A Roof Over Their Heads

by M. K. Stelmack

  “No. She evicted them.”

  Mel took a bite of his muffin. “Oh.” Like it was news about someone they barely knew.

  Then again, how well did Mel know Alexi and the kids? It was him, Seth Full Name Greene, who was all wrapped up in their daily life, him who Matt came to when times were tough, him who was all torn up over them going hungry and having no roof over their heads.

  Without a single clue what to do, he turned to Alexi. “We’ll think of something. I know people in town. I can already think of a dozen people to call.”

  “No need,” Mel said and popped the last of the muffin into his mouth. “I have a place.”

  “Mel, we can’t fit five people into—”

  But Mel was shaking his head. “Not talking about the apartment.” He swallowed, his gaze switching to Alexi. “I bought the Stephensson place. You and the kids can move out there.”

  Then, as if he’d not just stripped Seth of the family he’d come to care for as much as his own flesh and blood, Mel took another bite of his muffin.

  Seth felt a hot trickle on his hand. He’d squeezed the paper cup hard enough for the coffee to overflow the rim. He eased his hold, aware that Alexi had noticed. She was worried, yes, but in her eyes, he saw something else. A flicker of hope.

  Mel had given it to her.

  “Come on,” said Mel. “Let’s eat. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.”

  Alexi followed. Seth couldn’t. Because once she and the kids moved out there, he’d only see them over his father’s dead body.

  * * *

  MEL, SETH DISCOVERED from where he stood rooted at the entrance, had it all planned out.

  “Me and Stephensson signed all the papers back in May.”

  May! Two months ago. Way before the hailstorm when Mel had first mentioned to him about Stephensson selling. Then, last Thursday, he said he was done thinking about it. Yeah. Because it was already a done deal.

  “Technically, I don’t take possession until the end of the month,” Mel said from the kitchen, his voice muffled by a Timbit. “But I know Stephensson has already left, so I could check with him and see if he’s okay with moving the date up. Or if he’s okay with you just moving in without us having to go through the rigmarole of signing anything else.”

  Mel really had bought the place that had killed their dad.

  What was he thinking? There were a dozen places he could’ve got. Why blow his inheritance money on this place? It was...morbid, was what it was. Morbid and sick and...and cruel.

  Mel had betrayed him, just as Connie had, but at least with her it wasn’t unexpected. With Mel... Mel knew exactly how he felt about the place, and yet he’d gone ahead and done it anyway. Yes, Mel had the right. Yes, Mel was a grown man. But by buying that property, Mel was deliberately going to a place where he knew Seth couldn’t follow.

  Seth stared at the dark brew in his cup, the same coffee he’d ordered alongside Mel’s frothy concoction for years now, a little tradition to start their day together.

  He’d lost it all. No Mel. No Connie. No Alexi. No Matt and the other kids. Everyone had made choices that didn’t include him.

  He wrenched open the door and left, chucking his coffee into the hydrangea bush he’d planted one Mother’s Day years ago. As he drove away, his phone rang. Ben. Probably wondering why he and Mel weren’t at the site. Seth didn’t pick up. Ben would call Mel, and Mel, who was showing himself to be quite the boss, could handle it.

  * * *

  THE FARMHOUSE WAS better than Alexi had expected. It was a two-story, old-time farmhouse, the kind found in calendars of prairie homes. Except this one looked far more solid and modern. Large windows, new vinyl siding and what made Alexi gasp, a deck that wrapped straight around the sides and front. Perfect for summer suppers.

  “It looks good from the outside,” Alexi conceded.

  “Yeah, the roof needs replacing but it’ll do for now.”

  Alexi squinted upward. Now that he mentioned it, the shingles curled and warped all across it. “I’m sure you and Seth will take care of that—”

  Mel pulled on the beak of his cap. “Do you want to see the inside?”

  The renovated kitchen had appliances that weren’t top-of-the-line but looked like they actually might work. There was flooring everywhere, even hardwood in the living room. Sure, work still needed doing—unpainted walls, missing baseboards, no window coverings—but it was all manageable. At least Marlene could see she’d upgraded.

  Callie gently released her leg as she began to explore the cupboards. A good sign. She could see the other three through the kitchen window, climbing the fence to the barnyard.

  “Are there any animals here?” she asked.

  “No,” Mel said.

  A safe yard. Another check.

  “The brothers had their niece and her family come live here,” Mel said, “so they’d started renovating. Then the niece’s husband got a job in Saskatchewan so the brothers moved into town and put the place up for sale last winter. One brother, he died in that bad hailstorm we had. Remember that? Got a hailstone to the head and dropped dead.”

  Alexi touched her forehead, remembering Seth’s intensity the morning after. His sadness—no, more than that—his helplessness at the quickness of life passing. She watched Callie open the cupboard door beneath the sink, climb in and close the door behind her. Almost immediately, the door swung open. “Welcome home!”

  The sudden loud happiness of Callie’s voice made both adults grin. Alexi decided to take the next step.

  “So how much? For real, for what you think it’s actually worth.”

  There followed much nudging and twisting about of the baseball cap. “Well, the thing is, you probably can’t pay me what it’s worth, eh?”

