Inertia: Impulse, Book One by Amelia C. Gormley

Author:Amelia C. Gormley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-10-27T22:00:00+00:00

Miss Ingrid was not a paying client.

She lived just down the block in the neighborhood of nearly identical red-brick houses Derrick lived in, and she had been his grandmother’s closest friend for over forty years. She and Gram had met twice a week for coffee and gin rummy. Her husband had died when Derrick was sixteen, and Gram had asked him, as a favor to her, to do some repairs and maintenance around Miss Ingrid’s house.

He’d never stopped. He’d repaired her appliances, used his contractor’s discount to get her wholesale pricing to replace things when needed, rebuilt her bathroom floor after a leak had caused it to rot out, and installed her carpet. And he’d never charged her a cent for labor.

When her eyesight got too poor for her to drive, he began taking her to the grocery store once a week. She, in turn, repaid him with occasional batches of amazing Swedish baked goods. If there was one person left in this world beside Devon who was the next-best-thing to family for Derrick, she was that person.

This year she needed new shingles on her roof before the fall rains began. The next time she’d have to have her entire roof replaced, and he’d have to arrange for another contractor, one with an actual crew, to do the work. But this job he could do by himself.

As lumberyard employees loaded his truck with packs of shingles, he realized, in her mid-eighties already, odds were high Miss Ingrid would never need to have her whole roof replaced.

Shit.

Working up on the roof forced Derrick not to get lost in his own thoughts. He had to concentrate or risk injury. Smashing his thumb with a hammer was the least of his worries when he could take a twelve-foot fall and break his neck. Though August turned out to be cooler than usual, working in the open sun was still brutal, and he made a point of coming down frequently for plenty of water and time to cool off before climbing back up. It wasn’t safe to think, and so he didn’t. He worked until nearly sundown, when the darkening sky made it impossible to continue. Then he came down, ate the dinner Miss Ingrid insisted on making for him, and drove back home to shower and collapse in bed, too weary to think.

That got him through to Wednesday evening, when he finally finished Miss Ingrid’s roof.

“You’ve been quiet this week,” she said, sitting at the table with a cup of after-dinner coffee while Derrick was still eating. Her face was deeply wrinkled, and her eyes were the most amazing shade of dark blue Derrick had ever seen. Her skin had a fine, luminescent quality that confirmed for him the gorgeous young woman in the black and white photos lining her hallway walls was her. “Well, quieter than usual, at least. It has always been hard to drag words out of you.”

She might require a walker to get around some days, but her mind was still as keen as the day he’d first met her fifteen years ago.

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