“Hank, has the company ever been able to play you?”
“I like to think not.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“I don’t know. Just a feelin’. Things don’t feel right. What about that list of numbers? Anything?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it. Have you met with one of the owners yet?”
The details were never explained, nothing about who, where, or when, but he knew how Hank really got things done at negotiation time. And it wasn’t during the public show of the negotiations.
“Not yet. But the call should come any time.”
“Find out then.”
Hank snickered. “I already intended to do just that.”
10:30A.M.
BRENT CLIMBED THE WOODEN STAIRS TO THE GARAGE’S SECONDstory, cooling off after removing the creeping Bermuda grass invading his mother’s flower beds. The top floor was bare studs with a rough plywood floor. Two dormer windows provided light. There was no ceiling, never had been, only the open rafters supporting a pitched roof.
Years ago, two walls had been lined with benches supporting his father’s woodworking tools, the saws and drills heard at all hours of the day and night. It was where his father built birdhouses. Intricate, beautiful works his dad had enjoyed giving away. The backyard was littered with them, and during the past week he’d noticed several still adorning the neighborhood.
All the pegboards remained, but the Swiss cheese panels where cold chisels, hammers, and rasps once hung were now bare. The table saws, sanders, and drills were also gone, everything sold when his mother held a huge garage sale. He understood why she’d been so willing to part with his father’s treasured things, that need for distance and a sense of moving on. He’d been searching for the same thing for a long time.
The splintered surfaces of the workbenches now supported cardboard boxes, each meticulously packed by the moving company and delivered from Atlanta a few days ago. He hadn’t kept a lot, most of what he’d owned had been sold during his own garage sale a few weeks ago, but enough remained to fill the musty loft.
He threaded his way through and looked up at the old shelves for the wooden container. It was not one brought from Atlanta.This one had stayed in the garage since college. He recalled seeing it while moving in the furniture, an aged Florida grapefruit crate lifted from the throwaway pile at the Piggly Wiggly what seemed a zillion years ago.
He carefully slid it down and carried it over to one of the workbenches.
Inside were mementos from high school and college, tossed there one afternoon after cleaning out his room, the décor adjusted for a man no longer eighteen. But there were also things from law school and his time while practicing law in Concord.
Right on top was the press clipping from Paula’s death.
She would have loved the funeral. So many attended that the crowd spilled outside the church and onto the lawn. Luckily, the day had been gorgeous, capped by an azure sky. The casket, a white bronze, had been draped in yellow roses, her favorite, but closed—the one thing she would have regretted—the windshield and steering column doing too much damage for the mortician to repair.
He could still see her as she was that last day of her life. Shoulder-length auburn hair. Inviting lips. Surprisingly warm blue eyes. But that pleasant façade hid an inner turmoil. One he never really understood. She was certainly dedicated. There’d been home-cooked meals every day. Not a speck of dust on the furniture. Not a weed in the flower beds. Everything in its place, orderly, like her life.
He’d tried hard to ignore his unhappiness by pouring himself into work. The demands of a private practice and his political maneuvering with Hank distracted him, for a time. But their problems only multiplied. Eventually, life became a simple toleration from one day to the next. Finally, it turned tragic one September day. Now he’d returned to somehow make amends. But to who? Himself? Paula? No way existed to satisfy both.
Fate?
It truly was fickle.
He lifted out his high school letter sweater, neatly folded insidea blue-tinted plastic bag, three pewter baseballs still tacked to the stitched goldW. He’d earned it during his sophomore year. Three graduation announcements lay underneath along with tassels from high school, college, and law school. The scarlet sash was still there, worn over his gown when he’d graduated as the history department’s honor graduate in college.
His Little League trophies had tarnished with time. And on the bottom was the scrapbook of his baseball days, clippings yellowed and loose, the tape long since dried hard.
He thumbed through his annuals, noticing how much he changed during eight years of high school and college. His hair progressively shortened, then thinned. Black-framed glasses were replaced by gold wire-rims. Now he wore contacts. A happy, carefree appearance, seen through eyes that once carried a whimsical expression, became hardened by years of trying to make the grade.
His senior high school annual was full of messages. A close friend warning,Don’t get a big head. And can I hitch a ride to Statesboro every day for college?Other friends recalling snippets that made him smile even now.
He lifted out a greeting card and opened it.
From Paula.
You know what you mean to me. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we endure. Even you can’t argue with that. I think we’re stronger now than ever. I want you to know I’m here for you. I’ll always be yours.
