24. Eagle
CHAPTER 24
EAGLE
Two months later
It’s pretty unbelievable what money and a decent attorney can accomplish. Over the last two months, Fingers has buried Linda in paperwork. First, the petition for dissolution of our marriage.
Yeah, finally, after far too long, it wasn’t her who filed for divorce—it was me.
After that, Fingers sent over a lot of demands for documents. Since Linda’s attorney demanded alimony and disclosure of marital assets and all other kinds of shit, Fingers did the same. And worse, he sent over a request that Linda formally disclose all the people she fucked while we were married. I knew of at least eight, but given how long we’d been apart, just making that demand would send her temper through the roof.
I haven’t exactly been celibate, but Fingers had a theory that if we told Linda we were going to try to prove infidelity, and that we might seek out sworn statements from some of the men she slept with in the early years before I finally gave myself free rein to get what I could… Well, she might just back off on the demand for money.
It’s not over yet, and from what Fingers tells me, it could be a long and painful battle. Not to mention expensive. But it’s done. The process has started, and there’s no going back. Someday, I will be a single man. Well, I’ll be free of Linda. Let’s put it that way.
I sincerely hope that I won’t be single for long.
I haven’t texted, called, or even seen Lacey—other than the social media stalking I’ve done. She doesn’t post often, but every time she adds a goofy picture of Ruby or posts the cinnamon raisin bread her mom’s brought home from the bakery, I feel a little less dead inside.
Lacey is still out there in the world. Beautiful, quirky, dreamer Lacey. She may not be mine now, but I haven’t given up. That’s something she taught me. To believe in my dreams and hold on so tight that even when they seem out of reach, never, ever lose faith.
Someday, when I have my shit together, I’m going to find her. Tell her everything I’ve done to deserve her. It may not be enough, and I know that. Too little, too late, and all that shit. What matters now is that I’m doing it. I’m fixing my life, my heart, and I’m building the faith in myself that I’ve been missing for too long.
“Yo, asshole.” I hear Crow’s voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie. He’s on the third floor of a small private school where we’re bidding out the renovation of all of the bathrooms. It’s a huge job, and if we get it, this summer when school’s out, I’ll be in charge of a massive project. A crew of my own.
“What’s up?” I ask, clicking the button to talk, then releasing it to listen.
“You’ve got a free morning tomorrow. I’ve got a property that needs an estimate. You wanna go, or should I send Morris?”
I’ve been taking every project Crow’s sent my way, working late nights, weekends, whatever he needs. I need every spare penny to pay Fingers’s legal bills, and I want to save what I can for whatever comes next.
“I’m on it,” I tell him. “Send the details to my phone.”
I head out to my truck and check my phone for the millionth time. I have the usual work emails—messages from Morris and Tiny, Crow and Arrow—but no texts. Nothing from Lacey. I haven’t texted her either, but I can’t. I need to be ready when I see her next.
I need to be perfect.
I put the address for the meeting tomorrow into my GPS and head back to the compound. I’m tired, hungry, and in need of a shower. Just like every other day since Lacey left. Wash, rinse, repeat. But somehow, I don’t get bored or resentful. I don’t miss the old days the way I used to. Maybe all I really needed was a goal I gave a shit about. Now, I have so many goals, I’ve started keeping track of them.
The only one I don’t know if I’ll ever accomplish is getting Lacey back. But it’s top on my list and always will be. Always.
The next morning, I arrive at the job early. The office of the nonprofit organization that wants the estimate is located in a house that’s been renovated and zoned for commercial use. It’s badly in need of repairs. I can see from the street that the shutters are peeling. The wood frame is warped. The concrete path is pockmarked and broken in places—signs of the ground settling and overall disrepair, making the place look absolutely depressing.
I mentally start doing calculations in my head as soon as I ring the bell on the front door. A receptionist calls out through a video doorbell, the most new and functional thing I’ve seen so far.
“Good morning. Can I help you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Good morning. I’m here to provide an estimate. I’m Logan Taylor’s foreman.”
I always chuckle when I say Crow’s real name. But if it sounds funny to the receptionist, she doesn’t show it. She buzzes me into the front door, which closes and locks behind me.
