Chapter One - Ballast / Page 3 of 6
The Boarding House
The first inspection site waits under rainwater, old paint, loose gutters, and second-floor windows.
The boarding house stood three lots down from the corner, set back behind a narrow strip of winter grass.
Its porch had settled unevenly toward the street. The paint had given up in sheets under the lower windows. A gutter hung loose above the steps, ticking rainwater into the same dark mark it had been making for years.
Elias parked at the curb and waited before reaching for the clipboard. Not because he believed in signs. He did not. But some houses made a man pause before he gave them a number.
He wrote the address at the top of the report. Then he looked up at the second-floor windows and felt, briefly, that the house had already read his name.
Some houses made a man pause before he gave them a number.
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