Once I’ve got him in bed, I make him take his meds, and he leans his head back on the pillows I’ve propped up—upright sleep for the first days after the surgery, the doctor said, and believe me, I took notes. He looks exhausted by all that bedtime effort. “You’re not going to have trouble at work, being here?”
“Dad, we’ve talked about this. It’s fine.” I sit in the chair I pulled up by his bed before I brought him home. I’m not leaving until he’s asleep. I even bought a baby monitor on Thursday night, but I’ve stowed it under the bed so he won’t know.
“Don’t use the f-word with me,” he says. “I know you’re real important over there at your job.”
I think about how important I stand to be if Jas and I can get out of this non-compete, if we can break out on our own. “You had some work yesterday?” he asks.
“Yeah, I went to see a possible recruit. She was—not real interested.”
“I thought you go around throwing all kinds of money at people,” he says, but he’s smiling, teasing me a little. “She doesn’t like money?”
“I don’t think she likes me.”
“Can’t say as I blame her,” he says. “With that ugly mug you got.”
“Jealous, old man?” I tease, and he huffs a laugh. I find myself telling him about my meeting with her, but I’m not even focusing on any of the right things. I skip right over the part where I insulted her by assuming she was someone else. Instead, I’m describing her—I’m talking about the goggles she wore over her black-rimmed glasses, the way I could still see the dark, rich color of her eyes right through them. I’m talking about how she was barely as tall as the steel frame she was cleaning, how she wore a too-big lab coat that had the sleeves rolled up into thick cuffs. I’m not saying anything that has to do with a plan.
“Mad scientist,” my dad murmurs, and it’s good—he’s getting sleepy.
“Yeah,” I say, but her lab—it was clean, almost freakishly so, when most labs I visit seem in a constant state of disarray. “She’s working with lots of old equipment, which she wouldn’t have to worry about if she came to work for us. She broke one of her old cabinets while I was there. The thing looks like it was manufactured during the Manhattan Project.”
Dad perks up, rolls his eyes toward me. “What’d she break?” Typical, that this is the detail my dad would seize on.
“Storage cabinet, a steel one. Broke the handle off. She seemed used to it—had a piece of rope as a handle for two of the other doors.”
“I got handles for one of those at the yard, probably. Those cabinets are a dime a dozen.”
I think about this, wondering what Averin would think if I showed up with replacement cabinet door handles as an apology. Rather than, say, me wearing a dunce cap and having read all her published work, which is what she deserves as an apology. Probably on principle I should also email my women’s studies professor from junior year and apologize for exhibiting gender bias.
“Hmm,” I say, but I notice Dad’s breathing is deeper, and his eyes are closed. I lean back in my chair, wince at the loud creaks it makes in the room.
My dad looks so small in his bed, which doesn’t make sense, because at six-three, he’s still exactly my height, and he’s in good shape from working the way he does. I wonder if it’s something about being back in this house, about how when I left eleven years ago, I was still so used to being a kid, used to seeing everything, including him, as bigger than me. It’s not that I never make it back here—I do, at least twice a year, and Dad comes out to see me maybe once every two years. But knowing I’m going to be sticking around for a while has changed my perspective, I guess.
“Stop staring at me,” he says, his eyes still closed.
“Thought you were sleeping.”
“I don’t want an audience. Go to bed; you’re annoying me.”
I chuckle—this is my dad’s familiar, cheerful gruffness. I stand, looking over things one last time, making sure there’s water by the bed, that there’s a pillow under his elbow, that his sling is in the right position.
I swallow a sudden surge of emotion. It’s hard not to see this fall as some kind of turning point, some kind of moment of reckoning that means Dad and I have to start talking seriously about what happens in his future. He’s only sixty, sure, and even though he’s got no plans to retire, his recovery from this is going to slow him down.
