Isaiah had told him it still held coffee, which was the job, and Ethan had informed him that function was not the only criterion by which objects should be judged. Isaiah had thought about that longer than he expected to. He was halfway through his second post repair of the morning when he heard the front door of the house open. He didn't turn around. He'd learned the rhythms of the property by now, the way Amelia came out early, the way Grace came out late, the way the house itself seemed to breathe differently depending on who was in it and what was happening between them.
These were things a person noticed when they worked quietly, which was why Isaiah had always preferred working quietly. The footsteps that crossed the frost-hardened grass weren't Amelia's. They were heavier, slow, deliberate in the way of a man who wanted you to hear him coming. Isaiah stood and turned. The man was maybe 45, well-dressed in the way of someone who dressed well even when they weren't going anywhere in particular.
Pressed shirt, good jacket, leather shoes that had no business being on a grass property this early in the morning. He was handsome in a way that had probably opened a lot of doors for him, and he had the posture of someone who'd never quite stopped being surprised that doors opened for him, and who'd started to mistake that surprise for entitlement. He stopped about 6 ft away and looked at Isaiah. The way you look at something you're trying to decide whether to buy. You're the contractor, the man said.
Isaiah Brooks. He didn't extend a hand. He'd learned to read whether a hand was going to be taken, and this man's body language said no. David Mercer. The man looked at the fence line, then back at Isaiah.
Amelia hired you. That's right. How long you've been out here? Few days. David Mercer nodded slowly, like this confirmed something he'd already suspected.
She overpaying you. Isaiah looked at him steadily. We agreed on a price. She tends to overpay for things, David said. It wasn't aggressive, exactly.
It was something worse, conversational, like he was sharing useful information. It's a blind spot. She values loyalty over efficiency, always has. Isaiah picked up his water bottle. I appreciate the context.
David's eyes sharpened slightly. He wasn't used to being gently deflected. I'm just saying, she's got a lot going on right now. Company stuff, legal stuff. She doesn't always make the best decisions under pressure.
She hired me to fix a fence, Isaiah said. I'm fixing the fence. A-beat. David looked at him for a moment longer than was comfortable, and then he did something that men like him often did when they encountered resistance they hadn't anticipated. He smiled.
Reframed it as friendliness, filed it under fine then, and moved on. Fair enough, he said. And walked back toward the house. Isaiah watched him go. Then he drove the next post into the ground with more force than was strictly necessary.
He was still working that section 20 minutes later when Amelia came out. She walked straight to him, which told him she'd seen David leave and had probably been waiting until she was sure he was gone. "He talked to you," she said. "Briefly. " "What did he say? " Isaiah considered. "He said you overpay for things. " Her jaw tightened.
"Of course he did. " "He also implied you're not in a great position to be making decisions right now. " She said nothing for a moment. Then, "He's right about one thing. I'm not in a great position. " She said that flatly without self-pity, the way you state a weather fact. "My board of directors has been meeting without me. Three of them have been talking to David.
He's positioning himself through them to argue I'm not fit to run the company. " Isaiah kept his hands on the post he was setting. "On what grounds? " "On the grounds that the last quarter was difficult and I didn't handle the communication well and I've been distracted. " She paused. "The distracted part is true. Grace has been struggling at school. I've been here more than I've been at the office.
They're using that. " "Distracted handling your daughter is a different thing than distracted. " "In boardrooms, Mr. Brooks, it's the same thing. " I didn't argue with that. He'd never been in a boardroom, but he'd been told things were the same thing when they weren't enough times to know it was a tactic and not a fact. "What are you going to do? " he asked. "I don't know yet. " She looked at the fence.
"That's the problem. I've been running this company for 11 years. I built it from eight employees and a mission statement that people thought was idealistic to the point of being naive. We have 240 people on payroll now. We've done more sustainable construction in this state than any firm in the Southeast. " She stopped.
"And I cannot for the life of me figure out how I let things get to the point where David Mercer is the one telling people I can't handle pressure. Isaiah set the post and stepped back. You've been sleeping. She looked at him like the question surprised her. Not well.
Eating. Isaiah. I'm not asking to be personal, he said. I'm asking because I've watched you come out here every morning for 5 days and every time you look like someone who's been fighting a war all night and then pretending they haven't. She was quiet.
My wife was sick for 7 months before she died, he said. He didn't say it for effect. He said it the way you say something that's just true. That's part of the landscape of who you are. During those 7 months, I was holding down three client jobs, taking Ethan to school, sitting in hospital waiting rooms, and trying to be the kind of husband she deserved while she was going through something I couldn't fix.
You know what my biggest problem was? She waited. I kept telling myself I was fine, he said, because I needed to be fine, because somebody had to be fine. And the longer I told myself that the more everything underneath started to go and I didn't notice because I was too busy performing fine to actually check. Amelia looked at him for a long moment.
Her eyes were doing something complicated that she was clearly working to keep off her face. What changed? She said quietly. She called me out on it. He picked up his mallet.
Three days before she died, she grabbed my hand in that hospital bed and she said, Isaiah, stop performing and start preparing. And I didn't know what she meant until after she was gone and I had a 6-year-old boy looking at me and I had to decide whether I was going to collapse or build something. He drove the next post. Amelia stood there for a moment in the cold morning with her coffee going cold in her hands and she didn't say anything and he didn't need her to. She went back inside.
He worked. By noon, the eastern section of the fence was 60% complete, and Isaiah was doing his mental accounting while he ate his sandwich on the tailgate, the way he always did, his mental accounting while he was eating, because the two things didn't require the same parts of his brain, and it was efficient. He was 1,400 into the job in materials. He'd quoted Amelia 2,800 for the full project with labor, which meant if everything went clean, he was looking at maybe 1,100 clear after materials, which was fine. It was fine.
It would cover the electric bill and most of the lumber credit he'd taken out for the Holt job, the one Holt had paid him 800 for instead of the 14 they'd agreed on. He thought about Danny Marsh, who still hadn't responded to his text. He thought about the truck, the defroster, the list. His phone buzzed. He picked it up expecting Danny or another one of those contractor poaching calls, and instead saw a number he didn't recognize, Nashville area code.
He almost let it go. Brooks Repair, he answered. Isaiah Brooks, a man's voice, professional, clipped without being unfriendly. That's right. My name is Charles Whitfield.