Chapter 6 - The Weight of Wood
The paint cans sat on the kitchen counter like two silent monuments to a truce that hadn't yet been signed in ink. By Sunday evening, the smell of fresh latex hung heavy through the hallway, mixing with the sharp scent of wood glue and the stale ghost of the energy drinks Derek had finally cleared out of the living room.
I stayed in the guest room on the pull-out cot, my duffel bag zipped halfway on the floor, listening to the muffled scrape of sandpaper against drywall through the thin partition wall. Derek was working. Not complaining, not shouting at a monitor, just working. Every twenty minutes or so, Sarah would shuffle down the hall, pause at the open door of the nursery, and check his progress with a look that wasn't forgiveness yet, but wasn't fear either. It was evaluation. The look of a woman who had spent too many months lowering her standards, now cautiously testing to see if the ground beneath her feet would hold her weight again.
Around midnight, the scraping stopped. A heavy thud echoed against the floorboards, followed by the soft click of a light switch.
I was already awake, sitting on the edge of the cot with my boots unlaced, when a quiet knock tapped against my door frame.
Derek stood there in his paint-stained gray T-shirt, his hair sticking up in damp clumps where he’d obviously run his hands through it. He didn't look like a tough guy, and he didn't look like a cornered kid. He just looked tired. The kind of tired that comes from eight hours of physical labor after three years of sitting in a dark room pretending the world didn't exist.
“You still up?” he asked, his voice rough.
“I sleep four hours a night, son,” I said, standing up without a groan. “Old habit. Come in. Close the door.”
He stepped inside, keeping his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched slightly forward. He looked down at the floor for a long moment before he finally raised his eyes to meet mine.
“The warehouse manager called,” Derek said quietly. “Higgins. He left a voicemail on my cell about fifteen minutes ago. Said if I’m not at Dock Four by five-forty-five on Monday morning with steel-toed boots and a valid driver's license, don't bother showing up because the morning shift doesn't wait for communication majors.”
“Higgins is a punctual man,” I said, crossing my arms. “He used to run supply lines through Fallujah while the bridge was still burning. He doesn't have much patience for people who need a second alarm.”
Derek let out a dry, humorless breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “You really set that up, didn't you? You didn't just find a bank. You called an old buddy from thirty years ago before we even crossed the state line.”
“I called a man who knows how to teach someone the value of an eight-hour day,” I corrected. “Did you think I was going to let you sit around here waiting for another startup to drop out of the sky while your wife carries a child on a second-hand mattress?”
“No,” Derek said, his voice dropping an octave. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper—rough, white printer paper with computer-printed margins. He didn't hand it to me immediately. He turned it over twice, his thumb tracing the crease. “My dad called me about an hour ago. While I was cleaning the baseboards.”
My instincts tightened like a tripwire. “Arthur?”
“Yeah. Arthur.” Derek gave a bitter twist of his mouth. “He heard from someone down at the county recorder's office in Fairfax that a trust managed by a retired military officer just took over the second lien on our property. He wanted to know if I was out of my mind, or if you were trying to take legal custody of the house before the baby even dropped.”
I didn't blink. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth for the first time in four years,” Derek whispered, looking straight at me. “I told him that if you hadn't walked through that door on Tuesday, we wouldn't have a house left to lose, and Sarah would still be cleaning up my messes while I played video games in the dark.”
The silence in the small room grew heavy, filled only by the distant hum of the refrigerator downstairs.
May you like
“He’s coming down here tomorrow morning,” Derek added, his voice tightening. “Arthur. He’s driving down from Fairfax in his Lincoln, and he wants to talk to you face-to-face.”
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