Shh... It's a Surprise! (Baby) (Small Town Romances) by Annie J. Rose

Author:Annie J. Rose [Rose, Annie J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Chris

Wednesday saw me head over to an older gentleman named Troy, who needed some help clearing out an old shed in his backyard. It wasn’t one of the more glamorous jobs on my slate, but I tended to make sure the ones for the older folks in the community got put on without refusal anyway. Making money was a necessity—the insurance fund wouldn’t last forever—but it did provide me with a healthy cushion. I didn’t need to push for big-paying projects and could take smaller, more meaningful ones if I wanted to. Helping little old ladies with changing lightbulbs and fixing cabinet doors, while not big-paying jobs, had their own appeal.

As for Troy, I had met him when I helped the next-door neighbor with rebricking their walkway, and he seemed like a nice enough guy that I didn’t mind taking a few hours to help him out.

When I got to Troy’s house, he was sitting on his front porch in a rocker, a blue trucker hat tucked down on his head to shield the late day’s sun from his eyes. He hopped up when I pulled in, showing off how surprisingly spry he was despite his advanced age. His neighbor had said he was in the neighborhood of eighty, but he moved like he was just barely retirement age, no matter what the wrinkles on his face said.

“Howdy,” Troy said as I shut the door of my truck.

I waved back. “Hey, Troy. You ready to go through that shed today?”

“Sure am,” he said. “I got a case of beer, a full pipe, a radio, and a cooler full of ice. Let’s get it.”

I laughed and shook my head. Eighty is the new fifty, I guess.

We went around back, and Troy opened up the shed door. He didn’t have a lock on it, and that was becoming a common occurrence. People out here rarely locked their doors for sheds or garages. That was even if they locked the doors to their house. On more than one occasion, I had arrived at a job that was indoors and the instructions said, “go on in, the door’s unlocked.”

When the door opened fully, I took a look into the shadowy depths of his shed and exhaled slowly.

“There’s a lot of… stuff,” Troy said diplomatically. “How are you with cussin’?”

“I’m fine with it,” I said with a grin.

“Good. There’s a bunch of shit in here,” he said. “Hell if I know if any of it is worth keeping. Can your truck haul a dumpster if it has tires?”

“I wouldn’t have bought it if it couldn’t,” I replied.

“Well, there’s a small industrial dumpster right over there on the other side of the house. If you can pull it over, we can get to tossing stuff,” he said.

I nodded and went to get my truck, pulling it around and hooking the hitch for the dumpster on. Then I pulled the whole thing down into the yard, stopping on a level spot about twenty feet from the shed door.

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