A Leaky Roof
When negative occurrences begin to pelt us with increasing frequency like an intensifying late spring rainstorm, people sometimes resort to unusual measures.
As she trudged up the metallic stairs to her second story apartment above the Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company with a ladder in her sweaty hands, Nadine Nadeau felt desperate. She had a growing suspicion that MaineLand GeoBoundaries Limited, the company that had employed her as a land surveyor since she had entered the workforce after graduation, was passing her over for plum assignments. She’d recently discovered that surveyors with less experience than her had been sent to work for some of the clients that had previously been hers to service. She preferred not to attribute this to her being a rare female surveyor in Maine, but she began to wonder if the fraternity was forcing her out.
On top of that stress, she’d being arguing with her father, who owned the aforesaid Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company. While she’d been very close to him as a child, she rebelled against his penchant for being judgmental about almost everything as she grew older. She knew it was out of his love for her but the former Marine tended to be tersely dismissive of things that she cared about. Even when he made a herculean effort and refrained from making a comment, she could feel his military glare sear right through her.
The latest argument with her father had to do with her recent breakup with her boyfriend, Will Northcutt. Her father had been against her relationship with Will even before Nadine ever mentioned his name. In a small community like Mapleton, Maine, people know who you’re dating almost before you’ve even recognized the relationship yourself. Nate Nadeau wasn’t keen on his only daughter, his lovely daughter, dating a part-time roofer.
However, the current frost in their dialogue had nothing to do with Will’s occupation. It had everything to do with a comment that her father dropped at dinner last Sunday. They were casually discussing a surveying project that Nadine was completing near the ruins of the Watson Settlement Bridge in Littleton, and she’d mentioned that Will and her once spent an afternoon having a conversation at the foot of the charred remains of the bridge. It was at that point that her father recollected Will’s visit to her apartment.
Nate Nadeau commented to his only daughter that Will had come looking for her, and that he’d advised Will that she was away on a project with Nate’s truck. That information was completely true. What he had not mentioned till just now was that Will had been carrying a gift.
“How could you not tell me that?” Nadine had screamed across the table at her father while banging her fist. Her face turned beet-red in anger.
Her father had seen action in Afghanistan and was in the first battle in Fallajuh, Iraq and wasn’t easily fazed. He’d looked at his beloved daughter without betraying a trace of emotion, though inside it must have bothered him that he’d done something to upset her. Nadine hated that stoicism.
“It didn’t occur to me that the gift was an important detail,” he’d answered after a few moments went by.
“Not important? Who are you to judge what’s important?” she had yelled at her father. She adored him, but his detached nature could infuriate her in these situations.
Silence enveloped the father and daughter for what seemed to be a full minute, but was probably no more than ten seconds.
“I can’t read your mind. You were in a bad place with him, and I didn’t want to overshare information and just get you all upset after what happened between the two of you.” Her father had laid out his palms, upward, on the kitchen table as if demonstrating that he had no secret agenda.
“What do you even know about that?” she’d said, as she began to cry.
“What everyone in the Mapleton area knows, about his cheating on you with that Nordic girl.”
“I’m not certain he actually cheated on me!” Nadine had sobbed.
“What?” said her father, with surprise in his voice. “But everyone’s been saying that for months.”
“Well what if everyone’s been wrong? Completely wrong about him!” Nadine’s chest heaved and tears fell from her face.
“But even you seemed to think…” her father started, but then, watching the expression on Nadine’s anguished face, he stopped right there.
Her father had felt an impulse to comfort his daughter, but kept his rigid posture at his seat, and folded his strong arms across his chest as men often do when they don’t know what to do or say.
“So what happened with the gift?” she added, as she tried to wipe away her flood of tears.
“I dunno. He took it back to his car with him.” He paused, watching Nadine as she sobbed with her head resting on the table. “What would it have mattered, given that he did what he did?”
“Don’t you realize he never gives gifts. Never! It was significant.”
“Well I’m sorry, Nadine. I thought I was protecting you.”
Nate Nadeau had let out a sigh. He’d rather face enemy fire than feel that he’d hurt his precious daughter.
“You’d no right to keep that information from me. No right!” she’d yelled as she rose from her chair and pointed a trembling finger at him.
Her father had shrugged, and held his empty palms upward again, and mouthed another “sorry.”
