Daniel Mercer stood outside the old shop. The faded sign leaned against the wall, Mercer and Son Repairs. Catherine Hail handed him a small box. Inside was a key and a deed with his name on the owner's line.
Two months earlier, this woman had looked at his dusty work clothes and said, "You're just a repairman. You work for people like me. That's all this is." Now she said, "You took me back to where my life started rotting. I'm doing the same for you."
Daniel opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His 9-year-old son, Noah, touched the word "Son." What had happened in those two months to make her give back what he'd sold for his dying wife?
The burn happened at 6:00 in the morning, and the only part Daniel Mercer found irritating was the hour. He had the coffee pot in one hand and the skillet handle in the other, and when the pot slipped, a thin line of it ran across the back of his wrist. He put the wrist under the tap, held it there while he counted to 30, and then wrapped a kitchen towel around it, and went back to the eggs. Noah came into the kitchen in his socks, saw the towel, and stopped. "You wrapped it again," the boy said.
"Eat your breakfast." "That's not a no." Daniel slid the eggs onto a plate and set it down. "It's not a no." Noah sat.
He was 9 years old and small for it, and he ate the way he did most things, watching something else while he did it. This morning, the something else was his father's wrist. "No school today," Daniel said. "So you're riding with me. Bring a book and something that isn't the tablet."
The thermos on the counter had a Minecraft sticker on it, peeling at one corner applied two years ago and never removed. Daniel filled it with water and screwed the lid on. Then checked his phone. Three messages from a contractor in Hensley who still owed him $400, all three of them, explaining why the check hadn't gone out yet.
He didn't answer them. He'd learned that answering made the excuses longer. The truck was already loaded because it was always loaded. His post driver, his level, his augers, his mixing tub, everything he owned that mattered rode in the bed under a tarp and had for four years. The bigger equipment lived in Ray Alden's garage, two streets over, and Daniel paid for the privilege in favors a rebuilt back step, a water heater, a gutter run.
Last month, he'd turned down a deck job on Bellamy Road because the lumber delivery had nowhere to go. $14,000 gone because he didn't have four walls and a door. He didn't say that part out loud in the house. His keys hung by the door. There were three on the ring.