Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

46. Dropping the hammer

46

DROPPING THE HAMMER

CAMPBELL

I screwed the final pressure-treated cap into place and tested it for wobbles.

It was a sunny Thursday afternoon. I was working alone on replacing part of the Fish Hook’s deck railing after Willis threw Chevy through it during a drunken reenactment of a dramatic fishing story.

Things were good.

Fall was in the air. A few early leaves were previewing the color to come. My sister was out of the hospital and back to her usual ornery self. There were no farm animals—ailing or otherwise—waiting for me at my apartment.

And I was fucking miserable.

I felt eyes on me and turned to glare at Lang Johnson and Kitty Suarez, who were having a late lunch on the deck. Both women immediately picked up copies of Hazel’s books, opened them, and shot me death stares over the spines.

News of the breakup had traveled faster than usual, and the rumors had quickly spiraled out of control. Lines had been drawn. Teams chosen. And Team Cam was mightily outnumbered.

Not that I cared.

The whole thing was ridiculous. It was a private matter that had been settled privately. People were acting like they were personally invested in a relationship that had never been more than a casual hookup.

I hadn’t seen Hazel in person since I’d ended things. I’d avoided her house for nearly a week out of deference to her feelings before my brothers bothered to tell me she was working from the lodge. They also seemed to take great pleasure in telling me the woman didn’t seem to have any feelings toward me that required my noble deference.

Garland’s coverage of her on Neighborly had gone from exaggerated rumormongering to excessive adulation. And in case I missed a post from our resident technological busybody, the whole town had taken it upon themselves to update me on how good or happy she looked when she stopped in to the bookstore or when she and a group of Lakers hit up Angelo’s for dinner and drinks.

Or how great she was with the pack of kids who followed her everywhere on their bikes.

I’d always assumed I would have kids. But in a show of what even I recognized as undiluted male privilege, I’d never given much thought to how I’d get them. An unnecessary flash of family life with Hazel had me hurling my tools back into their plastic tote with violence.

I wondered if my brothers ever thought about having kids. But the Bishop Buttholes message group had been suspiciously quiet since I’d done the right thing and ended it with Hazel. Gage and Levi were still talking to me on the job. Though now that I thought about it, they kept finding reasons to send me off by myself. Like right now.

Laura had been dodging my texts and calls. And I hadn’t received the last two official invitations to Bishop Breakfast.

I told myself I was fine with it. I liked solitude. So what if I was spending an unhealthy amount of time looking at Garland’s pictures of Hazel on her social media? I was doing the iocaine powder thing from The Princess Bride and building up a tolerance to a poison. It was just that in this case, the poison was my feelings.

I was supposed to feel better. I was supposed to feel relieved. Instead I felt…hollow. Anxious. On edge.

Maybe I’d swing by the store and see if Levi wanted to grab a beer. He was covering for Mom while she took Laura to the doctor for a follow-up.

“Psst!”

Rusty pulled me out of my whiny-ass reverie. I spotted him clambering around on the rocks below me.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” I demanded.

He brought his finger to his lips and shushed me. “Keep it down. I don’t want anyone to catch me talking to you.”

“Seriously?” I debated chucking my drill at him, then decided I didn’t want to go out and buy a new one. Besides, I had the distinct feeling Levi was just waiting for a reason to make me his first arrest.

“Look, man. I appreciate you fixing the railing and all, but you done fucked up,” he said in a stage whisper.

“I didn’t fuck anything up,” I snapped.

Lang and Kitty sent disapproving stares in my direction.

“I didn’t,” I insisted, doubling down.

Rusty let out a wheezy laugh. “Sure, you didn’t. You just turned tail and ran away from the best thing that ever happened to you. But hey, someone else’ll be ballsy enough to see it through. Anyway, I left the cash for the invoice by the register under Gage’s name. Figured if someone saw your name on it, they might stick a wad of chewing gum to it or worse inside.”

“Thanks, Rusty. I appreciate the support,” I said loud enough that the bartender and all seven customers looked over.

“Why’d you gotta go and do that, Cam?” Rusty grumbled. “Now I gotta do this.”

“Do what?”

He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Team Hazel!” he shouted.

Woo s and yeah s punctuated an aggressive round of applause as I packed up the rest of my tools and left.

I was still pissed off when I found a Team Hazel flyer in pink and lavender, the colors of her last book cover, under my windshield wiper. It included a bulleted list of ways to support our resident romance novelist in her heartbreak. It included suggestions like making her baked goods and setting her up with any acceptable single men. The joker who made the flyer had even listed out attributes for Hazel’s perfect man.

