escort employees out of the building on a Friday afternoon.”
“Wow. What happened?” she asked, kicking at a lump of earth that had been dislodged.
“Top-heavy organizational chart. Big, fat bonuses for the executives. Pay cuts and understaffing for the workers. Some joker figured out how to save money by messing with the quality of the product, and they all but killed the demand. Three hundred and fifty neighbors out of work in one day.”
“So now Billy’s a roofer.”
“We do what we can, where we can, to take care of our own,” Silas said. “Marta’s new, too.” He nodded toward the woman with the wheelbarrow. She had broad shoulders, narrow hips, a manicure, and looked like she was having the time of her life.
“She looks a little more confident on the job than Billy,” Maggie noted.
Silas grinned. “I bet Lou first pick that the Broncs—that’s the Boise State Broncos—would hire a new head coach in the off-season. I was right, so I got Marta and he got Billy. And now thanks to you hiring both companies, Marta can still afford to pay her sitter, and Billy doesn’t have to decide between groceries and insulin.”
“You should be saving this for the camera,” she teased.
He paused and looked deadly serious. “I don’t need to look like a hero if it makes someone else look like a victim.”
“That’s not what we do,” she promised. “We just tell the story.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” he said, turning her around to face the house. “Now, just picture how nice this terrace area will be as long as Billy there doesn’t take a header off your roof.”
Maggie could picture it. Cool stone under bare feet and strings of lights. Music. Drinks. Food. Laughter. Plants in greens and rainbows of color spilling out of pots. The tinkle of water in the fountain. Stolen kisses in the shadows.
Whoops. Rewind. Undo.
“Come on, you two. The world needs to hear the story of how you met,” Dean called from the front porch.
“Kevin is gonna be so embarrassed,” Silas quipped.
8
The day was done. And in the grand tradition of big jobs, things looked worse than when they’d first arrived.
Half of the roof was stripped, and the east side of the house looked naked without the plantings that just this morning had crowded the walls with a tangle of half-dead foliage. There were piles of rock, debris, and weeds that would only grow bigger in the coming days.
It was a good start to the project, Silas decided, dropping the tailgate on his truck and dragging the cooler closer.
Tradition. It was valued in Kinship. The shared history of people who’d grown up together, raised their kids together, worked together. Generation after generation. Sure, there was new blood every once in a while. And every summer and winter brought with it an influx of strangers looking for fun.
But the foundation was the people who lived and died there.
“Gather round, Bitterroots,” Silas called.