Three Sisters Finished the House He Left

Family Price

Jody Pelkey is my cousin on my mother’s side. He is four years older than me. When we were children he was the one who built the tree fort and the one who fell out of it, and Grandma loved him for both.

When Tate and I got our plans back, I asked Jody if he would bid the framing. I did not expect a favor. I only wanted somebody I trusted.

He came out to the lot one evening in June and walked the foundation with his hands in his pockets. Then he sat on the tailgate of his truck with a pencil and a notepad and did the numbers.

“I’ll do it for family price,” he said. “You won’t find better in the valley, and you won’t find faster.”

His bid was about four thousand dollars under the next lowest one we had. He wanted an $11,000 deposit up front for lumber delivery, his crew’s first two weeks and his time.

Tate was on a run to Spokane, so I called him on speaker right there on the tailgate. Tate said, “If you trust him, I trust him.” So I wrote the check from our savings that same night.

Jody’s crew started the second week of August. They set the sill plates and built the floor system and laid the plywood deck in four days. Then the walls began to go up, and I cried a little in the car the first time I saw a window opening.

For nine working days, it went just the way he had promised. Then came that Monday.

The Phone Call

I called Jody four times that week. I sent him two text messages. The second one just said, “Please. Whatever it is, we can talk.”

On Thursday my aunt, Jody’s mother, called me instead.

“Honey,” she said, “Jody’s real sorry. He got an offer from a big outfit up toward Whitefish. Steady work, all winter, health insurance for his family. Jolene said he was scared that if he turned it down, they’d never ask him again.”

I sat down on the steps of the single-wide. It was a warm afternoon and the grasshoppers were clicking in the dry grass.

“I know he is,” I said. “But he has eleven thousand dollars of our money. He took every nail gun off our slab. There is half a house standing out there with no roof, and it is almost September.”

“I know, honey. He said he’d make it right when he can.”

“When?”

She did not answer that. She said, “Please don’t make trouble in the family over this. You know how your grandma is. It would break her heart.”

I knew how my grandma was. She was eighty-eight years old and she still baked bread every Friday and still believed all of her grandchildren were good people. I loved her more than almost anyone alive.

After I hung up, I sat on those steps until the sun went behind the trees.