Maggie Moves On(109)

There was still much to be done. Small things. Hundreds of them. Not to mention the kitchen was still an unfinished nightmare of one step forward, two steps back. It was nearing completion through the sheer will of Jim and Maggie.

She was doing what she did best, obsessing over tasks and internalizing the stress of the looming deadline.

Silas hopped off the mower and admired the precisely cut lawn. Except for the fountain—with the new pump on back order—and the maintenance, Bitterroot’s work was done here at the Old Campbell Place. The acres on the bluff were now a showcase of natural beauty. Tamed and structured in some areas, like the rose garden and retaining wall. Wild and natural in others, like the grassy bluff trails and beds of wildflowers.

His crew had been divvied up and sent off to new, smaller job sites, where they created beautiful solutions for other homeowners. But they were all counting down to the day of the party, when they could show off their hard work to their families and let loose with friends.

A bloodcurdling scream came from the direction of the house and had Silas glancing up at the blue Idaho sky, asking for patience before heading inside. As suspected, it was Keaton, who had entered an unfortunate screaming phase.

“Perfectly normal part of development,” Blaire had insisted when Silas mentioned it. “He’s just exploring new ways of feeling important. It’ll pass.”

Silas had gifted Maggie a pair of noise-canceling headphones to get her through the phase.

He heard another sound. A distinct, horrified “What the fuck” coming from upstairs. He followed the commotion and found Maggie in a sitting room at the back of the house on the second floor, staring in silent rage at the gaping hole in the ceiling.

“What in the hell happened?” he demanded.

“Pipe burst in the bathroom upstairs,” Jim said, eyeing the mess of wet plaster on carpet that had been installed only a week ago.

Maggie’s eye twitched, and she held two fingers to it.

Uh-oh.

“I don’t need to tell you that this is gonna push us back a bit. Couple of days at least for the plumbers, plasterwork, painters, new carpet,” Jim said to her, scratching his head, blissfully unaware of the pot that was about to boil over.

“Mags, I need you to take a call with Columbus Paints,” Dean said, poking his head into the room. “Holy shit! What happened in here?”

“Pipe burst,” Jim said again.

Maggie’s eye twitched again.

“Didn’t you just lay that carpet?” Dean asked, not noticing that Maggie still hadn’t said a word yet. “Never mind. Anyway, I’ve got a call scheduled at three. They didn’t like the lighting in the dining room episode. They felt like the paint color looked off. They want you to shoot something else in the room with different lighting. Also, they want you to repaint the downstairs den in their new Barn Owl Gray.”

From somewhere in the house, Keaton let out another bloodcurdling scream, and Silas wondered if Maggie felt like doing the same thing.

He saw the clench of her jaw and backed out of the room. Figuring he had a window of about ten minutes, he jogged into the still unfinished kitchen, grabbed the sandwich fixings, and went to work. The lower cabinets had been installed and painted. There was a delay—shocker—with the countertops though, so they’d been living with plywood surfaces.

He had everything packed in a small cooler and stowed in the truck with two minutes to spare when he heard one of the painters yell down from the third floor.

“Has anyone seen Maggie? Cats got in the paint again. We got yellow paw prints all over up here.”

One of the cats in question ran past him on the stairs, feet and tail streaked yellow. Silas found Maggie, sledgehammer in hand and a wild look in her eyes, still standing in the ruined sitting room on the second floor.

“I’ll take that,” he said, plucking the hammer out of her hand. “Your presence is required outside.”

“I don’t have time to deal with another crisis right now,” she said slowly, carefully.

“Is Maggie in the house?” someone else yelled. “We got a problem.”

She reached for the hammer, murder bright in her eyes.

The window had closed. On yet another toddler howl, Silas dropped the sledgehammer on the ruined carpet and dragged Maggie down the stairs. They made it out the back door without being spotted, and he skirted the side of the house at a run with her in tow.

“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door of his truck.

“I can’t leave. I’ve got fifty-seven emergencies happening at the same time in there,” she insisted, pressing her fingers to her temples.

He picked her up, dropped her on the seat, and shut the door.

She was pissed, but not unhinged enough to jump from a moving vehicle, so he started the engine and took off down the drive.

“Silas, I don’t know what you’re cooking up, but I have shit I need to take care of. In case you didn’t notice, we’re officially two days behind schedule.”

“Oh, I noticed. But how many days will you end up behind if you start swinging at painters with a sledgehammer?”

“I wasn’t going to hit anyone with it,” she scoffed. “Maybe I thought about how good it would feel, but I wasn’t going to actually do it. Probably.”

“I sure wouldn’t blame you for it, but you going to jail and all would really put the job behind.”