It was only nine in the morning and he’d already fielded a call from their lumber supplier, wanting to know why their check had bounced. That was followed up by a call from his girlfriend’s new boyfriend, wanting to hash out who owned the television before the guy carried it out to his truck. Former girlfriend, he corrected himself as the phone kept ringing. Maybe he’d hit the shitty-day jackpot and it was his doctor calling to tell him he might have contracted some horrible disease. Probably from his girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—and her new boyfriend. At the fifth ring he glanced at the caller ID, and the area code snapped him out of his funk—603. And the prefix numbers were from his hometown. Why the hell was anybody calling him from Stewart Mills, New Hampshire? He tempted fate and picked up the phone. “S and P Builders.” “Chase Sanders, please,” said a woman whose voice he didn’t recognize, not that he would expect to after fourteen years away.
