“It’s a beautiful place. My favorite part of my day is the commute. And I’ve never said that about any commute before,” Raven replied, laughing.
“And Silas? How’s he taking you being the new boss?” the man asked, his voice dropping to a stage whisper.
His question was outside of what Raven typically considered small talk, but she supposed a small town would have different criteria.
“Silas has been very accommodating and professional,” Raven replied, hoping nothing about her delivery undermined the statement. Because the truth was since her little argument with Silas in the supply closest days ago, they’d been giving each other a wide berth. Curt hellos and goodbyes were all they offered one another. If that.
Raven’s impulse was always to smooth things over—disharmony made her stomach churn—but she was gritting her teeth and reminding herself why she confronted Silas in the storage closet in the first place.
“Would you say he’s been more withdrawn or more visibly frustrated?” Ed asked next, and it was such an odd question that it gave Raven pause.
Ed watched her carefully—like he didn’t want to miss her response. He also sat in his chair as if it were out on a deck on a summer’s eve. And it became clear to Raven that the plumber was fishing for gossip.
A protectiveness rose in her, not for Silas, but for the business in general. She would not expose them to wagging tongues. Ed had to go.
“We’re doing great,” she said to the man, gesturing for his now-drained glass. “Transitions are sometimes tricky, but it’s going better than I could’ve hoped.”
Within a minute, Raven had Ed out the door, and she felt triumphant, like she’d successfully eliminated a spy trying to bring down a kingdom instead of a nosy man.
It was nearly lunchtime, so Raven returned to the kitchen to beat the queue for the microwave and warm her food. She was standing in front of the appliance, listening to it whir, when Silas entered the break room. They barely made eye contact and didn’t exchange a word.
He walked to the other side of the counter, opened a cupboard, and shut it to search another. And another. Until Raven was sure he’d touched every last one twice over.
Tired of the muttering and the banging, she asked him, “Are you looking for something?”
“You moved the coffee filters,” he said, damn near glaring at her.
“I reorganized earlier,” she blandly responded as she approached the cupboard he stood in front of and tapped the box on the shelf just below his eye line. “I thought it made more sense if they were with the rest of the coffee and tea stuff instead of on top of the refrigerator.”
He didn’t honor her with any expression of gratitude.
When the rest of the staff showed up, it was to the hum of the percolating coffee maker and a microwave ding. She smiled at them but received muted responses.
“The sink’s fixed,” Raven said, and they responded slightly more enthusiastically and even tested the faucet.
But as everyone gathered around the table to eat their respective lunches and slog through strained prattle, Raven realized despite paying herself a salary, her name being on the proverbial masthead, and her viewing Mountaintop as hers to protect, she was still not part of the team.
* * *
“Don’t bother with a tray, Kendra,” Silas said to the old bartender with a painful-looking sunburn.
She placed four pilsner glasses before him and said, “You better not spill anything on my floor, Reynolds.”
It was a funny assertion considering the vinyl floor had never exactly been clean, but Silas replied, “I wouldn’t dare.”
Before he could leave, Kendra stopped him with “Oh, what’s going on with Mountaintop? I heard the new owner isn’t selling.”
Silas hoped the news hadn’t spread, that he’d own the business before anybody discovered the complications he was facing. But that was wishful thinking in Cedar Lake.
“It’s temporary,” he said. “A little hiccup. You know, lawyers and paper shuffling.”
Clyde, a career sawmill worker and the only person in town Silas felt petite next to, turned from the drink he’d been nursing at the bar and asked, “Chuck didn’t leave Mountaintop to you?”
“Not technically. He forgot to change an old will,” Silas said.
“Ah, tough break. But chin up, son,” Clyde said. “Bad luck doesn’t last forever.” The big man choked on the last few words, burying his face in his massive hands.
Silas turned to Kendra and lifted a questioning brow, which she responded to by mouthing, “Yara.”
