Three Sisters Finished the House He Left

The Snow Would Not Wait

Tate called me that night from a truck stop outside Casper, Wyoming. I could hear the reefer units running in the background and somebody’s air brakes letting go.

I told him everything. He was quiet for a long time, which is what Tate does when he is angry. He is not a yeller. He just goes still.

“We could take him to small claims,” he finally said. “Or I could drive up to Whitefish on Saturday and find his truck.”

“And then what?” I said. “My aunt stops speaking to Mom. Grandma’s birthday turns into a war. Half the family sides with him because he’s got kids and the other half sides with us, and it never heals.”

“So we let him walk off with it?”

“No,” I said. “But I can’t fix the money this week. I can only fix the walls.”

That was the truth of it, and I have said it many times since. If I went after Jody, the family would split down the middle. And the snow would not wait for an apology either way.

In the Flathead, the first real snow can come by the middle of October. A half-framed house with no roof, standing open through a winter, would warp and rot and cost us double. We had about six weeks.

We called around the next morning. Every framing crew in the valley was booked into November. One man said he could come in three weeks for nearly twice what Jody had bid. We did not have twice. We did not have once anymore.

Tate said, “I’ll take the extra loads. Every one they’ll give me. That’ll cover some of it.”

“And I’ll call my sisters,” I said.

Three Volk Girls

My maiden name is Volk. There are three of us, and we grew up on four acres south of Kalispell with a father who could not stand to pay a man to build anything.

Annika is the oldest. She is thirty-six and a nurse on the medical floor at the hospital, and she has the steadiest hands of anyone I know. Mira is the youngest. She is thirty and works the line at a diner in town, and she can lift a full stockpot like it is a jug of milk.

When we were girls, Dad built sheds. He built a tool shed, a hay shed, a chicken coop, a woodshed and a little playhouse with a real window. He built every one of them with us holding the other end of the board.

He taught us to read a tape measure before we could read a clock. He taught us to toenail a stud and to check a corner by measuring the diagonals. He taught us that if you set a stud crown down, the floor would tell on you for thirty years.

So on Sunday afternoon, after church, I drove to Dad’s house with the plans rolled under my arm. Annika came straight from a morning shift, still in her scrubs. Mira came smelling like the fryer.

Dad was at the kitchen table in his reading glasses. He was sixty-six. Last April he had heart surgery, three bypasses, and his doctor had told him plainly: no lifting, no ladders, no swinging a hammer for at least a year.

That rule was the hardest thing in the world for my father. He had built everything he ever owned. Now he had to sit in a chair and watch other people do it.

I unrolled the plans on his table and told them the whole thing. Mira swore under her breath and then apologized to Dad. Annika just put her hand flat on the plans and read them.

“How much wall is left?” Annika asked.

I had measured it twice that week. “About a hundred and forty feet,” I said. “Two exterior walls, the gable end and all the interior partitions. Plus the headers and the corners.”

Dad took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “That’s a lot of wall for three people who’ve never framed a house.”

“We framed your chicken coop when I was eleven,” Annika said.

“This is a bigger coop,” Mira said, and Dad laughed for the first time that night.