that he’d put off doing things with his grandfather until it was too late. If he could just speed up construction on the winery, he’d take his grandfather on the trip of his life. The doctors said Edwin needed a few weeks to regain his balance and what little strength he had left before attempting anything so taxing.
After the Caddy disappeared, a faded green Buick appeared between the palms, carrying three occupants—all councilwomen. They might just as well have been doctors, coming to chart his progress and, if required, give him a dose of medicine.
He walked across the driveway to meet them, determined to avoid their daily meds.
When the car stopped, he leaned down next to the open passenger-side window. With a nod to each woman, “Agnes. Rose. Mildred.” Flynn reached for his easiest smile. “Ladies, we’re no longer open to visitors. This is a construction zone now.”
“We won’t be in the way parked here.” Agnes, a gray-haired pixie who also served as the aging group’s ringleader, turned off the ignition.
“We’re old.” From the passenger seat, Mildred squinted at him through lenses as thick as a hard drive. “We won’t get out. You can tell us what’s going on from here.”
“Actually, I came to see the workers with their shirts off,” Rose piped up from the backseat, her snowy ballerina bun windblown. “For efficiency’s sake, you can call them out while you give us a construction update and then we’ll be gone.”
“Rose,” Agnes scolded, her papery thin cheeks pinkening. “We are not here to ogle men.”
Flynn’s jaw ticked, tugging one end of his smile down. “Ladies, I have nothing new to report since yesterday. You’ll need to move along. We’re expecting delivery of a Dumpster.” And they were parked right in its path.
“Young man, our town has a lot riding on this venture.” Rose drew herself up regally, as if she’d already forgotten her shirtless desires. “As councilwomen, we need to be kept abreast of the activities here.”
“I assure you—” as he and his partners had been for months “—that we have kept you up-to-date. But not only is it not safe here, my contractor won’t allow nonessential personnel on-site.”
The three elderly ladies looked crestfallen.
Flynn bent, just a little. “You can park out on Jefferson Street.”
“I can’t see anything that far away,” Rose grumbled.
“We can go home and get our binoculars,” Agnes suggested.
“Brilliant.” Mildred patted his hand. “We’ll talk later.”
That’s what he was afraid of.
Agnes reached for the key in the ignition, but didn’t start the car. “Flynn, before we go, I’d like to put a vote of confidence forward about Becca MacKenzie. She’s a wonderful woman.”
“She knows all the songs from Guys and Dolls. And she can shake her bootie,” Rose, the Broadway musical enthusiast, added.
“Any girl who can drive stick shift is okay in my book.” Mildred patted his hand again. “You won’t make a mistake by hiring her.”
Flynn doubted that. Becca had her secrets and worse: he liked her looks, her smile, her chutzpah. “How long have you known her?”
Agnes’s smile stiffened. Rebooted. “I only met her Friday, but she stayed with me all weekend.”
Flynn mentally chastised himself. The town council loved Becca. And she’d only been in town a couple of days? “Ladies, can you say con artist?”
Their laughter prickled and annoyed and reassured. If they were laughing, chances were his grandfather was in good hands. Flynn had known these ladies most of his life. They were a handful, but they didn’t misplace their trust. There was just that one look of Becca’s to interpret before Flynn felt comfortable.
After they left, Slade walked over, chuckling. “Don’t tell me you thought they’d stop coming once construction started.”
“I had hoped,” Flynn said.
Dane Utley, the project’s general contractor, called them over to the blueprints he had spread out over the hood of his silver-gray truck. “I know we want to fast-track this project, but I’m warning you, old construction has a mind of its own.” Broad shouldered, big-boned, Dane looked like a professional linebacker, but talked with the polish betraying his Ivy League education. “I don’t know how that building has stayed up so long. The beams we examined this morning were either rotted away or split. We’ll shore up everything before we do anything else, starting with the low beams on the north wall.”
“We promised the Preservation Society this would be a restoration,” Flynn said. “If we can’t use the guts of the barn we may lose community support.” And time. Every day they saved meant he had a better chance of fulfilling his promise to Grandpa Ed to take him on that trip.
“She’s a beautiful piece of history and we’ll save what we can,” Dane reassured Flynn. “I stopped by the county office this morning and they were still missing a couple of key permits and agreements. We can demo today, but the lack of a public improvement agreement is going to stop us by next week.”
“Will’s working on it,” Slade said. “He’s in Santa Rosa this morning with our legal team.”
They needed to widen a portion of Main Street and do earthquake retrofits on the Harmony River bridge. Both projects impacted Mayor Larry Finkelstein’s property. His lawyers, their lawyers and Will were handling the negotiations. Flynn was managing the building contractors and the councilwomen’s daily updates. Slade dealt with finances. If they could obtain these last few permits, maybe things would finally run smoothly.
“We could use some good luck to get things back on track.” Flynn voiced the understatement of the year.
Slade nodded.
A white car pulled onto the gravel driveway.
“It’s one of the county building inspectors.” Dane leaned around Flynn and shouted, “County!”
Power tools ground to a halt as word of an inspection spread. Workmen drifted through the red barn doors. The crew turned to watch the inspector approach.
The ominous sound of timbers snapping had them all spinning back to the barn. The southern wing undulated, wheezing and groaning as if straining for breath. And then it broke away from the middle of the barn, lurching to the ground in a drunken stadium wave, kicking up rolling plumes of dust.
Flynn felt the force of the collapse from fifty feet away. It eddied about his ankles, tugged at his determination, laughed at timelines and plans and mocked promises made in good faith.
In the seconds after the barn’s partial collapse, no one moved. Even the building inspector had stopped his car at the fork in the driveway, a safe distance away.
“Everyone back!” Dane leaped forward, gesturing for his crew to retreat. “She’s not done.”
The barn shuddered up to its hay loft and tilted precariously toward the collapsed south