Thinking about that now, after the day I’ve had—after the week I’ve had, really—feels too exhausting, and anyways, I’m no help to Dad if I’m too tired to see things clearly. I flip off the light and head down to my room, resolved to apply the rest of my mental energy for the night to thinking through what I’ve got going on with Beaumont, with Jasper, with E.R. Averin. Doing a job here will be a good distraction, will help keep me balanced while I take care of Dad.
But I still switch on the monitor and set it on my nightstand, listening to Dad breathe until I fall into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 3
Kit
Monday night, tired from the weekend of unpacking and a long day of work, I’m alone in the house, eating takeout at my dining room table that’s still got a few unpacked boxes stacked on top. It sounds depressing, but for a girl who’s never had a place to call home, right now it feels perfect. I’m happily paging through my favorite issue of the city’s weekly alternative newspaper, which I’ve picked up religiously every Monday since I first moved here. This is the best issue, a once-a-year summary that details what locals have voted as their trusted favorites—everything from eyebrow threaders to heart surgeons. I have this dream—it’s ridiculous, really—that someday I’ll know enough about this place to call myself a longtime local. To be able to recommend my favorite burger joint or mechanic or dermatologist.
Right now, sitting in my historic house in the neighborhood I’d long ago picked out as my favorite, I feel one step closer. I’m a local somewhere! It feels so good that I laugh a little, the sound echoing in the still bare-walled house.
It’s the echo that motivates me to get to work on a little more unpacking. Zoe and Greer had been champions all weekend, helping me settle the most important rooms—the kitchen, my bedroom, the bathroom upstairs. But I’d put off the dining room, eager to work on this by myself. In here is one of my favorite features of the house, built-in china cabinets with arched glass doors on top, cabineted shelving below. Unlike the rest of the house, these look like they’ve been recently tended to—a fresh coat of white paint on each, the shelving sturdy and clean.
But as I unwrap a few of the cups and saucers and serving pieces I have, it becomes painfully clear that these are neither nice enough, nor copious enough, to fill out those shelves. It’s not as if I have family heirlooms for this house. Even if such things existed in my family, my dad would’ve hocked them long ago for money. It all looks a little sad in there, actually, and I’m hit with a stab of nagging doubt. You should’ve bought a condo. You don’t have anything to fill this place up with. You’re not any good at making a house a home.
It feels a little cold, a little lonely in here now. I wish I could call my brother. I think he might be the only one who could possibly understand how I’m feeling, the growing pains of settling somewhere permanent, but his last email said he’d be unreachable by phone for the next couple of weeks, a refrain he’s been using more often than usual in the last few months, ever since I first tried to talk to him about what I want to do with the rest of my winnings. It’s hard to think about Alex, about Alex avoiding me because of the lottery, a pebble in my shoe I can’t seem to get rid of.
The china cabinets I’d so admired look too stark now, too white. Plus, they’ve got these modern, stainless steel knobs for handles, an obvious replacement that doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the house, deadening all the historicity of those built-ins.
And it’s this—musing on my boring cabinet knobs—that makes me think of
him. Of the package I received at work today.
Marti, our department secretary, had delivered it when I was taking a late lunch—basically, this means I was stuffing trail mix in my mouth while doing data entry at my desk. Marti is what Zoe calls my BFAW, my best friend at work, which is absolutely true, and probably was even when I was a grad student here. There was definitely a dearth of women in my department, but it wasn’t just shared chromosomes that drew me to Marti—she was hilarious and gave exactly zero shits about what people thought of her, and had no problem checking the egos of some of the more notorious faculty.
She’d come in, holding out a cushioned manila envelope to me, her eyebrows raised suspiciously. “Mail call. Some tall drink of water brought this to me, asked me to get it to you.” She makes the same sound she makes when she eats one of the Reese’s cups from the bowl I keep on my desk, a sort of mm, mmm, MMM! exclamation. “I got a hot flash looking at him, and he’s not even my type.”
