Cynthia Reese - What the Heart Wants

He surveyed Belle Paix from his vantage point on the front steps. It was in amazingly good structural shape, really—yes, it needed an accurate paint scheme, and he’d spotted some dry rot in a couple places. But the siding still seemed sound, the windows looked intact, and the wrought-iron porch posts Ambrose had used in lieu of his own heart pine showed only the need for a good scraping and painting.

There were home owners who would kill for a house in this near-perfect shape, where all they had to do was refresh. His own house’s renovation had been a scavenger hunt for missing pieces and obsolete moldings or parts.

He glanced at his watch. Still no sign of life. Okay. He pivoted on his heel and headed for the front gate. He’d go pay the water bill and then swing by again to see if Allison had gotten back—

Suddenly, from above him, came a horrendous screeching of long-stuck wood and a shout. “Kyle! Hey! Don’t go! I’m coming down!”

He looked over his shoulder and saw Allison framed by the open window above the porch. Her face was swathed in pale blue paint and something white covered her nose and smeared across her cheek. “I thought you were gone.”

“Only in my dreams! Just a minute.” But the stubborn window resisted her efforts to close it as vehemently as it had resisted opening a few minutes earlier.

“Sounds like you need a little graphite on that,” he called up.

“Dynamite, you say? Bring it on! This old house—” The rest of her grumble was shut off by the sudden cooperation of the window. Kyle could hear the powerful slam reverberate in the afternoon air.

Allison opened the door, a very unhappy Cleo wriggling in her grip. “No, Cleo, you must learn some manners. Nice Kyle, see? No, you cannot bite the guests—or me, for that matter!”

Kyle shut the door behind him, and Allison released Cleo. The cat streaked off with a series of unhappy yowls.

“You’d think I tortured the creature,” she said.

“So you were upstairs, then?” he asked. “I wondered if something had happened—”

“I heard the bell, but I was in the middle of something that I couldn’t let go of...and so I just crossed my fingers that you’d be patient. Well, mentally crossed my fingers. I had a problem with a wall in Gran’s room, but I think I’ve got it licked.”

They started up the stairs. Kyle saw that, unlike last night, Allison had some spring in her step. A few hours’ sleep must have put her to rights. He couldn’t help but reach over and touch the white stuff on her nose. It was a chalky paste.

“What is this?” he asked, stopping at the first landing to examine his fingertip. “It feels like...not quite wood filler...drywall putty?”

“Yeah, I’ve got holes. I started scraping, just like you showed me the other night, and all of sudden this huge chunk of plaster came out. I just about freaked, let me tell you. I didn’t know what to do. And then I got smart, went down to our friendly home improvement store, and a guy there told me this stuff would fix it right up.”

“Wait. He told you to patch the holes? With drywall putty?”

Kyle tried very hard to keep any judgment out of his voice, but what kind of idiot would advise someone to do that?

“Yeah. Seems to be working.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no.” He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and barreled through the twisty turn of an upstairs hall to reach Gran’s bedroom.

It was a big airy room that took up nearly the entire back part of the house. With direct access to the single upstairs bathroom, and plenty of windows, it had probably been Ambrose’s master bedroom.

The two interior walls they’d painted stood pristine and the barest shade of periwinkle blue, her grandmother’s favorite color, Allison had said. The back exterior wall?

A huge patch of grayish-white putty painted a bull’s-eye in the middle of the wall equidistant between the windows. Already Kyle could see signs that the putty was shrinking at the edges, ready to pull away from the hole. Eventually it would dry up, fall out and maybe take an even bigger piece of plaster with it.

“What a colossal mess!” Kyle swore. “Who would do such a thing?”

The pitter-patter of Allison’s feet behind him came to an abrupt stop. “I beg your pardon?”

He looked around to see her eyebrows arched and her chin raised a fraction of an inch. Her arms were crossed over her T-shirt.

“Not you. Whatever dumb salesperson told you about this. It won’t work. It will just make things worse.”

“It won’t?” The haughty look was chased away by a crease of worry between her brows.

“There are patches for plaster...but not drywall putty. Fiberglass is a good way...” Kyle walked over to the wall and ran his fingers over the nubby surface around the patch. He checked for the telltale signs—the way paint can feel over failed plaster, the give of the crumbling, damaged material underneath.

Shoot.

He stretched higher.

Double shoot.

“Better get the ladder,” he mumbled to himself. Jerking it over from where she’d been using it to scrape, he propped it by one of the windows and climbed up the rungs. Systematically, he began to inspect the wall surface.

“Kyle?”

Not good. He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand and considered how to break the news.

“Kyle?” Allison said again, this time from the base of the ladder.

“Okay. This corner of the house has a northeastern exposure. Back wall here faces north. And the side wall—” He jabbed a finger toward the other exterior wall, which formed a right angle to the one she was working on. “Well, it faces east.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

“It’s Georgia, right? A hundred twenty-six summers of high humidity and heat, a hundred twenty-six winters of cold wet rain. The temperature difference, over the years, tends to create dampness. And dampness is not plaster’s friend. So...probably on every exterior wall, especially in stretches like this, where you’ve got lots of windows, you’re going to have at least some huge sections of plaster that will crumble at a touch.”

“Oh. I guess...” Allison eyed the little tub of putty she’d been using. “I guess I’d better buy a bigger bucket.”

“Not of that stuff. And this wall—and probably the other? Well, I’d advise carefully ripping out the plaster in the damaged sections down to the laths, and re-plastering it. Big chunks are damaged, so it’s going to be a pain to patch. But by ripping out the plaster, you can inspect for structural damage, check the wiring and even put in new insulation.”

She stared at him and blinked. “Do what?”

“I know it’s overwhelming. I know just how you’re feeling, because I had to do the same thing...”

Allison didn’t answer. She just sank down onto the paint-spattered tarp on the floor and stared some more. Her eyes went from Kyle to the wall, back to him, back to the wall. It was almost like watching a concussion victim trying to shake off a good case of having his bell rung.

“Can’t I just patch it?” she whispered.

Kyle came down off the ladder and knelt beside her. “Trust me. You’ll spend more money in the long run trying to patch it. And it won’t look right. You’d never get the texture to match.”

“I don’t care about the texture.” She banged her palms against her forehead. “Just once. Just one single time, can’t even the simplest thing actually be simple? Gran’s going to come home soon, and I haven’t even managed to repaint her room.”

“I know.” Kyle patted Allison’s arm, not quite sure what to say to her.

She didn’t respond right away, so at least he hadn’t said anything to aggravate the situation.