Chapter 16: The Roof

Rosemary's POV

Clayton was on the maternity ward roof at six the next morning, with a hammer, a borrowed hat and a very bad sunburn.

I stood in the yard with two mugs of tea and looked up.

Four men from the village were up there with him, and they were laughing at the way he held the nails.

"Hold them by the shank!" one of them shouted. "Not the head! You are not a pianist!"

"I'm learning!" Clayton shouted back.

He had paid the builders the night before, by wire.

The money came from the savings account he and I had once opened for a house with a yard.

I had heard it from Wanjiru, who had heard it from the bank clerk in Kisumu.

The clerk had apparently been told to expect a very strange foreigner.

He climbed down the ladder, wincing, and took the mug I held out.

"Thank you," he said.

"The men say you've got the hang of it."

"The men are being kind. I've hit my thumb four times." He held it up, black at the nail. "Doctor says it's fine."

"Which doctor?"

"Yours." He caught himself. "Dr. Reeve. Sorry."

"It's all right."

He drank some tea and looked at the roof.

"I want to give you something," he said, "and I'd like you not to say anything until I've finished."

He pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket.

It was a long envelope, soft with sweat, with a lawyer's name printed in the corner.

"It's the Columbus house," Clayton said.

"Quitclaim, the lawyer called it."

He held it a little higher.

"I signed it in Kisumu the night I read your papers, and a notary stamped it."

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