Chapter 13 of 13It's a Wall, Liam

"Mom."

Liam stood at the end of the dock with a canvas duffel at his feet and a folded sheet of paper in one hand. The fog had not lifted, and it hung behind him over the water, patient as a cat on a windowsill.

"Hey, just checking in," he said. "In person. Surprise."

Nora Vance set the pry bar against the porch rail of the Salt-Spray Cottage and wiped her palms down her jeans. Tern Island was quiet behind her, gulls working the low tide, and the only noise from the mainland was a truck on the county road she could not see.

"You drove up from Boston without telling me," she said.

"Rented a car. Cheaper than a cab." He held out the paper. "A deputy named Ruiz mailed me this. Forced window, floorboards pried up, no arrests. It's a week and a half old, Mom."

She read it. Flat and accurate, the way reports are, with one line at the bottom that said no suspects had been identified.

"That's a form with my address on it," she said. "I put you down as the contact when I filed it. That's how it found you."

"I know."

"You drove up here for a form."

"I drove up here because you're living alone on an island off Port Blossom with a window somebody kicked in."

"Renailed and reglazed. Ben had it done before the deputy filed."

"Who's Ben?"

"My contractor. Widower, fifty-five, keeps his boat cleaner than most people keep their kitchens." She tipped her head at the door. "Coffee's hot. Come in."

He did not move. He turned a slow circle on the dock, taking in the silvered shingles, the moss across the north slope of the roof, the boathouse leaning toward its own reflection.

"Look at this place," he said. "Roof's green. There's a tree in the chimney."

"Moss. I scraped the flue Tuesday."

"Mom."

"I know what it looks like," she said. "I bought it that way on purpose."

He put his hands in his pockets and said the thing he had come to say. "I found a realtor. Andrea, in the South End. She'll list this in a weekend. Island property, historic cottage. A developer will pay a fortune, you take the money, you come home, and I stop lying awake at night."

"Home," Nora said.

"Boston."

"I lived in Boston for thirty years. Your father still lives in Boston."

"That's not—" He stopped and started again, quieter. "That's not a reason to stay here."

"No. It's a reason not to go back."

She picked up the pry bar and went inside. He followed her, the way he had followed her through a dozen houses when he was a kid, hauling tools and asking when dinner was.

The front room smelled of sawdust and linseed oil. She stepped over the new joists and rapped the south wall with the flat of the bar. It answered low and solid, with no give anywhere.

"Feel that."

Liam laid a palm on the plaster. "It's a wall."

"It's a wall that used to breathe. The original sill was punky on the seawall side, so I cut the whole south run out, sistered new framing to the old, and set the plate on mortar so it can't drink."

"That's nice work."

"It's plain work. Nice is for clients."

"You have a budget."

"Can I see it?"

"When it balances."

He laughed once, against his will, and she walked him through the rest. Kitchen floor joists. The hearthstone bedded back into its mortar. The chimney repointed course by course. Copper flashing around the flue, still bright enough to throw a stripe of light across the ceiling boards.

"You did the flashing yourself?"

"Ben did. I held the ladder and complained about the price."

"What did it cost?"

"Renys in Rockland had the copper for eleven dollars. The yard here wanted fourteen, so I drove over and spent the difference on gas. That's my whole budget philosophy."

He shook his head, but he was smiling when he did it.

Then the back hall. He stopped there and pointed at the wall — a rectangle of mismatched plaster someone had smoothed over and painted long ago, gone the color of weak tea.

"What's that?"

"Old patch. Not mine."

"From the break-in?"

"Break-in was the window and the front floor. This is older."

"How old?"

"Old enough that I can't date the paint."

She knocked on it with two knuckles. The sound came back dense, no hollow behind it anywhere.

"And you're going to fix it."

"I'm going to paint it and hang a coat rack on it."

"That's it?"

"It's a wall, Liam."

He looked at her for a while then, the way he used to when he was small and trying to work out whether she meant something.

"You sound like you again," he said.

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning after the divorce, you spent a year talking like you were apologizing for taking up space." He shrugged with one shoulder. "Now you tell me a wall is a wall, and you know it. That's the only reason I'm getting on that boat."

An engine came across the water, low and even. Ben Carter brought his boat alongside the float, tossed a line over a cleat, and set a bundle of shiplap down before he looked up. Sunday was his supply run, and he was running late on it.

"Nora. You've got company."

"My son. Liam."

"Ben." He wiped his hand on his jeans and shook.

"Wind's swinging southwest," he said to Liam. "If you want the harbor tonight, we go when I've got this load off."

Liam looked at him the way people looked at Ben, which was carefully.

"You think she's safe out here alone?"

"No."

"That's not reassuring."

"Nobody's safe alone anywhere." Ben squared the shiplap against the piling. "Difference is, whoever got in here went straight for the floor between the chimney and the front wall. You don't learn where a floor is loose in one night."

"Do the deputies know that?"

"Ruiz covers the whole county. He'll get to it."

"Will he?"

"We'll see."

Liam stood there with his jaw working. Then he picked up his duffel.

"Andrea's number is in your phone now," he said. "That's all. It exists."

"I know it exists."

"You don't have to use it."

"I know that too."

He hugged her, and she held on past the point where he let go first.

"Call me when the roof's on."

"Call me when you're not checking up on me."

"That's never happening."

She watched the boat until it was a dark line against the mainland and the fog had burned off the last of itself. The tide was going out past the seawall with a long, patient hiss.

Back inside, the linseed oil was stronger than it had been that morning. She crossed the front room to latch the window, then stopped in the back hall on her way to the kitchen.

The light had changed while she stood on the dock. It came in low through the reglazed window now and lay across the patched wall like someone holding a straightedge against it.

Nora walked back and put her palm flat on the plaster. Solid. Then she looked at the seam along the patch's right edge, where the old paint stopped and started again.

It ran dead vertical, floor plate to top plate, one clean line. Saw-clean. No keyed edge, no feathered plaster, no wobble of a trowel anywhere along its length, and nothing in the framing of an old wall makes a line that straight.

She crouched and followed the seam down to the baseboard with her thumb.

Behind her, out the window, Ben's boat was already past the point.

Somebody had gone to real trouble to make a wall look like a wall.

She straightened, wiped the plaster dust from her hands onto her jeans, and walked out to the porch for the pry bar.