The Kitchen My Husband’s Brother Left Gutted

It ruined the cabinets, the floor, the lower drywall, the stove, the fridge, and every bit of wiring below that line.

We carry flood insurance because we are in the bottoms, and the bank that holds the note on the house requires it.

The check came the first week of May. It was for $28,400, made out to Matt and me and to the bank, because that is how they do it when there is a mortgage.

That is a lot of money for people like us. It is not a lot of money for a kitchen.

Troy is the careful one. He has built houses in three counties for twenty years, and his houses do not settle and his roofs do not leak, and when people around here want something done right they call Troy Kessler.

He came out the first Sunday after the water went down and walked the kitchen with a flashlight and a moisture meter. He poked at the studs with a screwdriver.

“I’ll do it at family price,” he told us that evening at my mother-in-law’s table.

“Materials and my crew’s time, nothing on top for me. But I need the check up front, Matty. I’ve got to order cabinets, and the lumber yard won’t carry me on a job this size.”

Matt looked at me across the table. I did not argue.

Troy was his brother, and Troy was the careful one, and I was tired to my bones of the smell of river mud in my house.

When the check came, the bank endorsed it over to us as soon as we showed them Troy’s written estimate. We deposited it, and I wrote Troy a check of our own for the whole $28,400, up front. Matt signed it, and I filled it out, and Matt handed it across the table to his brother.

So when I say my brother-in-law took our check, I mean that I gave it to him. I have had to sit with that.

Troy’s crew came the next Monday. There are two of them. Dusty is thirty-four and has worked for Troy for nine years, since he was a framer’s helper.

Ben is twenty-six, Dusty’s cousin, and hardly says three words on a talkative day.

They were good. I will always say that about them. They pulled the ruined cabinets and the old linoleum and cut the drywall off to the studs all the way up, because Troy said once you open a wall in a house that old, you open all of it and see what you have.

They sprayed the studs for mold and ran big fans for a week. They pulled out the old wiring below the water line and capped what was left.

Then, on the second Friday of May, Dusty loaded his tools into his truck and told me that they would be gone a while. Troy needed them on another job.

The other job was Troy’s own house. He had bought six acres across the county the year before and started building in March.

What I did not know, until I drove past one Sunday in July, was that it was a big two story house with a three car garage and a porch that wrapped around two sides, and that every truck I recognized was parked in front of it.

The first time I asked him when he would be back, he said two weeks. The second time he said after the Fourth.

The third time, in the church parking lot in August, he said the cabinets were backordered and there was nothing he could do about it.