It didn’t do him any good. Nadine had stormed to the door, and slammed it behind her. The family members who love the deepest are those most capable of unleashing their anger on each other.
Nadine replayed this dramatic scene in her head as she slowly climbed the ladder from the metal platform at the top of the stairs as the inquisitive sun peered over the edge of the roof.
She had excellent balance and had no qualms about climbing alone along granite ridges on the side of Mt. Katahdin while performing surveys, but scooching along the asphalt tiles on the roof above her second story apartment was a different story. She glanced nervously at the parking lot below where her RAV4 rested, and thought about how easy it would be to slide off the rubbery shingles and meet her end on the cracked blacktop below.
Eventually, a few inches at a time, Nadine found herself cross the portion of the roof that protected her apartment to the area above the Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company second floor office. She removed a very small chisel and claw hammer from her tool belt, and held the chisel at an angle. She then gave the chisel a few good thwacks until she felt it penetrate through the shingles and the material underneath.
Nadine slid the tools back onto her belt, and shimmied back across the roof to the top of the ladder with the nimbleness of a ninja. As she climbed back down, she knew she just needed to wait till tomorrow, when rain was due in the afternoon.
Late the following afternoon, Nate Nadeau glanced at the nondescript wall clock in his second story office. It was a half hour before quitting time at the Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company.
He’d sifted through a large stack of applications and claims and his back ached. It’d never been the same since he was hit by shrapnel from a roadside bomb at Fallajuh.
However, with Marine toughness, he was not one to depart from his established practice of working until precisely the last minute of the workday. His left hand brushed over his crewcut while his right hand opened a new folder. It was a water damage claim from a policy holder in Littleton, not far from the Watson Settlement Bridge.
Nate grimaced in that it was a conversation about that very place this past week that had started the unfortunate conversation that led to his daughter storming out of his home. He hadn’t heard from her since. Being a father can be an impossible job.
Nate recognized the name of the policyholder and knew he was an honest man. As he sifted through the details, he heard a thunderclap. He knew that a storm was forecast for this very afternoon and had thought about leaving early to get home before it hit. But that would have meant leaving early, and that wasn’t a possibility in his world.
He heard the rain begin to play percussion on his roof as he perused the file. A crack in the foundation had let water into the policyholder’s basement and ruined the carpet and required replacement of a section of drywall. The storm was now playing both percussion and cymbals on his roof. He heard thunder, and glanced out the window just in time to see lightning hit across the field across from his office.
When he looked back, there was a drop of water on the claim form. He looked up in time to see a second or third droplet hit the page. More droplets were forming, and their miniature elongated forms reminded him of his years on his high school diving team. He couldn’t see a hole up on the ceiling, but the droplets continued growing, as if mustering courage to leap and join their classmates that had already dived through the air and onto the application form.
Nate moved quickly to grab a bucket from the closet to position underneath the leak. He pulled out his phone and dialed.
He could hear the recipient’s phone ring several time, and then a tired voice answer.
“Hello?”
“Stevie?”
“Yep.”
“It’s Nate Nadeau. I need your help.”
“Hi Nate. What’s the matter?”
“My ceiling is leaking. It’s gonna ruin my files. Do you have someone who can come over here right away?”
“It’s almost 5 p.m. on Friday, Nate.”
“I know. I’d wait, but this could really mess up my office!”
There was a silence on the other end of the phone, Nate could hear Stevie Perrault, of Perrault Brothers Construction Company, breathing on the other end. Nate was a big deal in Mapleton. Nate had a seat on the Chamber of Commerce, and had an ownership stake in a few other businesses aside from his insurance company, which he ran alone, aside from the part-time substitute teacher who did typing and filing work for him on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“O.K. I’ll see what I can do, but it may take a few hours.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember this, Stevie.”
About forty minutes later, Will Northcutt rolled up to the small parking lot outside the Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company just as the storm took a respite.
Nate Nadeau opened the front door to greet him.
“Hi Will!” he said cheerily.
The cheerfulness struck Will as disingenuous given that Nadine’s father had confronted him, denigrated his profession as a part-time roofer and warned him to stay away from his daughter the last, and only, time the two men had met face-to-face.
“Hello, Mr. Nadeau.”
“I really appreciate your coming here so quickly.” Nate smiled at Will, and ushered him into the first floor waiting room.
