Page 5 of Something Like Shelter

“The primary bathroom.” I must have given her a look, worried it was something I’d already fixed. “The shower this time. It’s probably throwing a tantrum because I haven’t used it enough lately,” she said with a sad look.

“Alright. Let me go check out the damage,” I said, giving her a small smile as I made my way toward the center stairs.

The house was different than it had been before the baby. Blankets were thrown everywhere: over the railing, stacked on chairs, in a giant, overflowing laundry basket at the top of the stairs. The sink was full, the counters cluttered.

Motherhood had eaten up her housekeeping time.

Her own bedroom was strangely neat, though. Like she hadn’t been inside her own bed in days. She probably hadn’t.

Inside the primary bath, my boots slapped into the water puddles on the floor that Willa hadn’t managed to sop up with the towels and sweaters she had piled in the bathtub.

I walked further in, catching sight of myself in the mirror. I turned, noticing my shaggy, dirty blond hair, stubbly jaw, and brown eyes. But more so than that, I noticed the spots on the mirror.

I couldn’t tell you why, but my first instinct wasn’t to go into the shower and triage the problem.

It was to walk over to the vanity, grab the glass cleaner wipes from beneath, and wipe those spots away.

So that was what I did.

Then I turned to the glass-enclosed shower with its white marble and subtle black veins, its black fixtures, and the collection of shampoos, conditioners, and body washes she took out of their original containers and put into aesthetic black ones instead.

I hated to have to be the one to tell her, but a whole shower wall was going to need to come down. Rationally, the whole thing would need to be taken down to the studs to make sure mold didn’t grow.

It meant all her fancy tile had to go. And, given the placement, the glass door as well.

It seemed like the last thing she needed was bad news. But there was no fixing a pipe behind a wall without busting it open.

I set down my toolbox then made my way back out of the bedroom.

At the landing, I grabbed the basket and carried it down to set it in the doorway of the laundry room before I started looking for Willa.

“Shit. Sorry—” I said when I walked into the living room to find her sitting on the couch in her wet clothes, a blanket draped over her shoulder, and the baby nestled beneath, nursing.

I whipped around to give her privacy.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m… decent enough,” she said, exhaling. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

I turned back around.

“It’s not good. The whole shower should come down. If you want to save some money, I could try to just dry out the—”

“The money isn’t an issue,” she cut me off.

She’d never been worried about it before. But I didn’t know how much a baby and maternity leave might impact that kind of thing.

“Then I would recommend it all coming down. With your luck with this house, you’d get black mold.”

“That would be my luck,” she agreed with a huff of a laugh. “So… that means the tile and everything…”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she said, shrugging her one shoulder. “I guess that isn’t the worst thing. I kind of hate that tile. They used it everywhere in this house.”

They had. Each of the bathrooms and the kitchen. Even the laundry room had quartz backsplashes behind the washer, dryer, and sink.

It led me to think that the house had been in rough shape and flipped by some amateurs who thought they could just slap pretty finishes up, and no one would notice all the rotting beneath.

“The floor doesn’t really need replacing.”