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It’s a long night of driving, and Charlie’s aching when she gets to the diner. She’s getting too old for this shit.
What went down in Greenville — Charlie’s not going to think about it. She pulls her mind back to the present. Live in the moment. Live in this beautiful spring day. The clouds and the sky over the river. The diner perched on the side of the gorge.
(Charlie left behind a folder of evidence, and if that’s not enough, she also borrowed someone’s phone to send Luca a heads up.)
She looks at the diner, and decides that coffee and a bathroom are the top priorities.
The diner’s windows look out over the river, and Charlie takes a table next to the long drop down. The waitress gets her coffee and the breakfast special. The coffee is terrible, but the food’s not bad.
“New in town?”
Charlie turns to look.
The woman’s hair is dark, pulled up into a messy bun. She’s wearing a sweater dress, knee-length, over leggings. The dress looks like it should be soft, but Charlie knows dresses and sweaters like this. She finds them in thrift shops, at garage sales, and they always look soft, but feel scratchy as shit.
“Yeah,” Charlie says, and holds out a hand. “Charlie Cale.”
“Lucy Miller.”
Her handshake is warm.
“Join me?” Charlie asks, on a whim.
“Thought you’d never ask.” Lucy smiles, and it transforms her face.
They talk about everything and nothing. The town. The river. The house Lucy is fixing up, a ways out of town.
“It’s the contractors who’re killing me,” Lucy says, and her face looks bleak for a moment. “I checked all of the issues out before I bought the place. My cousin’s a home inspector, and he did a good job. I knew what I was getting into with the house. I looked up estimates online, and it was reasonable. But then the contractors come out, and they all tell me different things, and I can’t tell if they’re telling me the truth.”
“I can tell,” Charlie says. “If the contractors are lying. I can tell you that.”
“You can?” Lucy looks surprised. “Are you in construction?”
“Something like that.” Charlie thinks for a moment, and then decides to stop thinking. “Look, this is sudden, but — do you want me to come meet them for you?”
* * *
“My webcomic is pretty popular,” Lucy says, as they walk up a long, dirt driveway. Part of the road’s washed out — one of the many contractors Lucy needs will have to fix that — so they had to park Lucy’s car and the Cuda down at the main road. “I got really lucky with it, and the book and merch deals help, too. But it’s popular enough to buy a shitty, broken-down house, not a fancy house with stuff like working electricity.”
They walk around a corner, and the house is tucked into the woods. Charlie doesn’t know houses, but this looks like a pretty nice one that fell on hard times. It doesn’t look new, but it also doesn’t look super-old or anything. It’s got long walls and tall windows, and the peeling paint reveals weathered wooden siding.
The gardens around it are full of daffodils, blooming in shades of yellow and cream and white.
Lucy sees Charlie looking at the flowers. “I planted tulips too,” she says. “The squirrels got them.” She sighs. “I guess I can’t be angry. But I put corn out for them. Thought maybe that would stop them.”
They walk around the house. Lucy points out all the projects she has. New roof. New siding. New windows.
“And it needs even more work inside,” Lucy says. “Wallpaper all over.”
“It’s great,” Charlie says. It’s worn-down, and she can see why it needs work. But she can also see Lucy’s vision. The house, shingled in natural wood, fading to silver beneath the trees. The roof, replaced with metal and solar panels. Something about it says home.
* * *
The contractors come out the next day, and Charlie can tell all of them are lying.
“You said it was bad,” Charlie says, that evening. “But I didn’t think everyone would be lying to me. I thought there’d be a lot of honest ones, and just a few liars I’d need to weed out.”
They’re eating pasta Lucy cooked on a hot plate in the garage. Lucy has several running lists she’s keeping on a big sheet of butcher paper, and the electrical in Lucy’s kitchen is on the BIG PROBLEM list.
“And they’re the only contractors in a two-hour radius.” Lucy sighs. “I wanted to live in the woods, but…” She scrubs her hands through her hair, and then pulls out the scrunchie holding her bun in place. Her hair falls down across her shoulders, wavy and dark. The kind of hair you could run your fingers through.
It takes Charlie a moment to remember what they’re talking about.
“The third guy was only lying about the schedule,” Charlie says, once her brain catches back up. “He knows how to do the work, he really is going to file a permit, and he’s not planning on jacking up the price after he starts.”
Lucy looks at her, long and even. “I understand how you could know if they’re lying about the work they’re doing,” she says. “If you have construction experience. But how could you know about his schedule?”
“It’s just this — this thing I have.” Charlie keeps facing Lucy, even though she wants to look away. “It’s not a big deal, just… it’s just a thing.”
Lucy stares at Charlie a little longer, and then shrugs. “If you’re right, you just saved me five grand.”
Probably more, Charlie thinks. The other guys were lying their asses off.
“You should stay,” Lucy says. “As long as you like.”
“As long as I can.” Charlie doesn’t like to make promises.
* * *
“Ground rules,” Charlie says, a couple of days later, after she realizes that she might be staying a while.
They’re standing outside, by the old garden bed in front of the house. Lucy’s pulling weeds and Charlie’s nervously smoking a cigarette.
Lucy looks up at her. “What do you need?”
What do you need. Open and honest and — Charlie swallows.
“You can’t take any photos of me,” she says. “And you really can’t post them online.”
“Of course,” Lucy says. “Anything else?”
“You can’t tell people about me.” Charlie stops to think and realizes that sounds real bad. “I mean, you can tell people about me. But you can’t tell them my name is Charlie Cale.”
“I’d never share that without asking you.”
The truth. The absolute, god’s-honest-truth. Charlie’s not sure whether to be relieved or terrified.