Ben Tucker, I’d thought immediately, and I’d tried to look casual as I swiped the package from her. My name—at least the name I publish under, E.R. Averin—was printed across the front, but there’d been nothing else to indicate the sender. “Okay,” I’d said, setting it down on my desk, which was a mistake, because however well I’ve kept the secret about my lottery win from everyone I work with, I’m a soft touch when it comes to gossip of the relationship variety, and me not being curious about some hot guy hand-delivering me a package was very unusual behavior.
She’d crossed her arms and opened her mouth to speak, but I’d been saved by the bell, or, at least, by Dr. Harroway sticking his head in my office to tell Marti he’d broken the copier, again. The man does not understand why you can’t put staples through the feeder tray, I swear to God. She’d narrowed her eyes at me, snagged a Reese’s cup, and mouthed Later at me with what was, frankly, a disconcerting level of seriousness.
I’d waited until I was sure she was down the hall, then closed my door to open the package. Inside had been three brushed-brass file cabinet handles, exactly matching the two remaining I had on the lab cabinet, a business card, and a note:
These should fit your cabinet—Shaw Walker, 1959. The university used to order all their furniture from them.
I was the worst kind of incompetent on Friday, and I am sorry. Currently making my way through your very impressive backlist, Ms. Averin. You will not hear from me or anyone at Beaumont until I have a better, shall we say, “handle” on things.
With apologies,
Ben Tucker
Damn, I’d thought. Very good apology.
I’d put the handles on the cabinet before I’d left work, a little huffy, actually, that they’d fit so perfectly. But I’d tucked Ben’s note and business card into my jeans pocket.
I take it out again now, wondering how he found file cabinet handles from 1959. Okay, I might also be thinking a little about the way he’d looked standing in the doorway on Friday, his tall-drink-of-waterness, memorable enough that I’d thought of him quite a few times over the weekend.
His handwriting is bold, straight up-and-down, all capital letters, similar to a drafting hand. I trace the tip of my finger over where he’s written my name—Ms. Averin. If Ben Tucker could find old file cabinet handles, maybe he can tell me where to find old china cabinet knobs. And also I should thank him. That seems like the right thing.
I tap the edge of his business card against the note. I’m definitely making an excuse to call him—but suddenly it’s so quiet in here. I swipe my phone off the table before I can think better of it. As soon as it starts ringing, I want to hang up, but then remember that a great crucible of modern technology is widely available caller ID. Have to go for broke, then.
“Ben Tucker,” he says when he answers, his voice a deep rumble. It seems to scrape me in the same place it had last week, right at the base of my spine.
“Hi,” I say, and immediately slam my eyes shut. Hi sounds silly, too informal. I clear my throat and try again. “Hello. This is Ekaterina Averin.”
There’s a pause on the other end, a little longer than is comfortable for a phone conversation. I think about clarifying, maybe explaining that we’d met on Friday, though if I have to do that, this guy’s more incompetent than he’d let on—and frankly, he’d let on a lot. But then he says, “Ekaterina,” a little slowly—but he’s pronounced it exactly as I do, and I’m grateful for that. Mostly people ignore the first part, the quick, breathy Eh, and go straight to Katerina. “Beautiful name,” he says.
“People mostly call me Kit,” I say. “Fewer syllables.”
“Okay. Kit, then. But I don’t mind the syllables.”
“I wanted to call and say thanks for the handles you sent. They were perfect.”
“Great,” he says, but he sounds—I don’t know. A little distracted, maybe? That’s annoying—you’d think after everything he’d want to make a better impression. “I’m so sorry,” he says, and I think he’s about to redo the whole apology again. “Can you just—can you hang on one second? Please.” It’s the please that gets me. It sounds how the word is meant to sound—a real plea for something.
“Sure,” I say, and expect him to click over to another call. But I hear the phone being set down, the rustling of clothes, another man’s deep voice. And I can hear Ben when he says, “Come on, Dad. You need to take one of these tonight.” The other man—Ben’s dad—grumbles back, and right when I think maybe I should set my own phone down, maybe I’m hearing something I shouldn’t, there’s another rustle and the phone is muted. I’m both relieved and disappointed.