“It’s my job,” Will stated in a monotonous tone as he ducked into the bland, tan-colored space that featured several chairs and a water cooler.
“I’ve gotta give it to you,” said Mr. Nadeau. “After last time, you’d have a good excuse to ignore the service call. I mean, I figure you knew were you were going.”
“Yep,” said Will, flipping his long shaggy hair out of his eyes. “But that’s not my style. It wouldn’t be respectful.”
“Good for you.” Nate rubbed his buzzcut. “That you are that way. I may have judged you unfairly.”
“Maybe. But I don’t really know how you judged me.”
“Well, I thought you’d not done right by my daughter.”
Will sighed. "Given the Mapleton gossip mill, I don’t blame you. But it’s good not to take everything you hear at face value. Unfortunately, both Nadine and you did. But I get it’s hard not to, especially most dads are protective.”
“This is generous of you,” Nate Nadeau answered, hands on hips.
“Where’s the leak?” Will said, trying to steer the conversation away from his failed romance with Nadeau’s daughter.
“Let me show you.”
The two men trudged up the staircase to the second floor. Nate pointed to the blue plastic garbage pail just as another few drops of rainwater dropped from the ceiling into it.
Nate looked up at the spot on the ceiling where the drops were coming from.
“How old is your roof?”
“Had it redone ‘bout four years ago, I reckon,” said Nate.
“Interesting. You shouldn’t be having a leak. I didn’t see tree branches over your roof.”
“Not a one,” Nate replied.
Will walked to the window and put forth his hand in front of him sideways like a karate expert to mark where relative to the corner of the window, the leak was. He then paced from the window to the spot where the water was dripping to measure the distance.
About 10 minutes later, after Will clambered up onto the roof of the Grizzly Mountain Insurance Company amid a very light drizzle.
He lined his body up with the left side of the window and scooched over the right amount of spaces. At first, he had trouble spotting the problem. But then, after feeling the asphalt tiles with his fingers in the likely area like a blind man reading braille, he found it.
It wasn’t a tree branch. It wasn’t hail. There was a tiny fissure, perfectly round, at an angle, where the water was getting in. There was no way to avoid it. The hole had been created by a human hand holding a tool. But who would do such a thing to an insurance company roof? A disgruntled policyholder who thought his claim had been unfairly denied?
Will took his patch kit and went to work. In less than five minutes, he’d plugged the hole with some roofing cement, using his caulking gun, and smoothed it out using a trowel.
He clambered back down his extension ladder to the parking lot where Nate was waiting for him.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the unmistakeable figure of his ex-girlfriend, and her wavy tresses of auburn hair. She stood next to her RAV4 with crossed arms looking at him as he descended.
“What’s the verdict, chief?” Nate Nadeau asked.
Clearly, a leak in one’s roof can turn an adversary into a buddy.
Will was about to reveal his finding of a human-made breach in the roof, but as he opened his mouth to answer, he noticed what appeared to be a small smudge of roof tar on Nadine’s shoes.
“Um, I found a very tiny fissure and patched it. It should hold. You could have me replace the impacted shingle, but I think the patch should be sufficient given that it was tiny and I filled it all the way through.”
“I can’t thank you enough. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“C’mon Will. You gotta charge something for your work.”
“Really nothing, the whole thing took me 10 minutes. Hire Perrault for your next project.”
“I insist,” Nate said earnestly, and pulling out a wad of twenties. “You immediately drove all the way out here on such short notice.”
Will held his ground. “Maybe just give me a blank slate. And we’ll call it even.”
Nate reached out his hand, and the two men shook hands the way men do when they want to project masculinity in an agreeable way—a firm grip but not one that lingers.
Nate Nadeau trudged back into his office, and Will turned to walk to his car.
“Will, thanks for helping my father. Can I speak with you?”
Will turned and saw Nadine’s bright blue eyes focusing on him as she grinned—that darn grin that had formerly disarmed him whenever she unleashed it.
Read the previous chapter in the series:
Read the series from the beginning:
Hi Douglas! I’m still hanging in here reading every word you write. I’m still entranced with this story of Will and Nadine. And I’m still sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for this romance to get going. If you decide to do this ever again, perhaps you would consider making the installments weekly instead of every two weeks? I don’t like waiting so long!
Nadine is a smart cookie!