Chapter Four

Sharon Architectural Salvage was a big white nondescript building, with a large fenced in lot behind. Nicholas drove into the alley around back, got out, unlocked and swung open the gate then pulled into his spot between the tall rack of assorted pillars and posts and the peeling block wall.

From the un-ornamented, plain exterior, you wouldn't expect the riot of color, texture, and outline inside once you turned on the overhead lights and shut off the security system. The high ceilings were almost reached on one side by frames that cradled rows of exterior doors and interior doors, set up by size, alternating with heavy shelving and stacks of windows and shutters.

Almost everything in here was old, but ready to be repurposed. Leaded glass windows ranked along one wall, newel posts in profusion, chunks of staircase with fine detail in the woodwork, and peeping out behind it all the bulky shapes of fireplace surrounds and mantlepieces.

Into the main room, the riot of jumble was purposeful, but confusing to the eye at first (and not as well organized as when Natasha was alive, he thought again, and again, but he tried to maintain the order she'd established). Chandeliers and lighting fixtures of bygone ages in varying states of overpainting and polish; pictures and frames that had seen better days but all of a Victorian genre, no velvet or woodburned accents among them. Statuary of a more delicate nature than the concrete birdbaths and garden nymphs in the backlot, plaster and alabaster, faces pensive and sweet.

A stuffed great blue heron, almost as tall as Nicholas' six feet, stood next to an obviously fake suit of armor, cheap-ish but solid (he'd almost left it in the trash, then realized even if he sold it for $5 it was profit, so in the truck it went). A collection of gates, some wrought iron and others strap steel, stacked out from one wall, and a series of fan lights without glass piled against the other.

On through the door into the front office, passing through opposite the path most customers took from the main door inside, he stepped into the welcome warmth, clicked on the smaller lights in the lower ceilinged space. Glass top cases (for sale, too, but at prices designed to keep them in service here) sheltered old doorknobs, hinges, keys, the finer brass and steel hardware; art that Nicholas suspected needed more climate control hung along the walls. He flipped the hinged part of the counter, stepped behind, and sat down at the roll-top desk that he swore he would actually sell one of these days and powered up his computer. It took an eternity to start, since it was the one thing in here besides copper that there might be some temptation to steal, so why encourage them? It ran old versions of everything, and the browser just barely kept up with the internet, which was good enough for him, although he knew someday soon he'd have to upgrade.

And almost one of the antique house parts and vintage architectural pieces was the answering machine by the phone, the type that still had two mini cassettes, one for the answer to play from and one to record incoming messages. He still knew how to operate it and could work the buttons with two fingers and not thinking. It would have to be replaced when one of these tapes snapped, but for now...

Three messages overnight, one a lead on a house to be dismantled out near Glenford, and two asking what time church was on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the old wooden folding chairs came out of the closet by the fireplace surrounds, the pulpit (for sale!) rolled up next to the life-size statue of St. Anne, and Sharon Architectural Salvage became The Salvage Yard, a non-denominational fellowship that Nicholas was almost ready to quit trying to not call a church. He was the pastor, so to speak, and he still wasn't sure how this happened, but he knew there would be church here this Sunday, and that made him smile.