The Kitchen Renovation Crew Stayed Three Weeks Longer Than the Quote novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Quote Day
On the day the six-week quote runs out, three crew men each find a reason to stay and Tanner's hand finds her back; she walks out to his truck in her robe and tells him to come inside.
The quote said six weeks, and the sixth week ended at five o'clock that Friday.
I had circled the date in red marker on the sheet taped to the refrigerator, back in February.
The refrigerator stood in my dining room by then, next to a hot plate and a coffee maker.
My kitchen was a plywood floor, one butcher-block island and a hole where the sink should be.
I came downstairs at seven in my work clothes, ready to hear that the crew would finish by noon.
Tanner Eide was already there, standing at the island with a pencil behind his ear.
"Morning, Britta," he said.
"Morning. Are the cabinets going in today?"
He looked at the garage door and then at me.
"The doors came back from the finish and the finish is wrong," he said. "It needs another week to cure."
"A week."
"Yes."
I waited for more.
Tanner always answered late, and he always answered once, so I knew he was done.
He was twenty-four, six foot two, with a short brown beard and hazel eyes and forearms scarred white from his uncle's table saw.
He had hung every one of my wall cabinets himself.
I had watched him do it with a level and a very steady hand.
I hadn't expected to like watching.
I was forty.
The crew came in through the mudroom, so I heard Kou before I saw him.
"Ms. Sundquist?"
He stood in the kitchen doorway in his gray work jacket with his wire-rimmed glasses pushed up his nose.
Kou Xiong was twenty-three and the tile setter, narrow and neat, with black hair that never seemed to get dusty.
He held his clipboard against his chest with both hands.
"The backsplash tile has a bad lot," he said. "I have to send it back and reorder. I'm sorry. It will be another week."
"Kou, I picked that tile in January."
"I know. I'm very sorry."
He looked at the floor when he said it, and then he looked at me, which was worse.
Something in my face must have changed, because he went pink to the ears.
Behind him a ladder clanged.
The third voice arrived the way it always did, loud and cheerful and already laughing.
"Brit, don't be mad, it's the wall."
Mikko Salo was twenty-two, the painter, with curly blond hair, blue eyes and paint on his hands to the wrist.
"What wall?" I said.
"Dining room. The one by the fridge. I pressed it and it gave. Soft spot." He pressed the air to show me. "I need a week to open it up and see."
"You called me Brit."
"Did I?" He grinned. "Sorry. Ms. Sundquist. Britta. Boss."
I looked at the three of them.
Three men in my kitchen on the day the quote ran out, each with a different reason, each with the same number.
One more week.
I knew what it was.
It was padding.
Every contractor I had ever heard of did it.
The extra week would show up on the final bill.
The bill was not what I was thinking about.
I was thinking that Tanner had not moved away from the island and that Kou was still holding his clipboard against his chest.
Mikko had stopped joking and was looking at my mouth.
Nobody wanted to be sent home.
I could feel it in the room, three men who each wanted to be asked to stay.
A woman my age was not supposed to notice that. I was forty.
My husband had left in September.
"Fine," I said. "One more week. Get to work."
They went off to work.
I went to find my keys, and on the way I had to cross the floor where the sink would go.
The plumber's cutout in the floor was still open.
I stepped toward it without looking.
A hand settled flat against the small of my back.
It was big, warm and steady, and it turned me one step to the left.
"Watch the hole," Tanner said.
His palm stayed where it was.
I could feel each of his fingers through my blouse.
I did not move away, and neither did he.
Then he took his hand back.
I walked to my car.
My back stayed warm all the way to school.
I spent the day with my speech students and felt that hand all day.
At five the crew packed up and called goodnight.
Kou's van left first, and then Mikko's rusted blue Ranger.
At nine o'clock I stood at my bedroom window in my robe with a glass of wine.
The gray F-150 was still parked in my driveway.
The dome light was on.
Tanner sat behind the wheel with both hands on top of it and the engine off.
He wasn't looking at his phone, and he wasn't leaving.
I went down the stairs and out the front door barefoot, with the wine in my hand and my robe tied only once.
He saw me coming and rolled the window down.
"Is it the truck?" I said.
"The truck's fine."
"Then what are you doing out here, Tanner?"
He took a long time to answer, as he always did.
"Trying to go home," he said.
I stood there with the porch light behind me and the April wind going through my robe.
"Come inside," I said.
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