Page 44 of My Husband Problem

“She is. For this. But you never know who might be showing up at that front door.”

I push my chair back and head toward the door while Michelle and Wilson finish chatting.

I pull the door open to find the woman from the porch across the street standing there with a frown.

Her short, bright white hair is wrapped in a grape-purple scarf, and she’s wearing a sleeveless purple silk dress that falls to the matching sandals, with purple, silver, and teal rhinestones along the straps. She’s got multiple beaded necklaces drapedaround her neck in purple, silver, and teal that match the bangles on both wrists. She’s also holding a paper sack.

“I couldn’t open the door. It’s locked,” she informs me as soon as she sees me. She points at the statue. “And the key is missing.”

“We are not going to be keeping the key there anymore,” I tell her.

“Where is it now?” She looks around, clearly trying to locate the new key hiding place.

“We’re not going to be keeping a key outside the house at all,” I clarify.

Patty props her free hand on her hip, bracelets jangling. “Then why is the door locked?”

“To keep people from walking into the house.” I’m amused, I’ll admit.

“How am I supposed to come in and drop things off?”

“You can leave things on the porch. I assume this is a safe neighborhood.”

“We can’t leave stuff. It will be in the way of the door.”

I give her a quizzical look. “Set it to the side.”

She frowns. “Onthisporch?”

“Yes.” I look up and down the expanse of the porch that runs the length of the front of the house.

It’s completely bare of anything other than the otter statue. Astrid doesn’t even have a welcome mat. I have never, in my life, had a front porch, but I suddenly feel like this porch needs…something. Definitely a mat of some kind. There are clearly people here a lot. And as I look at the other porches on the block, it’s clear that everyone makes their porch a part of their house. There are plants, tables, chairs, and swings. “We could put a little table out here. Or a box or bin to put things in. It could be decorative and?—”

Patty takes two steps to the right, and the floorboard creaks loudly, and then I hear a crack. The end of the slat near the porch railing tips up. My eyes widen, and I reach for her, tugging her back toward the door.

She shrugs out of my grasp and gestures with her hand. “The secure zone is these four planks.” She indicates the four floorboards that lead directly up to the door.

“The rest of the porch is…?” I ask.

“Precarious.”

There is the spot with the missing board, but it’s just one relatively thin board.

I rub the middle of my forehead. “We’ve had people coming and going all morning.”

What if someone had gotten hurt? Jesus, the liability alone makes the back of my neck tighten. But I would feel like shit if any of the people from this morning had gotten hurt. They have enough going on in their lives without adding a sprained ankle or a gash on their leg from rotten wood.

Patty shrugs, clearly unconcerned. “People know. And if they’ve never been here, they probably saw the note on the website.”

“The note? On the website?” I parrot stupidly, rubbing the back of my neck.

“When Wilson posted the note that you were holding meetings today, he added the note about the porch, as always.”

Well, that’s a good thing, I suppose. Wilson should know if that covers us legally.

I look side to side. This porch needs to be fixed. What if Astrid comes home some night and it’s especially dark? Or she’s a little tipsy? If she steps off the “secure zone” and gets hurt…

“Well, if you have things to drop off, you’ll have to come when Astrid is home. Or when I’m around is fine,” I tell Patty,shutting down the images of Astrid falling through the floor of her porch and breaking her leg.