But they still wanted him to come in one day a week to meet with clients and his team and to coordinate with quality assurance. Those days were the hardest, because his commute was an hour in each direction on a good day, making his work day so much longer. Linda, Ben, and Holly might’ve already eaten when he got back from in-office days, but having a warm meal that he didn’t have to prepare waiting for him when he returned was a luxury that he was going to miss when he and Holly moved into their new home in a few weeks.
“And,” Holly said, dragging out the word, “done!” She held up her most recent masterpiece, which looked like Mrs. Claus with a hand up, waving. Nick was pretty sure that the cookie shape was intended to be a mitten, with Mrs. Claus’s arm as the thumb.
“Nice!” Nick said. “I give this one fifty-seven stars.”
Holly tilted her head. “Out of how many?”
“Fifty.”
She pumped a fist. “Yes! I knew I’d get over on this one!”
As Nick walked over to the sink to rinse his plate, he asked Holly, “Want to go to the new house with me tonight to patch some holes in the walls? We can go on a hunt to find every last spot that needs fixing.”
“You know it,” she said before hopping down from the bar stool she’d been kneeling on. “I’ll go get my stuff.”
Holly was nothing if not a seeker of adventure. Of course, she was in.
Linda watched as Holly skipped out of the room, then turned to Nick. He worried for a moment that his mother-in-law was going to bring up something more about starting to date again, but instead, she said, “That will be good for her. Just so you know, she came home in a mood. The cookie decorating distracted her, but you should probably still ask about it.”
Nick’s attention flew to Linda as his chest tightened. “Do you know why?”
She shook her head. “Something at school. She said she would only tell you, but if I had to guess, something happened with that same boy.”
The new housewas only a block away, but he, Holly, and Rosy still drove there. It was very cold, very dark, the sidewalks looked very slippery, and his trunk had more things than they could carry in a single load, including several gallons of primer. Besides, it was a little too chilly for the dog’s paws.
When he opened his trunk, he grinned at Holly. “I know we aren’t planning to decorate for Christmas until we move in, but what do you say we get a head start?” He pulled from its bag the wreath with the bulbs and bells that he’d bought and showed it to Holly.
She took the wreath in her hands, looking at it in awe. Then she ran with Rosy, the dog’s yips of excitement matching Holly’s, and she reached up, standing on her tippy toes, stretching her arms way up, to get it hooked on the nail that was pounded into the wooden door.
The look Holly gave him as she grinned back at where he stood by the trunk and the happiness on Rosy almost erased the bad memories of getting attacked by the blasted things in the store.
Well, maybe notalmost. “Partially” was a better word.
Once they had all the supplies carried inside, Holly stood beside him in the family room with her hands on her hips, staring at the wall, just like he was. Except for the tools and supplies that seemed to be multiplying in the home the more days he worked on it, the place was empty and every sound they made echoed off the walls and hardwood floors.
“Okay, what we’re looking for are holes like these.” He stepped up to the wall and ran a finger over a nail hole, then he pulled a putty knife from the tool belt he wore. “To fix it, we just put the corner of this into the Spackle and get a little on. We only need about this much. See? Then we just push it into the hole, like this, and then lay the knife flat to scrape off the extra. Got it?”
Holly nodded, her eyebrows drawn together in serious focus.
“Okay, you try this one.” He moved the step ladder just in front of a second nail hole, then handed her the putty knife. It wasn’t too difficult a task for her, and based on the proud grinshe gave him when the hole was no longer, she was going to love what they would be spending the next hour or so doing.
Plus, he figured it might help her get more invested in the new house and claim it as home. He was sure it wasn’t easy for her to leave the home she’d spent her entire life in. He’d grown up not being exposed to home improvement stuff at all, but Clara had. Her parents were quite the DIYers, so when he and Clara had bought their first house, Clara had total confidence in picking up a saw, a hammer, a wrench, a drill, and a million other tools, and he wanted Holly to be exposed to the same thing.
He put a roll of blue painter’s tape on her arm like a bracelet and told her to start filling holes and if she found anything bigger than the tip of a pencil to tear off a piece of the tape and stick it to the wall right by the hole. And then when she was finished, she could start filling the finishing nail holes in the baseboard that he’d installed yesterday.
As Holly filled a second hole that she’d found and he worked on patching a bigger hole beside the fireplace, he asked, “So, what happened at school today?”
The nice thing about Holly was that she was always willing to spill whatever was on her mind, no coaxing needed. All he had to do was open the gate.
She held up one finger as she concentrated on scraping the excess spackle from the wall, then turned around to face him, fists on her hips, getting a dab of white spackle on her pants where the putty knife in her hands bumped up against it.
After opening her mouth to speak, she closed it, then took in a deep breath. “Remember how you’re always saying that it’s important to help people? Especially the ones who really need it?”
He nodded slowly, wondering where this story was going that ended with her being upset.
“Well, I want you to remember that you always say that because I’m about one minute away from asking you to help my school make a living room for our program.” His eyebrows rose, and Holly stayed quiet for about five seconds before saying, “Will you help make a living room for my school?”
“You want me to make you… a living room?”
