CHAPTER 8: The Pergola Story

Greta Walsh arrived at the Harlow on Friday afternoon with a folder under each arm and the energy of a woman on a mission, which was, Noah had told him, her default state.

Eli had been warned. He had been warned by Noah, by Dani, by Pat Okafor, who had the specific expression of someone who had spent considerable professional time in Greta's orbit and had made her peace with it. He had been told that Greta Walsh meant well, that her documentation was genuinely useful, that her opinions about historic preservation were correct approximately ninety percent of the time, and that the remaining ten percent was not negotiable.

He had been prepared.

He had not been prepared enough.

"The transom windows," Greta said, within forty-five seconds of arrival, setting both folders on the parlor windowsill and opening the first one. "They were replaced in 1962. The original drawings — which I believe you've seen, I understand Noah pulled the county copies — show six-pane transoms with a Federal-style muntins. What was installed in 1962 is a three-pane flat configuration that is incorrect and needs to come out."

"It's on the scope," Eli said.

Greta looked at him over her reading glasses. "Which version of the scope?"

"The current version. The transoms are scheduled for replacement with reproductions matching the 1887 specification."

She appeared to weigh this. "Who approved the profile?"

"I did. Based on the original drawings and a reference window that survived intact on the third floor."

"Third floor east or west?"

"East."

A pause. "Good. The west one was modified at some point, I've never been able to determine when." She made a note. "I have photographs of the east window from 1947 if you want comparison documentation."

"I would actually like that."

She handed him a photograph from the second folder with the efficiency of someone who had known he would ask. He looked at it — a black-and-white image of the Harlow's east elevation, the transom window in question clearly visible, the six-pane configuration intact, a woman in a print dress visible in the adjacent window as incidental context.

"Who is she?" he asked.

"Eleanor Harlow. The last innkeeper. She ran it from 1932 until 1978." Greta settled onto the window seat with the confidence of someone who had been in this room many times. "She was a very competent woman. She maintained the property largely alone for forty years." A pause. "She also made the best blueberry pie in Cedarwood Falls, which Mae has declined to confirm or deny."

"Mae has her own pie."

"Mae has an excellent pie. It is not the same pie." Greta said this with the finality of someone who had spent time with this question. "The dining room wainscoting," she continued, without apparent segue.

Eli prepared himself and followed her into the dining room.

Forty-five minutes later they were back in the parlor, Eli's notebook significantly fuller than it had been, and Greta was looking at the fireplace mantel with the expression of someone completing an assessment.

"The mantel is original," she said. "Don't touch it."

"I wasn't planning to."

"People plan not to and then they touch things." She made a final note. "The scope is better than I expected." She said it as though this were an unusual occurrence. "Your firm does good work."

"Thank you."

"I'm not complimenting your firm. I'm complimenting you, specifically. There's a difference." She closed the second folder. "You're the one who looked at the reference window on the third floor instead of just taking the 1962 configuration as given. Most contractors don't climb to the third floor to check a detail."

"Most contractors aren't specifying reproductions."

"No." A pause. "Noah usually does."

Eli went still in a way he hoped was not visible. "Does he."

"He's done three restoration projects in this town in the last four years. Small ones — the post office facade, the Morrow bookshop, the Callahan Hardware exterior. All of them he went to the primary source before he touched anything." She looked out the parlor window at the site, where Noah was visible in the side yard talking to Pat Okafor, both of them looking at Pat's foundation notes. "He's a careful man. He doesn't do things by half."

"No," Eli said. "He doesn't."

Greta looked at him. There was something in the look that was not accidental. "He built the pergola in my garden," she said, in a tone that was offering him something without saying what.

Eli waited.

"My husband died four years ago. March." She was looking out the window. "The following June I came out one morning and found Noah in my garden with lumber and a post-hole digger and a plan he'd drawn on the back of a hardware invoice. He built a pergola for the back corner where Frank liked to sit. He didn't call to ask. He just — came." A pause. "He worked for two days. He planted wisteria at the base. He left without making anything of it."

Eli said nothing.

"I found the invoice later," Greta said. "He'd bought all the lumber himself. He charged me for the hardware only. The screws and the post bases." She picked up her folders. "He does that kind of thing. He does it without making anything of it."

"I know," Eli said. And then, because it was true: "I know he does."

Greta looked at him for a moment. Something in her expression settled into the particular quality of a woman who had asked a question without asking it and received an answer.

"The dining room wainscoting cap rail," she said. "Three and a half inch flat panel. I'll send you the reference photographs."

"Thank you, Greta."

She left. The bell above the front door rang and then it was quiet.

Eli stood in the parlor with his notebook and the photograph of Eleanor Harlow in the 1947 window and the accumulated information of the last forty-five minutes, only some of which was about the building.

He looked out the parlor window.

Noah was still in the side yard. The conversation with Pat had ended and he was alone now, making a note on his clipboard, his jacket collar up against the October wind. He was standing in the feral kitchen garden in the same spot where he'd stood on the first site meeting day, in the rain, holding two coffees. The spot where they'd had the first real silence.

Eli watched him for longer than was professionally warranted.

Then he went back to his plans.

He sat in his car afterward — engine off, the site quiet around him, the late afternoon light going amber through the firs — and tried to identify what he was feeling with the precision he brought to other problems.

This was not a skill he had historically applied to what he was feeling. Feelings, in his experience, were better managed than examined, and he had managed them with considerable success for a very long time.

The success, he was beginning to suspect, had been overstated.

He thought about the shelving with hand-cut dovetails. The pergola with wisteria. The county archive drawings pulled a month before anyone asked. The coffee, every morning, black, the muscle memory of ten years ago alive and specific and not degraded at all.

He thought about Greta's face when she'd told him. The specific quality of her telling — not gossiping, not engineering, just handing him something real and seeing what he did with it.

He did not know what to do with it.

That wasn't true. He knew exactly what to do with it. He had known for eight days with increasing clarity what the information meant and what it was asking of him and what it would cost to respond to it honestly.

He started the car.

He took the long way back to the motel.

Past the lake, through the residential streets, past the hardware store with its lights on and its green-and-gold sign and the shape of Noah's truck in the lot, not yet gone for the evening.

He didn't stop.

But he drove slowly.