Necessary Restorations (The Walsh Series) (A) (10 page)

That fucker was good and dead, and we needed to stop resurrecting his memory every twenty minutes.

“That sounds like it’s definitely about Angus.”

“Shan, stop trying to psychoanalyze everything I say. I have a shit ton of designs to finish today, and I need to get my ass on the treadmill tonight, and then I’m going out. Thank you for lunch, but unless there’s something else, we’re finished with this conversation.”

She tapped her finger to her lips and sat quietly while I emptied the bag of pistachios and drained the juice. She was probably watching to confirm that I was, in fact, eating.

“There’s one more thing. Something I hope will make you happy.”

There was that word again: happy. But Shannon couldn’t give me happiness any more than she could trap lightning in a jar.

She grabbed the framed snapshot from my desk, the one from the Boston Marathon finish line two years ago. She was in the middle, her red hair tucked under a Walsh Associates baseball cap, with Patrick and Matt on one side, and Riley and me on the other. Arms linked over shoulders, we leaned together, smiling. We looked completely typical, and from that image alone, no one would know we were tainted by neglect, abuse, and loss.

But . . . maybe it was possible to feel as lighthearted as we looked.

“Am I supposed to guess, or are you planning to say something?” I asked.

“It’s a good thing you’re cute, Sam. Otherwise I’d slap you upside the head for this shitty attitude.” She shook her head, replaced the frame, and flipped open her tablet. “I renewed your driver’s license for you. It will show up in a week or two. Oh, and I adjusted the automatic order for your replacement parts. When I went through the supplies at your place last week, it seemed like you were running low on infusion sets and insulin cartridges, but had enough skin preps and test strips for an eternity. Just let me know if you want more or less, or something different.”

I brushed the pistachio shells into my waste basket and stared at her. “Where were you this weekend?”

“I went away with friends.” Shannon could negotiate the spots off a Dalmatian but she couldn’t tell bold-faced lies, and the red tint creeping across her cheeks gave it all away.

“Where?” I asked.

She threaded a lock of hair between her fingers and studied it, avoiding my eyes. “Nantucket. I took the ferry from Woods Hole on Friday.”

“Who did you go with? What did you do?”

She shrugged and continued inspecting her hair. “Simone and Danielle, and it was a regular girls’ weekend. Beach, brunch, booze. What else would we do?”

I waited, watching while a hot blush consumed her cheeks and neck. She didn’t do girls’ weekends with her law school friends, and she hated listening to Simone humble-bragging about the high-profile divorces she handled. “Why aren’t you sunburned?”

“Sunscreen,” she answered simply, but it was a bullshit answer. Shannon’s skin was incredibly fair, and she couldn’t go to the beach or pool without collecting a thick patch of freckles and some painful burns.

“Why don’t you cut the shit,” I said. “What is the purpose of this exercise, Shan? Does it not seem ridiculous that you’re keeping something from me? From all of us? And you do notice that you’re making a bigger deal out of it by lying about going to Nantucket, right?”

“Since you have a busy afternoon, I’d rather get down to the reason I came in here,” she said. “We were approached last month by a real estate agent who was representing a very private client. Since the agent was absurdly vague about her client’s interests, Patrick and I decided not to engage.”

“Okay,” I said, annoyed that she was deflecting again. I went to the small refrigerator behind my desk to refill my water glass, and offered some to Shannon.

“No, thanks. The agent came back, saying the client really, really wanted to work with us. It seems the client saw the
Boston Globe
spread on the future of green restoration.” She gestured to where the freshly framed newspaper feature showcasing one of my projects leaned against the wall, waiting to be hung. “And the client insisted on working with you.”

“I don’t have much free time, Shannon,” I said. I slid my four-page call sheet filled with requests for consultation across the desk. “And no offense, but I don’t have a lot of patience for dealing with agents.”

Shannon wore a lot of hats around here, and licensed real estate agent was one of them. She was also our legal counsel and chief financial officer, and while she spoke the language fluently, she was the only non-architect in the bunch. She seemed to like that form of schizophrenia.

“Well, it gets better.” She toggled through a few screens on her tablet, then turned it toward me. “Turns out the client is Eddie Turlan, from The Vials.” She pointed to a picture of the punk band popular in the eighties. “He and his wife are huge environmentalists now, and they want a complete green rehab and restore, and they want a big publicity splash, too. They purchased this brownstone in the South End.” She swiped through another screen and zoomed in on the location. “It was built in 1899, and until the Turlans bought it, the property had been owned by the
same family.
It was renovated in the twenties, and then again in the sixties, but it hasn’t been touched since then. In fact, it’s been vacant since the late eighties.”

She switched the map to street view, and I stared at the red brick house. This property saw three centuries with a common lineage, and everything about it screamed virgin canvas. There’d be shag carpets and vinyl wallpaper to remove, and probably some room-flow dynamics to resolve, but it didn’t bear the weight of changing hands, and that was a rare delight.

“They want you to design it, and they offered to go well beyond your standard fees.” She toggled to another screen, and handed the tablet to me. “Here’s the most recent communication from the agent.”

I skimmed the email, noting the budget the Turlans were comfortable with—it was astronomical—and some of their design preferences, and handed it back to Shannon. “I still don’t have time.”

