North end is truck took down 30 feet. Rot took down two posts before the truck ever got here. Huh? Richard toed one of the discarded posts in the grass. Catherine's been letting this place go.
Water off that downspout's been sitting against those footings for years. That's not letting go. That's just a mistake somebody made when they graded it. He said it flatly without looking up and Richard's mouth tightened because they both knew who had built the house. The man recovered fast.
He asked how long Daniel had been working out here. He asked whether he'd been inside the house and how often. He asked in a tone that was almost friendly whether Daniel found the family comfortable to be around. "You seem comfortable," Richard said. "I'm doing a fence."
"Sure." Richard looked toward the kitchen window. You know she's in trouble at that company. Everybody knows. Fellow I play golf with sits on a fund that holds a piece of it.
He said it the way men say things they want repeated. And when a person's professional life gets unstable, people who care about a child have to ask certain questions. That's not cruelty. That's diligence. Daniel finished the wire and clipped it.
"Fences take time," he said. You can't put one up fast. If you do, it stands for one season and then it doesn't. Richard studied him for a moment, and something in his face shifted half in annoyance, or possibly the recognition that he had just been told something and couldn't decide if he'd been insulted. He started for his car and then turned back.
Does she talk to you? Lily? She talks to whoever listens. Richard held that for two full seconds and then got in the Mercedes and left. And Daniel noticed that he did not go inside to see his daughter who was standing at the upstairs window and had been for the whole conversation.
That evening, Catherine came out with two beers and gave him one and sat down on the tailgate, which she had not done before. "He's offering to buy out whatever equity I still have in this house," she said, which after the refinance is not very much. He calls it a reasonable number. Is it? It's a very reasonable number for someone who knows my attorney's retainer is due on the first.
Daniel turned the bottle in his hands. Some things you don't sell just because the number's reasonable. You say that like you know. He didn't answer right away. And when he did, his voice had changed, gone quieter and more careful.
The way a man's voice goes when he's handling something that still has sharp edges. His wife's name was Sarah. She'd gotten sick 5 years ago, and it had gone the way those things go, slower than the doctors said, and then much faster. Her family had come after the funeral with an offer on the house, well- meant, so he and the boy could start clean somewhere else. He'd said no.