The girl who greets me is pretty in a plain way, and she has a nice smile. But her eyes aren’t as bright and deep as Lacey’s. She’s wearing a skirt, but not a pencil skirt. Her hair, though it’s in a bun, isn’t the tight, low bun that used to sit at the nape of Lacey’s neck.
I miss her. That’s the God’s honest truth. I’ll never stop missing her.
“Our executive director will be right with you,” the receptionist says. She offers me a chair, but the “chair” is a folding chair. I don’t know what half of the things I’m looking at are used for, but this seems to be a place where a lot of equipment comes to die.
Before I can even sit, another woman comes rushing into the room, her hand extended. “Hi there,” she says, giving me a huge smile. “I’m Susan Leach, Executive Director. Thanks so much for coming. There’s a lot to do here, and I’d like you to meet the team so we can go over our goals and our budget before you get started looking around.”
I shake Susan’s hand and introduce myself. “I’m Easton Wilson,” I tell her. “But my friends call me Eagle.”
“Eagle?” she asks, giving me a funny smile. “Well, that’s a terrific name. I’d like to use that one, if you don’t mind. Now, follow me.”
She leads me through the house that has been converted to make the living spaces on the first floor into work nooks. The place is cluttered, books and marketing materials with kids in hospitals and home settings on the covers scattered everywhere. I follow her past what was once the kitchen of this house, but which is now clearly an office kitchen. Coffee mugs labeled with blue painter’s tape line the counter, and I can see cans of soup and other dry goods left out for communal snacking. In some ways, this place reminds me a lot of the compound.
As Susan takes me toward the central staircase, I can already tell there’s no way a nonprofit has the funds to redo this place. The floorboards creak, I smell mildew that no doubt means water damage, and cosmetically, this place needs to come down. All the medical equipment lodged against walls and blocking walkways has to be violating at least ten city codes.
Susan heads down a hallway and stops in front of an open door. She knocks lightly, and a woman shoves a pair of glasses off her nose to get a better look at us.
“Yes? Susan, what is it?”
I recognize that woman, but it takes me a minute to remember from where. But it takes her half the time to recognize me.
“Well, I’ll be darned.” Danielle, Lacey’s mom’s friend, stands from her chair. “Great to see you, Eagle.”
She holds a hand out to me, and I shake it. “You came highly recommended,” she says. “Have a seat.”
Susan, the executive director, and Danielle both sit. I wedge myself into a slightly nicer wooden chair that’s close to Susan’s. These people must not get a lot of visitors. I have to shift my chair until it’s almost touching Danielle’s desk so I’m not knee-to-knee with Susan.
“So, Eagle,” Danielle says with a bright smile. She waves a hand around the office. “I wear about three hats here at Gabriel’s Closet, and that’s two hats too many.”
She goes on to explain how the nonprofit just recently lost its lease on a different building due to a huge spike in the rent. But Danielle’s parents recently moved to Nevada to be closer to their grandchildren and offered the converted house where they used to operate an insurance agency to the nonprofit for a steal.
“So, here’s my dilemma,” Danielle says. “My parents sold me this house, which thankfully is zoned for commercial use. But we connect children in need with medical devices and equipment. We get a lot of donated items that are large and which need to be kept securely stored for weeks, sometimes months, until we find a child who needs it.” Danielle explains a little about their business, but I am curious why I am here. “That’s where you come in,” she says. “I fundraise, do the books, run the marketing that we do—what little we can do.” Her eyes meet mine, and she smiles softly. “We have taken on a brilliant intern. She’s helping me with every aspect of my job, and it’s my hope that we can offer her paid work in the coming year or so. But for now, we need an addition built on to this house. One that is accessible for clients who are able to get to us, and one that can safely store the equipment we take in.”
She explains that they have an architect on the board of directors who is willing to donate plans, but she needs a contractor to build the addition. She opens a drawer in her desk and shows me some rough drawings—not the architect’s images, but the hand-drawn sketches she’d probably shown the architect.
“We’d love to get a bid from you for the work,” Danielle says.
