Chapter 28: Remodeling

2026

Riley’s incarceration proved to be as much of a pain in the ass for us as it was for her. One of us had to be her jailer at all times. I told Kelly that I should have taken the Basic Jail Officer course at Athens back when I was taking the Basic Law Enforcement Officer course. On the days I was home I drove her to school and back home. Sometimes it was Kelly who did the duty. When I was away teaching or consulting, and Kelly had classes, either her mother or mine had to take the detail. Riley was beyond embarrassed that we had to let her grandmothers know what had happened, and I know they both gave her an earful about it.

The first week was the worst. I took her to school and when I went back to pick her up, she was crying. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked when she climbed into my car. I reached out and pulled her to me and let her cry on my shoulder a minute. “Now, what’s wrong?” I figured she was getting grief from her classmates about being grounded or was going crazy from being offline.

“It’s Russ!” She sat upright and said, “He said I ... I...”

“I get the idea,” I told her. I sighed and started up the car. We drove home while Riley sniffled. After a bit I said, “Can’t say as I’m surprised. He seemed the kind of shitbag that would do that.”

“Daddy!” She was both shocked and amused by my profanity.

“I know how you fix this.” Riley looked at me. “The next time he says something, just walk right up to him and kick him in the nuts as hard as you can!”

“Daddy!”

“And then keep kicking him in the nuts as hard as you can until they drag you off his screaming carcass. He’ll never do it again, that I can guarantee.”

She giggled and shook her head. “Are you for real?”

“There’s something to be said for the direct approach in public relations and reputation management. It can be surprisingly efficient. I wouldn’t suggest you let your mother know about my suggestion.”

“Did she ever do that?”

I looked over at my daughter and gave her a hard look. “Your mother never had to worry about a boy talking about what she did or didn’t do on dates. Your mother never went out with a boy with a mouth bigger than his brain.”

“Sorry.”

“And I never went out with girls and then talked about them afterwards. Real men don’t do that, no matter what kind of girl he dates. Maybe you need to think about what kind of girl you are and what kind of boy you want to date.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

I didn’t chew on her, though I surely wanted to.

She certainly talked to Kelly Wednesday! I got a call at lunchtime from Matucket County High to come over and bail her out. She was in the guidance counselor’s office. When I got there, I found I wasn’t the only parent present; Don Coogan was sitting there as well. I raised an eyebrow but kept my mouth shut.

The guidance counselor, Mrs. Borne, didn’t say much, but she simply ordered us all to follow her down to the principal’s office. We stopped along the way to pick up Russ from the nurse’s office; he was sitting on a bench with an icepack in his lap. He groaned as he got to his feet and Don ordered him to come along and quit whining. Next stop was Principal Gerard’s office. He didn’t look happy. “So, who wants to tell me who started this?”

Both Russ and Riley looked at each other but didn’t say anything. Gerard shrugged and said, “Nothing? Fine by me. Miss Reaper, since you attacked Mr. Coogan and don’t have a reason, you have violated the school’s violence policy. I have no choice but to expel you from school.”

That moved the needle! “What! He calls me a whore and a slut and tells lies about me and I’m the one who gets thrown out of school? That’s not fair!”

“Ah! Mister Coogan, anything to say about that?”

“She’s a crazy bitch! Keep her away from me!”

“Uh huh. Mister Coogan, are you aware that calling a female a bitch is a violation of the school sexual abuse policy and will result in your own expulsion?”

I had the feeling that Gerard knew exactly what had happened. I just kept my mouth shut. I noticed Don looking like he wanted to say something, and I just shook my head. He clamped his mouth shut.

Gerard let the kids wrangle another minute or two and then had enough. “Stop! Enough!” They glared at each other but closed their mouths. “We will hold on the expulsions, but there will be consequences. You are both getting three-day detentions, and if you don’t like that, it will be five days.” They stayed silent. “Now, Miss Reaper, I suggest you learn two things. One, a better way to handle jerks, because Mister Coogan won’t be the last one you’ll ever meet, and two, I strongly suggest you stop hanging around jerks. As for you, Mister Coogan, consider yourself lucky that Miss Reaper was wearing running shoes. You act like a jerk around a grown woman in spike heels and don’t be surprised if you need medical attention. Maybe you should stop being a jerk!”

He sent us all home; detentions would begin on Thursday. As we left, I glanced over at Russ’ father, who was just shaking his head in disgust. I figured there was going to be some additional punishment back at the Coogan estate.

Kelly managed to avoid laughing through dinner when Riley explained why she had detention. Afterward our daughter was sent packing, to work on her homework, while Kelly followed me into my study and sat down on my lap. “She really kicked him in the balls?”

