I did not sleep that night. I sat at my kitchen table with the contract and the canceled check until the sky went gray, and by morning I knew exactly what to do.
I did not call a lawyer to fight his lawyer, the way he dared me to. I did something that cost me nothing and scared him a great deal more.
I called the state board that licenses contractors.
It turned out my roofer was licensed, and a licensed contractor answers to that board whether he likes it or not. I sent them the contract, the canceled check, and photographs of the rain coming through my ceilings. And I learned two things that changed everything.
The first was that his license required him to carry a bond, a pool of money set aside for exactly this, for the customers a contractor cheats. The second was that mine was not the first complaint in his file.
He had told me a widow on a fixed income could never touch him, and he was so sure of it that he never imagined I would simply pick up the telephone and call the people who could take his license away.
The board did not need a courtroom. They opened a case, and they put his license on the line, and a man who will not answer a widow answers quick when his livelihood is at stake.
He paid. Every dollar, out of that bond and out of his own pocket, rather than lose the license that lets him work at all.
I hired an honest crew, a real one, bonded and checked, and they put a proper roof over my head, the house where I raised four children, the house my husband and I paid off with forty years of work.
It does not leak now. Not a drop. I lie in bed on a rainy night and hear it drum on good shingles and roll off the way it should, and I think of that man who was so certain I was too small to fight.
I told the ladies in my church circle the whole story, the ones who recommended him in the first place, so they would never send another trusting soul his way. They were horrified. They spread the word faster than any newspaper could, the way church ladies do, and I doubt that man gets many recommendations off a pew anymore. That is its own kind of justice, the quiet kind.
He knows better now. So does the board. And so does the next widow he might have cheated, because his license carries a mark on it that anyone can look up before they hand him a dime.
I did not shout at him. I never do. I just called the right people, in a steady voice, and let the truth do the rest.
Turns out he picked the wrong widow after all.