A Roof Over Their Heads. M. K. Stelmack

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A Roof Over Their Heads - M. K. Stelmack A True North Hero

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catcher because Ben could hit whatever Connie threw at him.

      Heavy footsteps sent quivers through the stretch of metal bleacher under Seth’s butt. He glanced up to see Mel plunk himself down beside him, deadening the vibrations. He carried the same box of Timbit donuts he’d had up on a roof this afternoon.

      Seth jutted his jaw at the yellow box. “Aren’t those hard and dry by now?”

      Mel looked offended. “These are good a week later.”

      Mel opened the box for Seth. Seth took a plain bite-size donut ball. “How would you know? They don’t last the day around you.”

      Mel took two sugared ones. “Sometimes they get away on me, and I don’t find them till later.”

      Seth opened his mouth, then shut it. The less he knew, the better.

      “Forty percent chance of severe thunderstorms tonight,” Mel reported. “Good thing Ben and me finished off the roof.”

      “Yep.”

      Like with little kids, Mel didn’t always need a lot of feedback to hold a conversation.

      “Hot enough for it, humid enough, too. And it’s July. Anything can happen in July.”

      “You bet.”

      “You called Connie yet?” Mel said.

      “Why should I?” Seth opened his phone to check his weather app. Maybe there was something nasty coming. Hot and humid, yeah, but electrical, too. Made people lazy and twitchy at the same time.

      “Maybe she didn’t get the widow’s message. Maybe she doesn’t realize how much of a not-good situation she’s in, legal-wise.”

      Seth’s thumb paused over the phone screen. He’d told Mel about the renovation disaster over at the house but he’d never considered that the mom might call a lawyer. She struck him as more of a problem-solver than a troublemaker. Then again, hauling his sister’s butt into court was one way of solving the problem.

      He hit Connie’s number. He didn’t get through and he didn’t leave a message. Seth called again. And again and again.

      Mel tipped the box toward Seth, and Seth shook his head. It was part of their ritual. Seth would take one, maybe two, of whatever Mel had on hand and no more, even though Mel would continue to offer.

      Connie had her own ritual around not answering her phone. She seemed to think he really had to mean it. Or, as he suspected, she liked to have him riled right from the get-go.

      After what seemed like the ninety-seventh try, she answered with, “What? What!”

      “Your tenants moved in today.”

      “They did? Today?”

      “Yes. She said she left you a message.”

      Connie’s tone switched from surprise to accusatory. “You talked to her.”

      “Not by choice. I don’t even know her name.” He meant that last bit to prove how little he knew this woman, but to his ears it came out peeved, as if he’d missed out. Not that he was going to ask Connie because she would love to know he wanted something from her. Lord it over him, angle for something in exchange. He didn’t want her to know it mattered when it was already absurd that it did.

      “For your information,” Connie said, “I called her, like, days and days, weeks ago to tell her not to come, but her line was disconnected.”

      “It was working today.”

      “I called her landline and I don’t have her cell number.”

      “She called yours, so you do now.” Seth heard her draw breath, no doubt for another excuse, so he got to the point. “You better do something before you’ve got a tenant sic’ing lawyers on you. You’re in the wrong here, Connie.”

      “Oh, when am I not?” she snarked. “Leave it to me, will you?”

      Resentment rushed through Seth but he bit it back. “I want to leave it to you. That’s why I didn’t tell your tenant that you were my sister, because then she would start leaning on me to fix your problems. And I think both of us can agree that I’m through doing that.”

      “And I think both of us can agree you have no business interfering. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s my house now.”

      As if he ever could. “Then start acting like it is.”

      Mel nudged Seth. “Tell her we’re having a pickup ball game. Tell her to come.”

      “Tell her yourself,” Seth said and switched to speakerphone.

      But Connie had overheard. “Tell him I’m busy tonight.”

      Mel jabbed a finger at the phone. “No, you’re not. Ben ate at Smooth Sailing earlier and told me you weren’t working tonight.”

      There was a hiss and splutter from Connie’s end. “What? Did he say— Never mind. I’m busy doing something else. Thanks for the invite, Mel.”

      She ended the call before Seth had a chance to speak.

      “I thought that went pretty well,” Mel said and popped another Timbit.

      “Next time you call her,” Seth said.

      “I can’t. I don’t have a cell phone,” Mel explained. “Oh, look. Ben’s here.” And in a clear-cut case of ducking the issue, Mel was off, abandoning his box. Seth peeked inside. Empty. Of course.

      He picked up Mel’s garbage and carried it to the trash can at the edge of the field. He should be sorting everyone into teams but he needed a moment to calm down. He always had to after dealing with Connie. Tonight’s call had left him more than normally irritated. Thirty-two years old, and still acting like a teenager. Worse than a teenager, because at least then all her rebellions had been about making something of herself. Now she was messing around and messing up, creating havoc wherever she went.

      The widow and her kids were only Connie’s latest victims.

      Hard to think of the mom as a widow. She was too young—he doubted she was as old as him. And too beautiful. Too beautiful to have her face twist in sorrow when her boy let drop about his dead dad. Seth understood why the kid had said it. His own dad had passed twenty years ago, and he’d never forget the day it happened.

      Seth cut over toward Ben’s truck to thank him for the bats. Sure enough, he’d brought the pink-and-purple one. Paul was using it to lob a long one into the outfield. Mel went tearing after it, like a dog playing fetch. But it was only when Seth was up close that he saw the second bat. It was the big old wooden one. Seth should’ve known.

      There was a time when Ben might’ve gone from friend to brother. About two years ago when Ben loved Connie, and Connie had loved him right back. When she’d bought him the heaviest slugger she could source, Ben converted her pitches into home runs, and she watched with a silly grin as he circled the bases, circled her—just like they were kids again.

      But

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