Literate

Supportive of her career and success

Good-looking

Not an asshole

Won’t steal from her

Won’t be a pathetic chickenshit and run off when things get too real

I snatched it off the glass and balled it up. “Very funny,” I announced to anyone who happened to be watching.

Something warm and wet plopped on my head. I reached up just as a shadow swooped over me. “Goddammit, Goose! Did you just shit on me?” I demanded as the damn bird landed on a Subaru two spaces down. He gave a demanding squawk and held up one foot like it was injured.

“You think you can scam me for treats after shitting on me?” I barked.

“Good eagle. Nice aim,” my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, said. She glared at me as she tossed a handful of treats on the roof of the car.

Swearing under my breath, I used the flyer to clean the bird shit out of my hair and tried not to gag. I didn’t want to give Story Lake yet another thing to gossip about.

I marched over to the trash can and hurled the shit-soaked paper inside. Movement caught my eye, and I instinctively flinched. But it wasn’t another pass by a bald eagle. Instead, the Story Lake Warblers were advancing on me in militaristic formation. They stopped directly in front of me, faces stern, bodies blocking the entire sidewalk.

“No,” I growled.

I was cut off by a huffy note from Scooter’s pitch pipe, followed by an angry, harmonizing hum. There was nothing to do but wait it out.

“Campbell Bishop, you’re a skunk

Condemned to stew alone in your funk

You hurt our dear friend Hazel

’Cause you’re just a lowly weasel

She’s better off without your heart of stone

And you’re the one who’ll end up alone”

Spontaneous applause broke out from the other passersby on the sidewalk.

“Seriously, Livvy?” I called to my brother, who was clapping and whistling from the store steps. He responded with a middle finger.

I turned my attention back to the Warblers. “Hazel hired you guys? Real mature.”

Scooter’s eyes narrowed. “No one hired us. We’re doing this for free,” he announced haughtily.

I was about to tell Scooter exactly where he could shove his pitch pipe when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Hazel was my first thought, and I embarrassed myself by frantically patting my pockets.

Dad: Need you to swing by the farm when you have a minute.

It was definitely not disappointment I felt in my chest that it wasn’t Hazel. Nope. I was over her, and she was over me.

“What the hell’d you do to your hair?” Dad wondered, when I walked in the house.

“I didn’t do it. Goose was having target practice downtown.”

Mom paused in her irritated banging of pots and pans in the kitchen to give a vindictive laugh.

“Christ. Not you too. The whole damn town is more upset over this breakup than we are,” I said.

“About that. Let’s go talk in the office.” Dad guided me out of Mom’s line of fire.

He closed the door behind us and gestured for me to take a seat in Mom’s chair. Then he picked up a piece of paper off his desk, cleared his throat, and started to read.

“You are measuring life by the number of bumps in the road. That’s not an accurate estimate by any means.”

“What are you doing?”

He looked up from his notes. “I’m lecturing you. Your mom knows I get flustered, so she made some notes.”

To this day, I still vividly recalled Dad’s awkward attempt at giving me the birds and bees talk when I was ten.

“I’d hardly call your stroke and Laura’s accident ‘bumps.’”

“Detours then,” he conceded.

“Dad, I really don’t feel like talking about this right now.”

“Well, tough shit. Because you’re not getting out of this room until you hear what I’ve got to say.”

On a sigh, I slumped into the chair. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

Dad looked down at the paper again. “You were a good boy who grew into a good man. But sometimes I can’t help feeling like I failed you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re shit at talking about your feelings just like I am,” he said, waving his notes as evidence.

“We’re Bishops. Bishops don’t talk about feelings. Hell, we might not have feelings other than grumpy and hungry.”

Dad didn’t laugh like I expected him to.

He tugged at his earlobe. “Why’d you break up with Hazel?”

“That’s between her and me.”

“Fine. Then I’ll just speculate along with everyone else. I think you got scared and decided to run.”

“I didn’t get scared. And if I was gonna run, it would be a hell of a lot farther than just a few blocks away.”

“You best spit it out before you lose him, Frank,” Mom called from outside the door.

“I’m gettin’ to it,” he yelled back.

I reached over and opened the door. “You wanna join us?” I asked.

Mom leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “You’re being a big-ass chicken, and you hurt someone to save yourself the pain.”

I had immediate regrets about opening the door.

“Hazel and I are two different people who want different things,” I insisted. “I don’t owe you or anyone an explanation.”

“‘Different things?’ Seems to me that she wants to live in this town and be part of this family,” Dad mused with another tug at his earlobe.

“This is bullshit,” I complained.