I nodded. “When we found him, he was sitting in the nurse’s office with an icepack in his lap.”

“I think I need to talk to her about other methods of vengeance, like letting all the other girls in school know he’s an asshole.”

“Think that will work?”

“If not, there’s the nuclear option.” I gave her a quizzical look. “Let the other girls know he has a two-inch dick and suffers from premature ejaculation.”

“Ouch!”

“So now you know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t treat me right later tonight!”

I laughed. “Just how right do I have to treat you? Remember, I’m in my forties now!”

“Remember when you told me that you had our bedroom walls soundproofed when we had to rebuild after the attack? I want to test the soundproofing tonight!”

Kelly climbed off my lap, and I smacked her ass. “You’ll need to motivate me.”

“We’ll see.”

Kelly was exceptionally motivating that evening. She bathed, shaved, and put on an almost nonexistent nightie. It took me several hours before she promised not to tell the other kids in school about my two-inch dick and premature ejaculation. I wondered if that was what Mom had done to motivate Dad prior to his heart attack. My heart was certainly pumping when we finished!

Saturday afternoon the three of us had a conversation out on the deck. Riley was unhappy about being off Facebook and not knowing what was happening with her friends. “So what?” I asked. “You can’t go out anyway.”

“Dad! That’s not the point!”

“No, that’s precisely the point. You’re grounded. It’s a punishment. You screwed up. Get over it,” said Kelly.

“How am I supposed to date?”

Kelly snorted out a laugh.

“Dating? Forget it! You are fourteen! There is no dating even after you get out of jail!” I said.

“What! That’s so unfair! Mom dated at fourteen!”

Kelly’s eyes popped open at that. “Excuse me? I never dated at fourteen. Wherever did you come up with that idea?”

“You were dating Dad at fourteen. You said so!” Riley protested.

“I used to hang out with your father in school when I was fourteen. We never dated until I was fifteen. Your grandparents would have never let me date at fourteen, and the only reason they let me date your father at fifteen was that they had known him since he was nine and he had saved me from being gangraped when I was your age. So maybe you need to stop talking about things you know nothing about!”

Riley stared. “You were raped?”

I answered, “Almost. It was a group of boys led by a guy who was as big a jerk as Russ Coogan. Maybe you should be a little pickier about the boys you hang out with.”

“Whatever happened with Randy Holden?” asked Kelly.

“He died a few years ago. I thought you knew that,” I said.

“You killed him!” exclaimed Riley.

“No! Don’t be silly. I arrested him. I never killed him.”

“What’d you arrest him for?” asked my daughter.

I shrugged. “Drugs, murder, guns, you know, the usual. He was an all-purpose criminal.”

“Who killed him?” asked Kelly. “I thought he was in prison for a dozen lifetimes.”

“Nah. He was a professional scumbag. The Feds took him away from Matucket County and offered him a deal, witness protection for testifying against everybody and anybody. He spent a few years in jail during the trials, but they ended up relocating him somewhere out west. Still, once a jackass, always a jackass. He got into trouble out there and got his throat slit for his troubles. I heard from some people I know in the Bureau,” I explained.

“And you dated this guy?” asked Riley.

“Oh, my God, no! He was your father’s enemy from elementary school on. Attacking me was a way to get at your father.”

Riley was let out of jail after serving the full sentence. There were no paroles, no furloughs, no work-release programs, and no time off for good behavior. We also made sure to reinforce the idea that she needed to become a lot pickier with the people she hung out with. She did tell us that she was staying away from Russ Coogan, who was avoiding her like the plague. We pushed the notion that when she was allowed to date, she was expected to invite the young men home to meet the parents, and not just a ‘Hi guys, bye guys!’ sort of meeting. She wasn’t happy about any of this but gave a slump-shouldered acceptance.

Riley survived the fall and winter of 2025. It turned out that she was not the only one of her freshman friends who transgressed against the customs and mores of Matucket County. She wasn’t the only girl to earn a detention, nor the only one to learn that junior and senior boys weren’t to be trusted around freshmen girls. One of her friends even ended up pregnant, which proved to be a real eye-opener to Riley and crew. Dating became an activity that carried a whole new level of complexity to our daughter, and she stopped clamoring to be allowed to date, at least for a little while.

Fortunately, her brother was still prepubescent, so the only hormones coursing through his veins were the hormones of random stupidity. He wasn’t five, so girls weren’t yucky. Instead, at eleven, girls were irrelevant and beneath his mighty gaze. Occasionally, he’d spout something that would get his sister stewing and his mother and me shaking our heads in disbelief.