Shannon nodded, and the devious grin on her face told me she already cooked up a plan. “You could make time if Riley moved off Matt’s projects and started working with you.” I began to protest, and she held up her hand. “I think you’ve argued with me enough today. Just listen. He’s come a long, long way in the past eight months, and you have to admit that.”

I sighed, knowing she was right.

He still couldn’t zip his pants with any regularity, but he could be trusted to manage a couple of projects.

“I was also thinking this could be a phenomenal opportunity to partner with the roof garden girl,” she said. “If there’s ever been a property that needs a roof garden, it’s this one.”

I reached for the tablet, and paged back to the aerial map. Again, Shannon was right. Even with a quick glance, it was obvious this property would be perfect for all my favorite green features and my favorite sustainable landscape architect.

“What’s the timeline with all this?” I asked.

Shannon nodded, her fingers drumming against the arms of the chair. It reminded me of Tiel and her non-stop fidgeting. Somehow, Tiel’s noise was nothing like the noise my siblings created.

“They’d like to know as soon as possible. They close on the property in forty-five days or so, and want to start construction immediately. I promised them we’d follow up by Friday.”

I ran my hand over my desk, savoring the applewood’s gorgeous grain. I came across the felled tree while camping in Vermont last fall. I didn’t know what I’d do with it at the time, but it gradually took shape while I worked it in my shop. This desk, the attic conference table, and most of the furniture in the Walsh Associates office came from my workshop at one point or another.

“I’ll call Magnolia and find out whether she has any flexibility in her schedule,” I said. She’d been bugging me to involve her in a project start to finish, to better understand the entire lifespan of a restoration rather than the narrow elements where she was typically involved. I respected her commitment to continuously learning and improving, and this property seemed like a good opportunity. It also meant I’d be able to think through problems with her, and she was amazing in those situations. She asked all the right questions and poked holes in my theories, and I loved that. “I need Riley freed up in the next couple of weeks, and I want the blueprints pulled from City Hall by noon tomorrow. Get your errand boy, Tom, on that one.”

Shannon clapped her hands together and said, “Yes! I knew you’d be all over this. There’s just one more thing.” I groaned and she held out her hands. “Actually, two things. One: why can’t we just call her Roof Garden Girl? I really prefer that to Magnolia. I mean, please. Who names a child Magnolia? It requires her to be a landscape architect, or own a flower shop. And two: there’s a strict non-disclosure agreement attached to this client. You can’t go tweeting about working on Eddie Turlan’s house.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t tweet, and you’ll need to talk to Magnolia about that. I don’t think we know her well enough to give her a nickname yet.”

The nicknames dated back to childhood when Riley couldn’t pronounce any of our names correctly, always cramming them into garbled amalgamations like Mattrick and Sherin and Sammew. Somehow it was easier for him to say Optimus Prime than Patrick, and over time, we each earned our identifiers.

Despite my attempts to adopt Iron Man as mine, my siblings thought Tony Stark was more fitting.

“But you’d like to know her a little better, right?” Shannon asked. “You’d like to get on a nickname basis.”

“You’re reading into this rather far, Shannon.”

She smiled, collected her things to leave, and paused in the doorway. Of course, she was the Black Widow, and as she stood there in the fitted plum dress I selected last April, sky-high heels, and piercing stare, she looked every bit the part.

“I really do want you to be happy, Sam. We all know the past year has been difficult for you, but we can’t help if you don’t let us.”

Sipping my water, I tried to construct a response that acknowledged her concern without revealing how deep into my private Quechee Gorge I had dropped. She’d been waiting—realistically, it was my whole damn family that had been waiting—for me to fall apart since that miserable bastard died last year, but I wasn’t giving them the satisfaction of being right.

They’d been there for me my entire life, and I appreciated that to no end. But I needed to do this on my own, and if this weekend with Tiel was any indication, it was worth finding the path out. I got there once; I could get there again.

“I know,” I said. “I’m trying.”

I SLEPT LATE on Wednesday mornings. My classes didn’t start until noon, I didn’t have any regular sessions with my little buddies, and I never reserved practice time in the studio. I always capitalized on this scheduling gift by going out Tuesday evenings. I should have used those hours for catching up on grading or research, or some form of exercise, but after a night spent trolling the underground music scene, sleep always won out.

Irritable
didn’t begin to encapsulate my reaction when my phone buzzed across my side table before eight. Cracking an eyelid enough to visualize the screen, I found Eleanorah Tsai’s face smiling back at me.

“Please tell me this is an emergency,” I growled.

“Can sweaters be an emergency? Because I need you to send me some,” she laughed. “I packed two and I had no idea that Ottawa in September was like New York in February. Oh, and maybe some socks, too.” I made a vague sound of agreement and she continued. “Yes, the weekend
was
fantastic, I’m so glad you asked. We played our asses off on Saturday and Sunday, and then we did the tourist thing at Niagara Falls, and I’m shocked to admit the tourist thing was really cool but it totally was. Then we spent all day yesterday on the bus to Ottawa, and ran into a hockey team at the hotel. Never would have guessed Canadian hockey players and bearded pop-folk boys could be best friends for life after draining a keg.”

“BFFLs,” I said, shifting to sit back against the headboard. “Gotta love them.”