Mom cuffed me on the back of the head. “Shut up and listen.”

“Why are we talking about this? You don’t bust on Gage when he breaks up with some girl,” I pointed out.

“Hazel isn’t just ‘some girl,’ and Gage hasn’t fallen in love yet,” Mom said.

“And you’re saying I have?” My heart did a weird flip-flop in my chest.

My mother pointed a triumphant finger in my face. “There! That look right there. Nauseated with a hint of fear. That’s love, kiddo.”

“No, it’s not. It’s…indigestion.”

“You fell for her and you got scared, so you did what you always do. You left,” she said.

Dad nodded his agreement.

“I can’t believe this. You make it sound like I abandoned you. I left town because I wanted to. I got a good job in a nice city because I wanted to have a life of my own that wasn’t all wrapped up in everyone else’s.”

My parents shared one of those annoying know-it-all looks.

It was my turn to point the finger. “No. Now it’s your turn to listen. Just because you love having everyone around your table every Sunday and because you don’t mind filling in at the store you retired from and picking up kids who aren’t yours and living alongside the same people you’ve known your whole life doesn’t mean I have to do the same.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “And I thought it was Levi with the thickest skull. That is what you want.”

I covered my face in my hands and let out a frustrated groan. “Oh my God. What makes you think that?”

Mom threw up her hands, and Dad leaned in. “Well, for starters, because your mother’s not an idiot.”

“Thank you!” she said, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Look, I’m not here to guess why you are the way you are. But you came to us a scared, broken little boy who had lost his parents and been separated from his brothers. That’s bound to leave a mark.”

“Maybe you had something to prove,” Dad said, tagging in. “Maybe you wanted to show that kid that you could take care of yourself.”

Hazel’s words from the lake echoed back to me. You were a kid from a stable, loving home who wanted to spread his wings to make sure they worked.

“Why does everyone feel the need to psychoanalyze me all of a sudden?” I was tired. I was pissed off. I’d spent days being harangued by people who thought they knew my business better than I did.

“Because you keep doing the dumbest possible thing, like you’re set on self-destruct or something,” Mom pointed out.

“We broke up. It’s not a midlife crisis, and it sure the hell isn’t a big deal.” Lies. They just kept coming out of my mouth.

“You don’t seem the least bit concerned that you just walked out on the best damn thing you ever had,” Dad said.

“Hazel wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to me,” I said quietly. “You two were.”

They both went silent for a beat. Then Mom, with tears in her eyes, hit me over the head with a file folder of veterinarian statements.

“Ow! The hell was that for?”

“For being so sweetly, infuriatingly wrong,” she said. “You don’t get just one good thing.”

“You start with the first and you build on it,” Dad said earnestly.

“You think we were satisfied with just finding each other and falling in love?” Mom demanded. “No. We bought this place. We started a business and then another. We had your sister. We found your brother. We brought you home.”

“And that’s great for you guys. But that’s not what I fucking want.” The panic was rising again, but this time I didn’t have anything to let go of.

“All right. Then what do you want?” Dad asked.

To never lose anything again. To never feel that twist of dread. That swift slice of grief and fear.

To not feel like I’d had something good and solid, only to realize it could be taken from me just like that.

To forget what it was like to watch my sister find out her husband wasn’t ever going to walk through the door again.

“I want a quiet, simple life. And I don’t get why everyone and their second fucking cousin feels the need to weigh in on that.”

“The problem is everyone knows you’re full of shit,” Mom pointed out.

I started to get out of my chair. “I’ve got shit to do. I don’t have time to take it from you two. Just because I’m not living my life the way you think I should?—”

“Campbell Bishop. You’ll sit your ass there until we’re done with you. Life is precious, even when it hurts. It’s not something to be avoided. It’s all we’ve got,” Mom said gently.

“Now if this solitary life is really what you want—” Dad began.

“It’s not,” Mom cut in on a huff.

“Then by all means, keep doin’ what you’ve been doin’. But if there’s even the slightest chance that you’re just trying to protect yourself, you gotta stop and think. You deserve a bigger life than that.”

“So does that little boy who showed up here on our doorstep,” Mom said pointedly.

They both sat there, staring at me expectantly.

“Fine. I’ll think about it,” I said, realizing that pretending to consider their advice was the only way I was getting out of this room.

“Little stashes of happiness,” Mom said.

“What?”

Dad nodded. “You’ve heard the saying ‘Don’t put your eggs in one basket.’”

“What about it?”

Mom threw up her hands. “You don’t give yourself only one source of happiness. You can’t be happy only as long as your family is healthy. Nobody stays healthy forever.”