* * *
Most mornings follow the same routine. Lucy gets up and goes to her studio, up on the top floor, to work on new comics. Charlie gets out the wallpaper steamer, or the paint, and works on fixing up the rooms on the main floor. Around lunch time, Lucy comes down and shows Charlie a new comic on her tablet, and Charlie tells her it’s awesome, because it always is. And then they spend the afternoon hiking, or thrifting, or working on the house, or discovering a whole new type of horrible contractor who’s lying to them.
Charlie’s been living there a few months when she finds Lucy painting on the back deck. Not painting the deck (although it needs it, and it is on Charlie’s list, if only the weather would cooperate).
Instead, Lucy’s painting at an easel, facing a huge canvas — big blobby slashes, her palette knife cutting through the greens and browns and blacks of the evergreens. The reds and golds of the autumn leaves.
Charlie’s about to walk back inside when Lucy turns and smiles at her. There’s a blob of paint on her nose, and her hair’s piled up on her head with a paint brush.
“I thought you drew on a tablet,” Charlie says, and then feels like an idiot.
“I do.” Lucy looks back at the painting. Tilts her head, like she’s trying to change perspective. “The comics are for my audience. Painting is just for me.”
Charlie stares past her, at the canvas. Sees the trunks of trees emerging. The glow of the light on the changing leaves.
She knew Lucy was out of her league, that she was talented. That she didn’t need Charlie.
“It looks amazing,” Charlie says.
Lucy smiles at her again, like the sun coming out, and Charlie knows that she is not worthy.
* * *
They’re sitting on the three-season porch, watching the snow fall outside.
They found an honest electrician, and the kitchen’s back in service, although Lucy still needs to get down to the scratch and dent for a better stove and a fridge that doesn’t swing between hardly-cold and frozen milk. Lucy’s made them hot chocolate. There’s a roaring fire in the little woodstove by the outside wall, which offsets the cold air coming in from where the door still hasn’t been replaced.
Charlie’s feeling itchy. Like she’s expecting something to be wrong.
“You actually inherited the house,” Charlie says. “And now someone’s angry.”
“Nothing like that.”
“You’ve got family members who hate each other and are coming to visit.”
“No.”
“You didn’t develop an app and get swindled out of your cut, did you?”
Lucy smiles. “Because I lost the napkin I wrote my original plan on? No.” She gets up and puts another log on the fire, and then turns to look at Charlie. “What’s with you tonight? Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Charlie says. She stares into the fire.
It’s been six months. Six months here. With Lucy. Charlie’s never been somewhere this long without — well.
Everything is okay. It is, and it terrifies her.
She’s used to living in the moment. But Lucy makes her want to live in the future, or some shit like that. Like she could stay here forever.
The fire pops, and the log shifts.
* * *
Charlie is running out of things to fix.
She finished the wallpaper removal and wall repairs in the first month. Since then, she’s screened roofing contractors and electricians, learned how to install a French drain, and dug holes for hundreds of flower bulbs. (Lucy found them on online clearance; Charlie got them planted before the ground froze.) She’s mastered basic electrical repairs and can now replace a ceiling fixture or vent fan with only minor hand-holding from YouTube.
She’s solved one crime in the last ten months: the case of the structural engineer trying to get a kickback for a referral to a local foundation contractor.
The house looks amazing now, and Lucy doesn’t need her.
Lucy says Charlie can stop working, that Charlie doesn’t need to do anything at all — that Charlie can relax. And Charlie knows Lucy thinks she’s telling the truth, but what role is there for Charlie here?
* * *
Charlie paints the front door on a warm day in February. The faded, scratched, shit-brown paint has been annoying her all winter.
Lucy’s house deserves better. Lucy deserves a sky-blue door, bright and unexpected and beautiful, just like her.
The butcher-paper to-fix list in Lucy’s kitchen is getting really short these days.
Charlie finds Lucy in the upstairs guest room, which has a narrow twin bed and a large area with a drop-cloth and an easel for painting. The windows look out over the snow-covered woods.
“New painting?” Charlie asks, from the doorway.
Lucy’s wearing the same dress she was wearing when they met at the diner, all those months ago. Her hair’s loose, falling over her shoulders in soft waves. There’s a blob of red paint on her cheek.
Normally, Charlie would have trouble making herself look away from Lucy. But this time —
The painting — it’s her. Her face.
Charlie doesn’t know art. What she knows is truth. And she sees it there, in her face, looking out of the canvas at her.
She thinks of Lucy — decent, honest Lucy. Lucy who puts out a cooler for contractors on hot days. Who holds events for the fans of her comic, to raise money for good causes. Charlie’s been assuming she’s one of Lucy’s strays. But looking at her face, looking at that painting —
Lucy pays attention to power discrepancies. Lucy would think about the fact that Charlie might not have anywhere else to go.
“I.” Charlie doesn’t normally find it hard to ask people about things she’s deduced. But this time, the words try to stick in her throat. “Lucy, are you into me?”
Lucy blushes. “I’ve been adding things to the list,” she confesses. “So you wouldn’t go.”
A warm feeling bubbles up in Charlie's chest.
“I want you here,” Lucy says. “But I didn’t want — I know I’m the one who owns the house. You’ve put so much work into it, you should too. But I know you said you can’t be on the grid, and I — Charlie, I just want you to stay.” She meets Charlie’s eyes. “With me.”
Truth. All of it, the truth.
Charlie’s been dreaming about this for months. She steps forward and puts her arm around Lucy.
The dress isn’t scratchy. It’s soft.
Almost as soft as the skin on Lucy’s cheek as Charlie cups it.
Charlie leans in for the kiss.
This is home. Not a house. Not a place. But a person.
Charlie thinks she’ll stay a while.