I looked out the window above the sink and saw a line of clearing sky through the woods in back. Lorelei must have gotten tired of making it rain … or her wounds had worn her out. Ha! I thought, she probably didn’t have a talented wizard like Duncan to heal her wounds.

“… So if you just okay this estimate …” Bill was holding the clipboard out to me, head ducked, feet shuffling.

“Oh, of course. You’ll need a down payment. How much …?” I looked down at the statement and was pleasantly surprised by the total. “That seems fair,” I said. “Can I write you a check for half now and half when you’re done?”

Bill grunted assent and I went to get my checkbook out of my desk drawer. When I came down he was in the foyer on his hands and knees. At first I thought he’d slipped on the wet floor and I wondered if the house was deliberately sabotaging anyone who tried to fix it, but then he looked up and I saw he was holding an old rag in his hands.

“Just mopping up a little spill,” he said, getting to his feet and tugging his cap over his eyes. “I didn’t want you to slip.”

“Thank you,” I said, handing him the check. “That was very considerate of you.”

He folded the check and stuck it into the breast pocket of the t-shirt he wore under his sweatshirt. Then he stuck the rag – a scrap of plaid flannel – into his back pocket where it hung out like a flag on the back of an oversized load on a truck. Bill wasn’t a spiffy dresser, but if he fixed my roof the way he’d fixed my hot water heater I was going to nominate him for Man of the Year.

“Should I give you a key?” I asked.

“I can just use the one under the gnome,” he said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “If that’s all right?”

I hesitated, wondering how these things were usually done. I’d gotten used to Brock coming and going as he pleased. Was Bill worried I’d accuse him of stealing something later? Or maybe he thought I was naïve for trusting a total stranger with the key to my house. Maybe he was right. But every instinct in my body told me to trust Bill Carey. Then I remembered that Liz and Diana had said that no one wishing me harm could get to the key under the gnome. If Bill could use it, that proved he was as trustworthy as I thought he was.

“It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “I trust you.”