  True, and yet her back stiffened. “How much would it be if I could?”

  A shrug, another nudge. “How are you with a paintbrush?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “How about you pay me in labor? Paint the place, nail some boards on, handle a bit of the outside work. I need it done, and I don’t have time to do it myself so I’d have to hire someone anyway. I know you have to work it around the kids and your other business but I trust you to do what you can.”

  It was something like the deal Connie had made with Seth. She stepped up and hugged Mel. “Thank you,” she said and stepped back.

  Mel turned beet red. He cleared his throat. “Seth’ll come around. I surprised him with buying this place. He doesn’t take well to surprises.”

  There was more to it, but it wasn’t her place to pry. It would suggest an interest she’d no right to indulge.

  “So, to be clear, you bought the place. Not Seth?”

  “Yep.”

  She was pretty sure she knew the answer but she asked, “Are you and Seth going to live here, too?”

  Mel scrunched his forehead. “Hadn’t intended to. You want us to?”

  “No!”

  Mel gave a start, and Alexi revised her tone. “I mean, I just needed to clarify. It would be best if there was some distance...”

  Mel’s frown creased deeper. “I thought you two were together.”

  “No. We’re not.” She whispered the words, not because of Matt but because it was all she could manage. Somehow saying it aloud to someone else made it real and solid. It was like when she’d told the kids that Richard had died. Their crumpling faces meant it was true, and not a reality she could hide.

  Mel looked far from happy. “I don’t get him sometimes.”

  “It wasn’t him. It was me. And it wasn’t me, it was Matt.” She sighed. Why had it become so difficult to love someone?

  Sudden shrieks pierced the house. Alexi ran for the front door, emerging onto the front deck at the same time as the kids came running toward it from the barnyard.

  Matt
was in the lead, and didn’t stop until he was right before her.

  “Mom, guess what?”

  Before she had a chance to reply, he said, “A cat! With kittens. Five kittens!”

  A cat with kittens. More work. And on a farm, heartache. Yet, she couldn’t stop a smile from starting and it grew until it was as big as the kids’.

  “What do you know?” she said. “What do you know?”

  But if anyone could be grinning more, it was Mel. “Wait until I tell Seth. He’ll never believe it.”

  * * *

  CROUCHED ON A small hill in the pasture next to the farmhouse, Seth watched them. He had walked there from where he’d parked on a side road, coming across the green field where Stephensson had once pastured his cattle and where the obstacle course happened.

  With each step through the coarse grass thickened with yellow clover and purple alfalfa, Seth had remembered. He remembered Old Stephensson, who had already seemed old twenty years ago, tell him about how he always pastured a portion of the herd close to home—the cows with the calves born late, the yearlings with a lame foot or weak eyes, the heifers too young to be with the bull. The misfits.

  Old Stephensson had told him this when he’d come with Mel and his dad to roof the house.

  Instead of helping to rip off the shingles, Seth had hung out with Stephensson in the barnyard, firing off random questions about livestock management and crops, as cats and kittens wove patterns about his legs and meowed for their turn to be snuggled in the crook of his arm. Sixteen, old enough to drive, and yet he’d asked his dad the second he’d got on the roof if they could have a kitten. Dad had said, “We’ll see.”

  From what he could see of the kids, there were still kittens. Who was taking care of them, if Stephensson was not there? Were they wild? Did Alexi know they could carry diseases?

  Never mind. Not his business. Just like the farmhouse roof.

  It was a steep roof, the steepest Seth had ever been on. So steep, his dad said, a pigeon couldn’t walk it, and he’d insisted they wear safety ropes. They were laying the starter row at the bottom, the trickiest because it determined the look of the entire roof. His dad was showing Seth how it was done, right from the setting of the chalk line to cutting the shingles. Seth was catching on, setting himself a rhythm whereby he measured, aligned, remeasured, cut and laid.

  Finally, his dad had stood, said, Yep, keep on, just like that, took a step back and that was the last time his dad spoke to him.

  He and Mel pieced it together afterward. The shingles were normally piled higher on the roof, but his dad had moved a short stack down to lay the first row, which he normally did himself. He had his own routine, but this time his attention had been focused on Seth. And the rope? He’d removed it, probably to maneuver more easily around Seth and the shingles.

  One wrong step.

  He remembered how for a second he didn’t even know what had happened. There’d been no sound, just a peculiar thud and then a strangled yelp from Mel. He’d looked up from his shingles then, glanced around, then down.

  His dad was sprawled on the front steps, cement steps, meant to last. He was angled downward, his head on the bottom step. Mel was crossing the front lawn in a stumbling run. He’d dropped his thermos of coffee and slid in beside their dad. Mel lifted his head, and a part of Seth silently screamed at him not to do that, something to do with the spine.

  Their father died in excruciating pain from a broken back two hours later.

  Seth remembered fumbling with the knots to free himself, knots his father had shown him how to make not an hour earlier to keep him safe.

