Wendell Prasky had spent thirty-one years measuring the slow decay of old houses, and he liked to say that dry rot was the only thing in this world that kept its promises. At sixty-two, the forensic building inspector had a nose for water damage and a bad habit of noticing everything else too—the way a screen door hung crooked, the way a woman held her coffee cup when she was about to say something she’d been chewing on all morning.
The Hollis Street community center had been his assignment for a week now, poking at joists and tapping plaster while the neighborhood’s Tuesday night social club clattered around him. He worked late to avoid the crowd. He was good at avoiding things. His ex-wife had put it plainly on her way out: *You audit buildings, Wendell. You audit people too.*
He was up on a ladder in the back hallway, flashlight in his teeth, when a voice floated up from below.
“You know that ceiling’s been leaking since the Reagan administration.”
He looked down. A woman stood with her arms crossed, gray hair pinned up, reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain. Sixty, maybe. Sharp eyes. A volunteer’s badge and the kind of posture that suggested she ran things.
“Wendell Prasky,” he said around the flashlight, then took it out. “Building inspector.”
“Delia Vance. I run the Tuesday club.” She pointed at the water stain. “I’ve been telling the board about that stain for two years. They tell me it’s cosmetic.”
“It’s not cosmetic.”
“I know it’s not cosmetic.” Her mouth twitched. “That’s why I’m telling you.”
He climbed down, and she didn’t step back. Close enough that he caught the smell of peppermint and something warmer underneath, wool and cedar. She held his gaze a beat past comfortable, the way people do when they’ve decided you’re worth the trouble.
He came back Thursday. Then Saturday. The stain became a joist repair, the joist repair a saga involving the board, a contractor named Duane who wore cologne like a threat, and Delia Vance appearing at his elbow with coffee in a chipped mug and opinions about load-bearing walls.
“You’re here more than the janitor,” she said one evening, leaning against the doorframe while he wrote up his notes. The club was setting up for a potluck behind them, folding chairs scraping, someone arguing about a crockpot.
“Building’s falling down,” he said.
“Mm.” She sipped her coffee. “So it’s the building.”
He didn’t answer. His pen moved. She watched him write, and he felt it the way you feel a draft—not unpleasant, just undeniable.
The trouble arrived in the form of a city councilman named Bryce Tanninger, who wanted the center’s back lot rezoned for a parking structure and had begun hinting that the building’s “structural issues” might make demolition the sensible path. Wendell read the proposal and felt his stomach go cold. The numbers were wrong. Deliberately wrong.
He brought it to Delia in the empty club room, the two of them hunched over the table, her shoulder pressed to his as she read. She smelled of peppermint again. He noticed he’d stopped breathing normally.
“He’s lying,” she said quietly.
“He’s lying with arithmetic. It’s harder to prove.”
She turned to him, and her glasses caught the light. “You can prove it.”
“I can try.”
“Why?” Her voice was soft, curious. “It’s not your building.”
He looked at her too long. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
The hearing was a circus. Wendell stood with his charts and his photographs and walked the council through every crooked number, and Bryce Tanninger smiled the whole time, and Delia sat in the third row with her arms crossed, and when the vote came down—five to four, the center saved—she found him in the hallway and put her hand flat on his chest, just once, brief and warm through his shirt.
“You audited him,” she said.
“I audited his math.”
Her hand stayed a second longer than it needed to. “You’re a difficult man, Wendell Prasky.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She laughed, low, and let her hand drop. “Potluck’s Friday. Bring something that isn’t store-bought.”
He brought a pie. He was not a pie man; he stood in his kitchen at eleven at night with flour on his forearms wondering what had gotten into him. At the potluck, Delia took a bite, closed her eyes, and said nothing for a moment.
“That’s a good pie,” she said finally, and the way she said it made him feel like he’d passed an exam he hadn’t known he was taking.
They ended up on the back steps after everyone left, the parking lot dark, the crickets loud. She sat close. Her knee rested against his.
“You know what I like about you,” she said. “You don’t talk to fill the air.”
“I’ve got nothing to say.”
“You’ve got plenty. You just don’t waste it.” She turned her head. In the dark her face was all planes and patience. “Bryce Tanninger’s going to try again next year.”
“Probably.”
“You’ll come back.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yes.”
She leaned in, and he thought—for one dizzy second—that she might kiss him, and his heart did something undignified. Instead she plucked a bit of flour from his collar, held it up, and smiled like she’d caught him at something.
“Friday,” she said, and went to her car.
He sat on the steps a while, listening to the crickets, and found he was grinning at the dark like a fool.
