My Father's Best Friend Fixed My Roof, Then Never Left My Kitchen novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Roof
The day after her father's funeral, Carly steadies the ladder while her father's best friend patches the roof. That evening in the kitchen she kisses him, and when he says don't, she asks him to tell her what to do. He says: lock the door.
Milan Drabik had been on my father's roof since eight that morning, and I hadn't asked him to come.
I found out when I woke up in my old bed and heard boots over my head.
The funeral had been the day before.
I'd stood at the back of St. Cyril's for three hours shaking hands, and I still had the smell of lilies in my hair.
Now the ladder was against the gutter, a bundle of shingles was strapped to the truck bed, and the sky over Locust Street had gone dark gray.
"Rain by dark," Milan called down.
"You didn't have to do this."
"The hall ceiling's been stained since August," he said. "Your dad kept saying he'd get to it."
He said Dad, the way everyone in town still did.
I went and stood at the foot of the ladder, because somebody had to hold it.
I'd been the one who did things for eight weeks.
I'd counted pills, changed sheets, argued with the hospice nurse, and held a cup with a straw to his mouth until the last morning.
Now there was nothing left to do, and the quiet in that house was so big I could hear the refrigerator from the porch.
Milan worked above me all afternoon.
He ripped off the old shingles in long gray strips and let them drop into the yard.
Around four the wind picked up and the first cold drops hit my neck.
"Come on down," I said. "It's going to pour."
"Two more rows."
"Milan."
He looked at me over his shoulder, nodded, and started down.
I put both hands on the rails and leaned into the ladder.
I could feel him in it, every rung, his weight coming down toward me.
He had come to every birthday I ever had, and he'd fixed my first bike with a wrench from his back pocket.
He was my father's friend, the man at the end of the table on Sundays, and nothing more than that.
He stepped off the last rung.
His hand came down on the rail and covered mine.
It was a huge hand, rough and warm, with white scars across the back of the wrist where tin snips had slipped.
I looked at it, and it was the first time I had looked at any man's hand and thought about what it could do.
He didn't move it.
"Carly," he said, low.
It was the way he said my name that made me look up.
He wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at the gutter, hard.
His jaw was tight under the gray beard, and a muscle moved in it.
"You're freezing," I said. "Your jaw's locked up."
"It's the cold," Milan said.
He took his hand off mine and the rain came down for real.
We ran for the porch, and I made a short, bad sound that wasn't a laugh.
He stayed on the porch steps while I went in and turned on the kitchen light.
I watched him through the screen door.
He stood with his hat in his hand and rain running off his shoulders, looking at the street.
I felt empty all the way down.
I'd felt that way since the cemetery, and I'd expected to feel it forever.
But when he stood in the doorway and his boots left wet prints on Dad's linoleum, I wasn't empty at all.
Something in me had woken up.
I heated a church lady's tuna noodle casserole, because there were six of them in the freezer and nobody would ever eat them all.
Milan sat at the oak table with his big hands around a mug of coffee.
He didn't sit in my father's chair, the one by the window with the flat cushion.
Nobody had sat in it since the morning.
The rain hammered the window glass.
The light over the stove made a yellow circle on the counter, and Milan's hair was wet and dark, and there was a line of water in his beard.
He kept his eyes on the mug.
"You don't have to eat this," I said.
"I'll eat it," Milan said.
"Stay for supper."
"Carly, I should get back."
"Stay," I said.
I put the spoon down.
I didn't know I was going to cross the floor until I was already doing it.
He stood up when I came near, the chair scraping, and he was so tall that I had to tip my head back.
I put my hand flat on his wet shirt and felt his heart going under it, fast and hard.
Then I went up on my toes, and I kissed him against the refrigerator door.
He kissed me back for one long second.
I felt his mouth open under mine and his hand lift and nearly close on my hip.
Then he turned his face away.
"Carly," he said, rough. "Don't."
I stood with my palm on his chest and my mouth burning.
I was thirty-four years old, I had a chipped front tooth and a braid down my back, and I had held my father's hand while he died.
I was so tired of being the strong one that I could have screamed.
"Then tell me what to do," I said.
He looked at me.
The rain stopped being the only sound in the room.
His blue eyes were dark, and I could see that he wanted me, and that he hated it, and that he was going to say yes anyway.
"Lock the door," Milan said.
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