  All Mel ever said of their father’s death was If I’d a gun that day, I would’ve shot him. Seth got back on the roof the next day. Mel had stayed at the bottom until he couldn’t stand it and joined him. Easier to catch you before you start falling, he’d said. The two of them finished it in one day, and went back home to help with the funeral. He’d spent twenty years avoiding even looking at that house, and now some of the best people in his life were going to make it their home.

  He stood, turned his back on the old house with its old roof. He still couldn’t bear the sight of it, though now it was for a whole family of other reasons.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SUN WAS fire on his back when Seth got to the top of the apartment roof and strapped on his harness. Mel was working the nail gun, while Ben installed flashing.

  Seth didn’t know if Mel had said anything to Ben but after a glance from each of them, they kept their heads down and said nothing.

  Which suited Seth just fine. They all stayed on the roof straight through lunch and into Mel’s siesta break before calling it quits. By then, they wore gloves, even though their hands were sweating, otherwise the metal was too hot to handle, and the shingles were like slabs of hot rubber.

  As soon as Ben’s boots hit the ground, he informed them he wouldn’t return until four and left in his truck.

  “Wonder what that’s all about,” Mel said, sliding into the passenger seat beside Seth and maxing the air conditioner. “How about Taco Time? I’ve got coupons.” It was part of their routine to grab lunch at one of the fast-food places in Spirit Lake.

  “If it was our business, we’d know, and yes,” Seth said. Mel was always poking his nose where it didn’t belong, which was doubly annoying given that he’d no trouble clamping up about buying the Stephensson property.

  Seth couldn’t take it anymore. He turned in his seat to face his brother. “Why didn’t you tell me you bought the place?”

  “You know,” Mel said. “You’re not the only one who’s stood on that hill the odd time or two.”

  How had he known? “Today was the first time back in twenty years. You been there more than that?”

  Mel stared out the windshield. “Can’t count the times.”

  “So why buy the farm, Mel? Why do it when all it does is bring back bad memories?”

  Mel shifted in his seat. “Because Dad wanted me to. Last thing he said I could make sense of.”

  Seth remembered Mel cupping their father’s head. That’s when his father must’ve spoken, because by the time Seth had wrestled free of his harness and come down the ladder, their father was incomprehensible from the pain. “Why?”

  Mel gave Seth a rare, square-on look. “For your sake, Seth. He was worried about you.”

  “Me? What do you mean? I was fine.”

  “Nah. You were about like how you are now. Looking for things to fix. To take care of. He figured the farm was a good place to start. Animals, pets, crops, machinery breaking down all the time. Something to tie you down because you liked being tied down. Still do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. But you don’t like to admit it. That’s what Dad said and he’s right. Look at you with Alexi.”

  “She’s not a charity case to me. It’s more than that.”

  “Know that,” Mel confirmed.

  Yeah, Mel had known all along it was more than that. Crap, how long now had he not seen how together Mel was?

  Which made Seth realize something else. “You like the business, don’t you?”

  Mel shrugged. “Hard to explain. I like the view from a roof, I guess. Means you’re still with people but they can’t get to you.”

  So that was it. Coming to a strange place at age twelve, not quite fitting in and on the run from his past. The roofing business would’ve been a way in with people. Still was, if his early mornings at Tim’s drive-through were any indication. Seth turned down the air-conditioning. It was cooling off fast enough.

  “You telling me that Stephensson waited all this time to do it now? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I guess he carried on, kinda like we did. Family moved in and helped out but they all went their ways, and so him and his brother moved out, and put it up fo
r sale. As soon as I got the money, I went to him.”

  “You know, just because Dad wanted the place, doesn’t mean you needed to follow through. Despite what he said.”

  Mel shifted about as if sitting on a ball. “I liked this roofing business well enough. But I didn’t want to do it on my own. Back when Dad died, you were happy enough to help out, and with the way Connie was acting out, our Mom and I decided that maybe it was best we stay where we were at.”

  Seth thought of the warm, earthy smell of the pasture this morning, how even in his anger and disappointment, he remembered how the cattle were kept. “I guess...I guess you two made the right decision.”

  “Back then we did,” Mel said, “but your mother didn’t forget. Last winter, she got wind of the sale and she...she was pretty sick by then, but she made me promise that I would follow through. That’s why she gave me the money, so I could buy you the farm.”

  Seth stared at Mel, stared out the windshield at nothing in particular, back at Mel. “You got to be kidding me.”

  “Do you think,” Mel said in a quiet, reasonable voice, “if she’d given it to you, you would’ve purchased the farm?”

  “No! I’d have rather burnt every last single dollar.”

  “Well then, our mom and I made another good decision.”

  “But I don’t want it!”

  “I think you still want it.”

  All the suppressed emotion from this morning welled up. “No, I don’t. Because of Dad. And because of Alexi and the kids living there.”

  Mel did his rolling-on-a-ball shift again. “Alexi said you two aren’t together because of Matt. How’s that?”

  Seth bit off the obvious retort about why Mel was asking what was none of his business, because when had that ever stopped Mel?

  “She’s in the middle of adopting Matt. The caseworker would see me as a person of interest. Especially given my record.” Seth couldn’t keep the bitterness from the last word.

  “Would it stop the adoption?”

  “Not necessarily. It might. It’s not worth the risk.”