Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 25 of 60

Eduardo woke before dawn and went straight to the front of the house. The one clean window stared back at him. The other frame still waited, empty. He measured the second pane, set it in place, and sealed the edges. He pulled the last curled strips of paint from the siding and brushed the boards clean. By mid-morning he had the first coat of pale blue on the front wall. The color matched his shirt. It matched the sky above the ridge. He worked without stopping until the porch steps. He shimmed the tilted stone back under the low step and drove fresh nails into the rail. He replaced two boards on the porch floor that had softened through. He wiped his hands on his jeans and stepped back to the road. The house had two clean eyes now. The front wall held one steady color. The step sat level. The rail did not wobble when a rider brushed it. A stranger passing would not cross the road to avoid it. He should have felt done with the front. He did not. His mind slid to her. He pictured Kiersten riding by on some errand she would never take, slowing her horse at the gate. He pictured her auburn eyes moving over the paint, the glass, the step. He pictured her deciding whether his word matched his walls. He set the brush down on the can lid. He knew what this was. He had promised the angel woman no unearned women and no lies about his motives. He was painting for a witness who had told him never to return. He walked to the kitchen and opened the ledger. Two names sat inside it. He read them slowly. The feed store owner. The angel mother at the pale house. Neither of them was Kiersten. Neither of them ever would be. He carried the ledger out to the porch and sat on the top step. He spoke plainly to the empty yard. "She is not coming to look," he said. "The house stands for me." He said it again until the picture of her at the gate went thin. It did not leave. It only stopped pulling at his hands. He stood and finished the second coat before the light went. When he stepped back the last time, the front of the house was whole. Roof still sagged in back. Side wall still needed work. But the face it showed the road was honest now. It told the truth his ledger told. He closed the paint can and set the brush in a jar of water. He took the ledger inside and laid it flat on the table where he could see it in the morning. He had built the front for a road that did not know him yet. Tomorrow he would start on what the road could not see.