On the fourth afternoon, Tessa opened the door with flour on the back of one wrist. A blanket lay over her shoulders. She looked past Rae at the empty landing.
“Just you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. They keep telling me someone's coming and I keep getting out of bed.”
Rae had worked with Tessa's bakery manager once, rewiring a counter after closing. She remembered the woman herself only from this installation: asleep when they arrived, apologetic about the dishes, annoyed that everybody thought night workers were simply available in the day.
Tessa pointed at the heater under the window. “The office said you need to check it.”
“Two controls from this batch were involved in fires. There was another house with possible heat damage. We need to keep this unit off until it's properly checked.”
The woman tightened the blanket. “Then why did they say a check?”
“It is a check. They should have told you why.”
“You installed it.”
“I was on the crew.”
Tessa moved away from the door. Rae stepped inside without putting down her bag.
The room was small and warm. A loaf lay on a board by the sink. Tessa must have brought it home from the bakery; Rae could smell it over the blanket's washed-wool scent, and her stomach made a noise she hoped wasn't audible.
Tessa heard. “Take a slice if you want. First call the manager. I need somebody to tell me where I sleep if you take the heat.”
Rae called with Tessa standing beside her. The manager said he was in a meeting. Tessa took the phone.
“Should I bring my blanket to it?”
He promised to call the assistance contact. Tessa made him repeat when. Rae wrote the time on the work slip and added the number herself. Tessa taped the slip to the door.
“I want to see it when I wake up,” she said. “Not remember it was something somebody told me while I was tired.”
Rae explained what she could do, and Tessa agreed. The heater went out of use. Rae stayed within the work she could do safely and recorded what she found. She didn't test it just to make the risk visible.
Tessa cut her bread while Rae packed. “The bakery's changing the night oven. That thing sounds like a truck backing up when it's cold. We've been telling him for months.”
“Is he listening?”
“He is now. An oven doesn't make money while it's broken.”
She wrapped two slices and handed them to Rae. Rae tried to refuse the second. Tessa said she would eat it at the next job and was probably right.
The invoice roster had reached Rae at the previous job. She'd checked that address and two recent installations against her notebook. The older pages were still waiting; she'd been getting the warnings out first.
“Have you called everybody?” Tessa asked.
“The office has a list.”
“I asked about yours.”
Rae paused with the bag strap in her hand.
“Your jobs,” Tessa said. “How many did you put in?”
“I have a book.”
“So have you checked?”
Not every page yet. She'd trusted the invoice list to cover the older work while she visited the addresses on it. Her own book was in the van.
“I'll do it now,” she said.
Tessa held the door open while she went to the van. The field book lay under the passenger seat beside the cereal bowl. Rae took it out and spread the roster across her lap.
She started with the date the shipment arrived. The notebook pages were bent at the corners, muddy in one place from a job where she'd dropped it. The invoice roster was clean. Names, addresses, dates, model numbers in columns.
The first missing job was a duplex near the river. Elias knew the owner's brother. The next was a clinic with a bill that hadn't been paid. Rae checked twice, then wrote both addresses on a fresh page.
Calder's came after a rainy spring date. She remembered Ruth handing coffee through the kitchen doorway in chipped mugs, saying the residents would be home from work soon and could they finish the hall first. Rae had smiled and promised a warmer house.
Her signature lay at the bottom. Same batch above it.
No Calder address on the roster.
Tessa stood beside the van, blanket held shut with one fist.
“You've found somebody.”
“More than one.”
“Oh, God. You'll have to call them.” Tessa shifted the blanket. “I thought you'd forgotten me sitting here. No, go on. Call.”
Rae nodded. She had left the bread on the seat beside her and Tessa picked it up before it could fall.
She photographed the notebook pages beside the roster and called Elias.
“Why isn't Calder's on the list?”
Shop noise carried through the connection, then stopped as he moved somewhere quiet.
“Ruth's a separate account.”
“It's the same control.”
“It was a favor. I was checking the older records.”
“Did you tell Ruth about the fires?”
“I sent Len and Jory. They're replacing it tonight.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That we're replacing it.”
Rae looked at Tessa's blanket. The office had made a warning sound like a convenient visit. Elias had done the same at a house with eleven people.
“They need to know,” she said.
“Rae, Ruth can't close the whole place on a maybe. She's barely keeping it open as it is.”
“She can decide that when she hears it.”
“Let the crew finish. Then she has heat and nobody has to be put on the street.”
“How far along are they?”
“They'll get it done.”
Not an answer. Rae knew where the missing information lay now. She knew the silence from the kitchen that morning, the hand hovering over the old phone.
“I'm giving my page to the center.”
“You signed that work.”
“I know.”
“They'll ask you about it.”
“I know that too.”
Her voice was shaking. She wished it wasn't. He would hear the shake and think she needed him to take over.
“I don't want you walking into something you can't undo,” he said.
She looked down at her signature. It wasn't possible to take it off the spring page. Whatever question she would have to answer later had already begun.
“I've got to go,” she said, and ended the call.
She sent Maya the photographs and a message with the three addresses. My signature. Missing from the roster. Dad sent a crew to Calder's for a quiet replacement tonight. I'm bringing the book.
Maya replied: Come to the center's side entrance.
Rae went back to Tessa's door. The woman was on the phone, telling somebody at the assistance office that she worked nights and needed to be called directly. She lowered the phone.
“He finally called,” she said, pointing at the work slip. “I'll manage from here.”
“The heater's off. My number's there if you need the job details.”
“I know.” Tessa looked at the notebook in Rae's hand. “Go.”
Rae put it on the passenger seat, where she could see it, and drove to the center.