Free Unhinged by Sarah Graves Page B

We hadn’t yet discussed the previous night’s revelations about my father. Now I leaned on him, feeling the tight metal clamp around my heart ease momentarily.
    “A longer ladder,” he marveled at last. His hands smelled like gun oil; when not piloting big cargo ships in and out of Eastport’s shipping dock, he was a well-known gunsmith with a workshop upstairs in the ell of the old house. “Don’t you think you should give that face of yours a break from slamming it into stuff?” he added, eyeing my bruises.
    “Maybe you’ve got a point.” Wondering what else could go wrong, I followed him inside with Monday trotting behind me. The day’s only bright spot was that I’d been able to put the contact lenses in again that morning, adding yet another unnatural color to the ghastly panorama that was my face.
    “I called the hospital,” Wade went on, pouring me a cup of coffee. “Talked to Victor. Sam’s coming home after another set of X rays.”
    The coffee was fresh. Maybe Victor would set up a catheter so I could infuse some into my brain. “How’d he sound?”
    Wade grinned. “Like Victor. Trying to figure out some way it could be your fault, but he couldn’t because it isn’t.”
    A clatter hammered up from the cellar but I was so tired I barely flinched, just raised a querying eyebrow at Wade. “What’s going on?”
    “That’s Mr. Ash,” he replied as if this explained enough noise to raise the dead.
    But Lian Ash had said he would be over to discuss the work, not to begin it. We hadn’t even talked about costs or materials, and now he was ripping 200-year-old stones out of my walls with, it sounded like, a jackhammer.
    Wade rinsed his cup, tied a red bandanna around his head to keep sweat from dripping while he worked on a Harpers Ferry rifle he was restoring for a client.
    “George’ll bring Sam home,” he added. When he finished the rifle he planned to reload some shotgun shells, a chore that always made me nervous because it involves compressing explosive powder. But Wade said it was safe and that it was a waste of a good shotgun shell not to reload it.
    A muffled oath rose from the cellar. “Son of a bore,” it sounded like. Moments later a puff of mortar dust preceded Lian Ash into the kitchen.
    “There,” he uttered, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Now I see which way the wind blows. Next I’ll get jacks up, keep the house from fallin’ down while I pull out the bad areas.”
    Dust ringed the outline of the respirator he’d been wearing; his blue eyes gleamed out from a coating of 200-year-old grit.
    “Won’t you need some help?” Wade asked. “Big operation.”
    “Yes, sir, I will. But not,” Lian Ash added, “with taking old stuff out. Too many men on that, ’fore you know it one of ’em’s pullin’ out somethin’ you haven’t braced yet. Somethin’ you have not entered into your calculations.
Then
you’ve got problems.”
    He turned a serious gaze on me. “Speakin’ o’ problems, I’m sorry about that young feller of yours. Heard he took a weave and a bobble, last night. Glad he came out of it all right.”
    Somehow just having the old man around made me feel better. “But Mr. Ash,” I added when I’d reassured him again about Sam’s welfare, “I need an idea of what you are going to charge for the foundation project, before you begin. An estimate, so I don’t get in too deep.”
    “Ah, yes. Getting in too deep. A situation to be avoided if possible. Though sometimes it isn’t,” Lian Ash finished wisely.
    He ran himself a glass of water and stood drinking it at the sink. “Chlorinated water. Wonderful invention. Quenches thirst, replenishes the cells, and kills germs on contact. Ahh,” he said appreciatively, setting the glass down.
    Wade shot me a wink, vanishing back upstairs to work on the rifle and reload the shells, and when I turned again Mr. Ash was scribbling numbers on a pad of paper.
    “This is the materials. This other number,”