“Remember what your great-great-grandfather Melmo did with his money?” Dad asked.

“Spent it on booze and women?” I guessed.

“When he died, he had a modest amount saved up in the bank. But he left behind a treasure map to a literal fortune he’d squirreled away in hiding places all over his hometown. If the bank failed or if someone found and stole one of his stashes, he knew he’d be fine.”

“So in order for me to be happy, you want me to start burying gold coins in the backyard?”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse, and that will be reflected in your birthday present this year,” Mom said.

“I don’t want a birthday present. But I do want this conversation to be over.”

“Look, Campbell, you fell in love with Hazel.” Dad held up a hand when I tried to argue. “It was plain as day to everyone but you. You got scared.”

I bristled. “I didn’t get scared.”

“Bullshit, son. Every man gets scared when he falls in love, but real men face their fears. You’re acting like falling in love with a good woman is the worst thing you could do.”

In my opinion, it was. And after they’d sat by Laura’s bedside those first few weeks and months after the accident, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t feel the same.

“Let’s try this. It’s about diversification,” Dad announced.

“Ooh, that’s a good one, honey.” Mom patted his knee.

“You don’t have all your money invested in one single one of those made-up stock things, do you?” Dad continued.

“No.”

“Right. You spread your investments around so if one goes belly-up, you’ve got others that are safe…unless the whole stock market implodes, which seein’ as how it’s all made up anyway?—”

“You’re losing the thread, Frank,” Mom warned.

I decided to cut to the chase. “So you’re saying I should get a couple of wives? I don’t think that’s legal in Pennsylvania.”

“Of all the thickheaded Neanderthals…” Mom muttered under her breath.

“I can hear you,” I told her.

“Good. I wanted you to.”

“You know exactly what we’re saying,” Dad insisted.

Mom shook her head. “I don’t think he does. So I’m gonna drop the hammer. You came back here full of guilt, delusionally thinking if you’d stuck around you could have prevented Laura’s accident.”

“There’s nothing delusional about it. I would have been the one running with her. We would have been out earlier because that’s when we always worked out together. That car never would have?—”

“That’s just really fucking stupid.”

“Language, Mother.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but dropping the hammer doesn’t work if you soften it up. You watched Laura grieve Miller, her physical abilities, and her old life. You had a front-row seat to it just like the rest of us, and you think by pushing Hazel away, you’ll save yourself from that kind of pain. But that’s just really?—”

“Fucking stupid,” my dad filled in.

“Is there an echo in here?”

“Look at your sister,” Mom said, ignoring me. “She went through the kind of trauma that takes some people under and never lets them surface again. But she was laughing her ass off on Labor Day. She’s got the kids, she’s got us, she’s got this town. And when all of you dummies finally sit down to talk, you’ll realize she’s ready to go back to work.”

Dad and I both shot Mom the same confused look. She rolled her eyes. “Do I need to spell everything out for you stubborn pains in my ass?”

Dad and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Well, yeah,” we said.

“Laura is dying to get back to the store. She wants to grow the business. But in order for that to happen, you all have to make it accessible for her, and you need to give her the reins to do it.” Mom pointed at Dad for that last bit.

“Why didn’t Laur say anything?” I asked.

“Because your sister is just like the rest of you. She doesn’t know how to ask for help. You think she wants to sit down with you and your brothers and ask you to put in a ramp and a new restroom? You think she wants to be the one to tell Frugal Frank here that we need to hire more staff? She’s expecting you to read her damn mind, just like you’re expecting her to explain in detail what she needs from you.”

Neither of those things had ever happened in the history of the Bishop family…well, unless you counted my mother.

“Well, why didn’t you say so, Pep?” Dad demanded.

Mom threw her hands in the air. “Because I’m not always going to be here to pull your heads out of your asses. You’re all adults, and I am trying to respect that, but geez Louise, do you all make it difficult. This conversation is six months overdue.”

“I should go talk to Larry,” I said, starting to stand again.

“No. You should take a good hard look at your life and realize that you already put all your happiness in one damn basket. You’re only okay as long as your family is okay.”

“Jesus, Mom. You act like you and Dad rented an RV and drove around the country partying till dawn while Laura was in the hospital. I saw you. You suffered right along with her.”

My voice broke, which immediately shut me the fuck up.

Mom sighed and leaned forward to ruffle my hair. “Of course we did. But we didn’t stop living, and neither did your sister. You, on the other hand, haven’t even started.”

“Girlfriends, kids, pets, friends, hobbies, vacations, adventures, new tools. Son, the world is full of things to love. Don’t you think it’s time you try a few of ’em out?” Dad said.