Gave her a rough estimate over the phone and she thanked me and hung up. I didn't think about it again that night. I should have. Aldderton Road is one of those quiet streets that looks exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Singlestory homes, big yards, mature trees, the kind of neighborhood where people have lived their whole lives and don't particularly want anything to change.
Clareire Bennett's house was a light blue ranch style, well-kept with a vegetable garden running along the side of the driveway that was clearly tended by someone who took it seriously. Tomato cages, straw, mulch, everything labeled with little handwritten stakes. She was standing on the front porch when I pulled in. I'd been picturing someone older for some reason, but Clare Bennett was probably early 60s, not much more than that. Dark hair gone, mostly silver, pulled back, neat, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.
She had the posture of someone who used to be taller, someone who'd spent years carrying something heavy. She watched me get out of the truck and didn't come down the steps to meet me. Just waited, Mr. Mercer. Caleb is fine.
You must be Clare. It's around back. She didn't shake my hand. Just turned and walked toward the side gate. I grabbed my bag and followed.
The backyard was bigger than I expected, bordered by old oaks, still holding most of their leaves in that first week of October color. A detached garage sat along the far left side, paint peeling a little, doors padlocked, a wooden deck off the back of the house, older but solid, and in the middle of the yard, exactly where she described it, a hole in the ground with a green lawn chair sitting on top of it. I walked over and moved the chair aside. It was a clean collapse, almost perfectly round. The soil at the edges was dry and crumbling, like whatever had been supporting it from beneath just let go.
I crouched down and shown my phone flashlight into it. The sides went straight down for about 2 and 1/2 ft before widening slightly. The bottom was darker than it should have been. How old is this property? The house was built in 1962.
We bought it in 994. You and your husband. A pause. My late husband, Daniel. He passed 6 years ago.
I'm sorry. The ground looked completely normal yesterday morning. I came outside to check on the garden around 7:00 and it was fine. I came back out at 5:00 in the afternoon to water and the chair was already sitting where I'd put it. I looked up at her.
You moved the chair out there yourself between 7:00 and 5? No, I didn't go back outside between 7:00 and 5:00. I waited a second to make sure I understood her. So, you're saying the hole appeared and then you found it already with the chair over it? She held my gaze.
I'm saying I didn't put that chair there. I didn't let that sit. I couldn't afford to let that sit. There's a version of this job where you start thinking about things you can't explain and you never get any work done. So, I made a note chair placement clarify and I got back to the actual task in front of me.
I knelt at the edge of the sinkhole and started checking the soil. It was dry, looser than it should have been. That told me the collapse wasn't new. The hollowing out had been happening underground for a while. Something had been eroding the base without disturbing the surface.