The Crew Returned To Strip Cement From The Courtyard Wall

Inés set the transfer form on my kitchen table.

“He asked me to sign at the bottom,” she said. “He said your initials were enough for your side.”

“Did you sign?”

“I wanted to hear your voice first.”

Beatriz photographed the page, front and back. The customer signature line was blank. The date was the day I had driven to Albuquerque.

“Save the email it came with,” she told Inés. “The whole email, not just the picture.”

Inés took out her phone.

Russell's message said my retirement had been sudden and private. He asked clients to respect my wishes by not calling me.

I read that sentence twice.

He hadn't merely taken my name off a sign. He had built a little fence around me, using people's good manners as the posts.

“I'm sorry I believed him,” Inés said.

“You called before signing. That's what matters.”

We went to her courtyard the next morning. She had locked the side gate and asked Russell in writing to stay off the property until she sorted out the work.

The banner was gone. The damage remained.

A hard cement skin covered the bottom of the north wall. Above it, the old earth had begun to swell. Water from a loose drain elbow had run behind the coat.

I touched the wall with the back of my hand.

“Here,” I said. “Feel it.”

Inés held out her hand.

“Cold.”

“Wet earth stays cool. We fix the water first. Then we open a small test area. We don't tear into the whole wall because we're angry.”

She looked at me.

“Are we talking about the wall?”

“Mostly.”

Beatriz sat at the patio table with a clean work sheet. We wrote a short agreement to resume the original contract, with no second deposit. The $14,000 already paid would remain credited in full. Inés would pay the remaining $14,000 only through the stages listed in our contract.

I would use my reserve to begin the drain repair and the first test area. We would settle the rest of the work schedule after I knew the wall was drying.

“You're taking a risk,” Inés said.

“Yes. A measured one.”

I had enough reserve left after payroll to open the wall safely. I didn't have enough to pretend all six deposits were still there.

Tomas arrived at eight with Nia and our third worker, Eli.

They wore their own shirts.

“We got paid,” Nia said.

“You earned it.”

Tomas held up a ring of keys.

“Russell wants these delivered to his yard.”

“Which keys?”

“Mixer lock. Tool chest. Storage.”

I showed him the equipment list attached to my rental agreement. We checked each number. Nothing on that ring belonged to Russell.

“You don't have to take sides,” I said.

Eli pointed at the wall. “Can I take that side? It needs work.”

We began with a narrow strip near the drain. Tomas used a small hand chisel. Nia held a board to catch the loose pieces. No power hammer. Old adobe could lose a corner faster than a person could say stop.

Under the cement, the earth was dark and soft.

Nia swallowed. “He told us you approved the mix.”

“Put that in your own words on a dated note,” Beatriz said. “Only what you heard. No guesses.”

She asked each worker separately. Then she copied their time sheets, keeping the originals flat in her case.

By lunch, the drain elbow was fixed. I made three small plaster samples with different amounts of sand and chopped straw. Las Cruces earth changed from one yard to the next. A mix that behaved well south of town might crack here.

I clipped date cards above the samples with my blue clothespins.

“Why three?” Nia asked.

“So the wall gets a vote.”

I wrote the water amounts on the cards before cleaning the measuring jug. One extra cup could change the next batch. Nia copied the figures into the site book, then asked me to check them.

“You don't have to memorize everything,” I told her.

“Russell said good workers just know.”

“Good workers write things down so the next person doesn't have to guess.”

She underlined the date.

She smiled for the first time that morning.

We ate in the thin shade beside the gate. Inés brought water and sliced oranges. Nobody spoke about retirement.

At two, Russell called my phone six times. I let each call go to voicemail.

His last message was calm.

“You're creating confusion, Leilani. Return the customer files before I have to protect the company.”

Beatriz saved it with the others.

Before we left, I checked the open test strip. Still cool, but the wet shine had faded.

Then my bank officer called.

She had located the receiving account information in the transfer records.

“The business name is Dent Courtyard Renewal LLC,” she said. “All six transfers went there.”