Mending the Quiet House

I spent one summer at the Mulvaney lake house when I was nineteen. I left in September without saying why. Eleven years later I'm the contractor they hired to fix the place, and I have a ten-year-old daughter who laughs like the youngest one and stares like the eldest. I didn't tell them. I told myself I'd finish the house and go. Then camp closed and Josie came to work with me, and three men I used to know figured out the math on the same afternoon. I've been holding her alone for ten years. If they want in, they go in with me. All the way. Into a courtroom, if it comes to that.