Susan speaks up then. “We’d also like you to meet our intern since one of her responsibilities will be to coordinate with whatever contractor we choose. She’ll essentially be a project manager of sorts.”
I nod. “Happy to help. Can I take a look at those?” I lean forward and start looking over the specs, mentally calculating exactly the kind of structure they need.
Danielle gets up from behind her desk and heads toward the door while I’m studying the drawings. When I turn to look behind me and ask a few questions, my heart slams to a halt in my chest.
“Lacey.” I say her name like it’s the last word I’ll ever speak. I savor it. I breathe it in. She’s here.
I climb out of the tight space the chair is wedged into and stand.
“Eagle,” she says softly. “Thanks for coming. I honestly wasn’t sure if they’d send you.” She bites her lower lip. “That’s not entirely true. I wasn’t sure, but when I called, I did ask Crow to send you.”
She smiles and looks down at her feet. She’s wearing jeans and running shoes, the pencil skirt and heels gone. The ruby-red lipstick and tiny bun are still there, though. Her power outfit, just powering a different kind of work.
“I’m cleaning and moving equipment today. We just got in a bath chair and swing that were used by a teenager. It’s a lot of hosing down and sterilizing.” She shrugs. “I’m dressing for the job I have, not the job I want. But that will come soon enough.”
If she feels anything seeing me, she doesn’t give it away. There is a soft flush on her cheeks, but she’s not meeting my eyes.
I don’t know what to say. I just have one question. “Will you be my boss again?”
She laughs then, a sudden, sparkling sound. “No.” She shakes her head. “I’m just an intern. While I’m deciding what my next move is, I’m learning a totally new industry. Fundraising and development, marketing…” She holds up her hands. “It’s a nice change, learning rather than managing.”
“You’ve gone from riches to rags,” I say. “Are you happy here?”
She looks thoughtful. “I never thought about it that way. You’re right. This is a riches-to-rags story.” She nods. “But I like it. It suits me and where I am right now. I’m happy here. I used to get up every morning and savor the beauty of the place where I worked. The magic of the events was just dreamy. I could get lost in the fantasy, even though I knew it wasn’t real.”
She rubs her face and finally, finally meets my eyes. “Now, I wake up with a different kind of purpose. What we do here isn’t glamorous. It’s dirty, physical work. But it’s real. It matters to a lot of people. And I’ve met some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my whole life. Parents, clients.” She smiles. “I am happy here. It’s just a different kind of happiness.”
I understand that. I’ve felt the same way since losing Lacey. I can’t say I’m happy without her, but life, my work… It all hits differently now. I have purpose, and I’m okay with it.
“So, I won’t be working for you,” I clarify.
“No, but you’ll be working with me. We’ll be equals. Peers,” she says with a smile. “And no one can really get mad if we are more than just coworkers because, you know, no conflict of interest. I have no power over whether you get this contract.” She shrugs. “I’m not even getting paid. Unpaid intern at thirty years old.”
I don’t care whether she’s making minimum wage or stripper quantities of cash. All I heard was more than coworkers .
“Lacey.” I reach for her, sliding a hand behind her neck. Then I catch myself and step back. “Sorry,” I say. “Old habits. I shouldn’t. We’re at your work.”
I take three steps back, but then Lacey surges forward and throws herself into my arms.
“I miss you so much,” she whispers against my shirt. “God, Eagle. I…”
I hold her tight, my arms trembling, my chest heaving. I can’t say anything. Won’t say anything. I don’t want to fuck this up. And yet, I believe she cares about me. I believe that what we have means more than anything else in my life. I have to believe she feels it too.
“I fucked up, but I love you. I’m willing to work as long as it takes and wait as long as you need for you to see that,” I tell her, breathing in the clean fragrance of her hair. “I love you, Lacey. I love you.”
She lifts her face to me, her smile weak and a little sad, but it’s still a smile.
“I love you too,” she says quietly. “I still need time. I don’t want to rush into anything—not with this job, not with you. But I want to try. I can’t imagine losing you over anyone or anything without a fight.”
I close my eyes and just hold her close. “It’s been a long time since I had anything to fight for.”