It’s another minute before he comes back on. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
“That’s all right—I could call at another time. I didn’t realize you’d be busy. Well, that’s silly, I should’ve realized that, it’s eight o’clock. It’s not like you don’t have a life.” I clamp my mouth shut. Too much. I’m a terrible phone talker.
He chuckles. “I don’t have much of one right now. My dad had an accident recently, and he’s a bit of a challenge to—you know. Manage.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling like the worst for calling. About freaking file cabinet handles. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I can let you go.”
“No, no—it’s all right. He’s okay. He had a fall last week, needed a couple of surgeries. But he’s okay,” he repeats this part a little forcefully, convincing himself, maybe. “I’m in town to help out for a while.”
It’s my turn to pause, to draw it out. “And to recruit me?”
“Recruiting you is something that came up more recently. Listen, Kit, on Friday—”
“I got your package. And your note. I appreciate the apology.”
“Right, okay. Good.”
“I’m actually calling about the handles you sent. About how you found them.”
He laughs, but I’m not in on the joke, so I stay quiet. “Well. One of the things I’m helping out with while I’m here is my dad’s business. He owns a salvage yard on the south side. Tucker’s Salvage.”
I’ve heard of it—in fact, I’m pretty sure Tucker’s Salvage is in that local favorites paper I just looked through, but I’ve never been. “And you guys have old cabinet handles?”
“We have everything. We do architectural salvage, so we’ve got everything from old building materials to antique furniture and light fixtures. Some stuff we restore, some stuff we sell off as is, some stuff we have parts for. Like your cabinet there.”
Well, damn if an architectural salvage yard doesn’t sound like just the place for someone who’s recently bought an old wreck of a house. “Aha. And—can anyone come by? To have a look at what you have there?”
“You have a need for salvaged parts?”
“I do,” I say, and my voice sounds a little petulant, a little defensive. What business is it of his, what I need? Maybe I’ll try to go at a time when he�
�s not around. He can’t possibly be there all the time.
“I’m there open to close pretty much all this week, and would be happy to show you around.”
Shit. “Oh. That’s very nice of you, but I don’t think it’d be right—”
“No expectations. I won’t say a word about Beaumont to you, not unless you ask me.”
I lean down and touch the plain, boring handle that’s currently keeping place on my beautiful, original, built-in china cabinet. I know there’s probably antique handles and doorknobs online, but I’m a materials scientist. It matters to me to hold things, to touch them, to feel their weight. I’d rather see this stuff in person before I buy it. “I guess I could come by,” I say, but then quickly add, “I’m really busy though. I could come on my lunch hour, maybe on Thursday.”
“I’ll make time,” he says firmly.
Once we’ve settled the details—when I’ll be there, where to find him once I come in—there’s really nothing more to say, but I feel a strange reluctance to hang up. It was nice, for a few minutes, to have his voice in my ear. It seemed to dull the echo I was feeling in the house before I called.
But that’s ridiculous, completely ridiculous and needy, and also inappropriate given that what I’m most interested in from Ben Tucker is for him to leave me alone about his stupid job offer. And that I get to look at his doorknobs, or whatever. So I say, maybe a little more abruptly than is natural, “Thank you very much. See you Thursday,” and disconnect.
I open the music app on my phone and turn the volume up loud. Then I get back to the job of making this place a home.
* * * *
When I drive up to Tucker’s Salvage on Thursday, I’m resolved to make it a short visit, frustrated that I’ve spent too much time since Monday feeling flushed and fluttery whenever I’d thought of Ben, at one point seriously considering asking Marti whether I might be having hot flashes. Plus, I feel a little disloyal—is going to see Ben a suggestion that I’m open to his recruiting? The thought has plagued me, and I’ve not even told Zoe and Greer about this visit, so determined am I to make this outing a mere formality. I’ve come a little early, having wrapped up my morning work, and I figure that I’m fulfilling another task. I said I’d be here, and I am, and I’ll make it quick.
Beginner's Luck Page 4
