Three Sisters Finished the House He Left

Two Envelopes

The first envelope came the following Saturday. It was in our mailbox at the single-wide, a plain white envelope with my name on it in Jody’s handwriting. Inside was $3,000 in cash and a note on a piece of notebook paper.

The note said: “First half. More in two weeks. I’m sorry, Rae. J.”

The second envelope came two weeks later, on a sunny Sunday after church. Jody did not mail it. He walked over to me in the gravel parking lot, in front of half the congregation, and handed it to me.

There was another $3,000 in it. He did not make a speech. He said, “That’s what I owe you for the half I didn’t build. I figured it out three different ways. That’s the honest number.”

I had figured it out too. It was about what I had come to. Six thousand dollars back, for the half a house he walked away from. The other five he had earned with good walls.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I should have done it in September.” He looked at the mountains behind the church for a second. “Tell your sisters I said those are good walls.”

“Tell them yourself,” I said. “They’ll be at Dad’s for supper Sunday.”

He nodded. And the next Sunday, he did. He came to Dad’s house with Jolene and the boys and a pie Jolene had baked, and he stood in Dad’s kitchen and told Annika and Mira that their corners were square. Mira made him say it twice.

It was not the same as it was when we were kids racing bikes down Grandma’s lane. I do not know if it ever will be. But he sat at the table, and we passed him the potatoes, and nobody had to choose a side.

Our Names

The drywall crew was scheduled for the first week of November, after the windows and the wiring and the insulation. The weekend before, we had the house closed in and dry, and the first real snow of the year was falling soft on the roof.

The Saturday before the drywall went up, the three of us drove out to the house together. Tate was home. Dad came too, and Mom, and we brought a thermos of coffee and a box of doughnuts and stood around inside our house for the first time out of the weather.

Mira had a black marker in her coat pocket. She held it up. “Before they cover it,” she said.

We went to the front door. Behind it, on the right side, there was a stud we had nailed together on the very first Saturday. I could still see my missed nail sticking out the side of the plate below it, bent over flat where I had hammered it down.

Annika wrote her name first, near the top: Annika Volk. Then Mira wrote hers below it. Then she handed me the marker.

I wrote my name, Raelynn Gossard, and under it, smaller, I wrote Volk, because that is who I was when I learned to do it.

Then I handed the marker to Dad. He shook his head. “That’s yours,” he said. “I only drove one nail.”

“Then write one nail,” Mira said.

So he did. Under our three names, in his careful square print, my father wrote: “And one nail. Dad.”

Tate put his arm around me. Mom took a picture with her phone. Outside, the snow kept falling, and the house held it off just fine.

The drywall went up the next week and covered it all. You cannot see a single word now. But every morning when I open my front door to go to work, I put my hand on that wall for one second, right about where my name is.

It is a small house. It is not fancy. But it is square, and it is plumb, and it is ours, and I know exactly who built it.