After the New Year, Kelly insisted on beginning a project that I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to get involved in. She wanted to remodel the house, specifically the kitchen and dining room. Her idea was to blow out a wall, gut the area completely, and then put in a whole new kitchen and dining room, both larger. I wasn’t thrilled. It reminded me of a Far Side cartoon in which Satan was welcoming people to Hell and offering a choice of accommodations. The “Lake of Burning Fire” had an SRO crowd trying to get in, but the sign over the other door, the one with no takers at all, read, “Live in your house while the kitchen is being remodeled.”

We had built our home in the spring of 2009 on the empty lakefront property her parents had given us as a wedding present. We put up a modular home, hiring a contractor to build the crawlspace and do the sitework, and bought a home from a modular builder who was going out of business in the Great Recession. Since then, we had remodeled twice. The first time was in 2016, when we opened the north side of the living room, doubling its size and converting it into an open den/study/library where I studied for my classes and eventually housed RSC. The second time was a few years later, in 2018, after the Somali terrorists shot the hell out of the bedroom end of the house, necessitating rebuilding and new siding and shingling.

It wasn’t like we couldn’t afford the remodeling. The first job we financed with some of my Medal pension checks and our credit cards; the second Jack paid for when he discovered that terrorism wasn’t covered by homeowner’s insurance. Now we had some cash, a fair bit, in fact. Kelly’s Matucket State income and her other work, and my consulting and teaching job more than covered our expenses. What really put cash in the bank were the royalties from my books. Royalties from my three history books, and my cut of the book with Tolley, had so far exceeded well over half a million dollars. If the Ken Burns project worked out, additional sales would put us well above that. Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy sold over 400,000 copies. If he picked up $3 or $4 a copy in royalties, that was more than a million bucks! Even if I simply doubled my existing sales Kelly and I would become instant millionaires. If I got a piece of the pie for the accompanying book for the project, that was just so much more gravy.

I wasn’t all that interested in a major remodeling project. For one thing, they were incredibly disruptive, and the dust got everywhere. For another, I just wasn’t sure we needed a bigger kitchen and dining room. “Kelly, there’s only the four of us. We don’t need anything bigger.”

“Grim, it’s more than that.”

“There’s just the four of us. In a few years, Riley’s going to be in college, and a few years later Seamus will be gone. What do we need a bigger kitchen and dining room for?”

Kelly smiled and wrapped her arms around me. “And a few years after that, they’ll be coming home with their families. Ten years from now they’ll be graduating college and ten years after that they’ll be coming back here with our grandchildren. Don’t you want a nice big kitchen for our grandsons and granddaughters to run around in. Lots of granddaughters, too, lots and lots! This family needs a lot more estrogen in it!”

“I knew you screwed up with Riley! You just had to break the family tradition!”

“And long past due, too!” she laughed.

Ye Gods! Grandchildren!

I asked my father who the best contractor was for what we wanted to do. The guy who had done the expansion on our living room wasn’t around any longer. He was originally from Texas and when he and his wife split in a nasty divorce, he loaded his pickup truck with his gear and headed back to Houston. That was why I used a different contractor for the repairs to the house a few years later. He mostly did exterior work and subbed out the interior stuff.

Dad was the County Engineer and ran the Codes and Permits Office. He’d been working for the county for as long as I could remember and knew every builder and contractor in the county, both the good ones and the bad ones. He gave me a couple of names and said they could do whatever Kelly had in mind.

“What about what I have in mind?”

“Grim, I know you’ve been getting hit in the head since the time you played football in high school, but even you should know it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s what your wife thinks that counts,” he laughed.

“You’re a lot of fucking help, Dad.”

He just laughed and sent me packing.

We met with a couple of contractors by the end of January. The earlier we could start, the better; by May every contractor in the state would be booked solid. The one we selected was Willie Sutton of Culpepper Valley Contracting. Willie agreed that his name was just as bad as my name in terms of the odd looks it earned him.

Willie looked around the house and the outside. “Just how big did you want to go?” he asked. He took a measuring tape off his belt and measured the kitchen. “Your kitchen is fourteen foot deep here. We push out this wall, we can pick up another ten, maybe fifteen, feet before we need to do anything special with the foundation. Depending on how far we push this way...”, he indicated the dining room. “ ... Or maybe we push the other direction and redo the laundry and utility room ... Hmmm...”

“What?” asked Kelly.

“We push out on both the kitchen and the laundry room, relocate all your mechanicals, that frees up the entire area of your existing laundry room into the kitchen, which lets us expand the dining room over in this section.” He was pointing out various parts of the rooms as he moved around.