"They'll be here in thirty minutes to start work. It'll take them three or four days to finish. The electrician is coming by this afternoon to give you an estimate." He carried the two bags of groceries into the house for me.

"I don't care about an estimate. I want this place rewired so we can put in central heat and air, and we need plugs in every single wall. I don't care what it costs," I said.

We? My conscience picked up on that word so fast, it made my head swim.

He leaned on the doorjamb into the kitchen. "You ready to start removing paint?"

"I am" I lied so well, I almost convinced myself.

We climbed the stairs, each carrying a bucket filled with putty knives, a can of paint remover, and sandpaper.

"I'm really surprised you aren't sore," he said.

"Who says I'm not?" I asked.

"Well, at least you aren't a whiner." His tone held respect.

After that, how could I say a word? In Billy Lee's eyes I wasn't a whiner. I'd worked all day, then gotten up the next morning and ridden the monster tricycle to town and back. It might not be a lot in anyone else's opinion, but right then I needed a champion, and I'd gladly take Billy Lee.

He set his bucket down. "Way this works is that we pour the remover into one of the buckets, paint it on a foot at a time, let it set for a few minutes, and use the putty knives to take off what we can. It'll probably take several applications to get down to raw wood"

"So we're not going to get this room completed today?"

He'd already begun to pour some of the smelly liquid into a bucket. "You in a hurry?"

"If I live to the promised three score and ten, I figure I've got about thirty years. Same as you. So I don't reckon I'm in a big hurry. Can't promise I'll be lucid the last ten, though. Momma started losing it at sixty. Think we can get this room done by then, so I can enjoy it for a few days before I have to check into the nursing home?"

"Trudy, you are not going to that place," he said seriously.

"And what makes you so sure?" I asked.

He quickly changed the subject. "I'll open the windows and get some ventilation in here. Fumes get pretty strong after a while. Hey, the window people just pulled up."

He raised the windows. One looked over the backyard and his little frame house next door, and the other overlooked Broadway Street with all its killer potholes.

.,You are the official contractor on this job, so would you go show them where to start?"

"Wow, I get a title." He grinned.

"Want me to make you a fancy name tag?"

"Sure." He nodded on his way out of the room.

Two men and Billy Lee were back in a few minutes with a window. I'd expected them to measure, rub their chins, measure again, and do all the stereotyped things men do when they're discussing a job. But Billy Lee had already given them measurements-of every window in the house, and they went right to work.

Billy Lee showed me how to apply the paint stripper, and I found out really quickly that it could make fat cells whine and cry like little girls. I dropped a chunk of saturated paint off the putty knife onto my bare leg, and it dug in like a leech and in seconds was burning so badly, I thought for sure I'd see bone when I wiped it off. But there was barely a red mark. I sucked up the screaming and saved the whining until later, when I was all alone.

One of the men asked Billy Lee how his business was doing with the economy in trouble, and he brushed the guy off with an evasive answer. My curiosity alert went into high gear. Just what kind of business did he have? I figured he lived on some kind of inheritance his grandparents had left him and doing odd jobs like this one when he could get them.

"You'll have a nice place here when you get done. I'm glad to see you restoring rather than just remodeling. By the way, I'm Roy, and this is Melvin." The window man made introductions.

I nodded toward them. "Nice to meet both of you. I've got this idea in my head about how I want things to look when it's all done. I love the warmth of wood and bright colors. Billy Lee is my contractor, but I'm helping where I can."

"Don't know how you got him to work for you, lady, but you got the best there is. I'd gladly pay him double top wages to remodel my house. I didn't know he'd come out of his shop building for anyone. How'd you do it?"

I raised an eyebrow at Billy Lee.

He blushed. "Gert was my friend, and she asked me to do this."

"I'm your friend. When you get finished, will you work for me?" Melvin asked.

Billy Lee shook his head.

"Is that a no?" Roy teased.

"That's exactly what it is," Billy Lee said.

"Can't blame a man for trying. These are going to be beautiful framed out in oak," Roy said.

I stopped long enough to wait for the stripper to do its job. "I hope so."

"So you like the ... What did you say? The warmth of wood?" Billy Lee asked.

I wiped sweat from my forehead with a paper towel and nodded. "I didn't realize how much until these past few days. I'm a country girl at heart, not a modern one. I want a house full of color and laughter."

"That's the way you were when we were little. You liked red and yellow and blue when we colored out on the back porch, and you were always laughing," he said.

"You remember me as a child?"

"Sure. Y'all used to visit Gert, and I'd sneak through the hedge. Your mother always had a bag with crayons and two coloring books, and Marty and Betsy got one, and you always colored with me"

Talking about it jarred my memory. "And you colored so perfectly, you made us girls look bad"

"But you made everything so much fun. You colored hair purple or blue, and sometimes the sky was green. You've always loved color, Trudy. I'm glad you're going to keep the wood natural and use bright colors in the house. It'll be you."

"I may dye my hair purple or blue next week to prove the real Trudy has been resurrected"

"Please don't do that. Leave it brown. It's you just like it is now.,,

"And who is me?" I asked.

"You are Trudy Matthews with kinky, curly hair and a beautiful smile."

"Flattery will get you out of lots of explaining," I teased.

At noon Billy Lee and I washed up side by side in the kitchen sink. Our hands touched in the basin as we rinsed off paint speckles and dirt. There weren't any tingles, though, and the floor didn't wiggle a bit. I wasn't surprised. I never expected to feel anything romantic again.

"Mayonnaise?" I asked.

He pulled paper plates and napkins out of the cabinet. "Mustard, please."

"On bologna, lettuce, and tomatoes?"

"And dill pickles. Ever try it?"

I shook my head and left the mayonnaise in the refrigerator; might as well do something different to celebrate my freedom. "Is it good?"

He opened the bread wrapper and took out four pieces. "If you don't like it, I'll eat yours and mine. Here, I'll make them"

"What kind of chips and soda do you want?" I asked.

"Barbecue is good with bologna. And I'll have sweet tea if you have it made up."