Chapter Six
Beside Connor in the passenger seat of the van, Sam fiddled with the laces of his too-big steel-capped boots. Connor hid a smile when he saw Sam had rolled up the hems of the overalls he’d loaned him so they sat flush with the tops of his boots.
They were en route to Connor’s first job of the day.
He’d figured Sam could shadow him for the week to get a feel for the technical side of the work.
Sheryl had worked with his father for decades and had a wealth of knowledge of all things electrical.
While Sam had proven a quick study—already mastering the booking tool and surprising Connor by integrating it with his accounting software—he still struggled with a basic understanding of the trade.
“Sorry, the last apprentice we had was a size twelve,” Connor said, gesturing at the giant boots he’d dug out of the workshop.
“Now I feel inadequate.” Sam gave him a curious look. “I didn’t know you trained apprentices.”
“Yeah, Dad was trying to expand the business and figured we could do with another pair of hands.”
“What happened to him?”
“Skipped town in search of better opportunities. At least that’s what I was told.
We went from three sets of hands to just one.
” Connor raised his wrists from the steering wheel and waved with his fingers.
He made it sound like a joke, yet Andy leaving was when things had begun to fall apart—not just for the business but for Connor and his father.
“His loss,” Sam said.
Connor cocked his head. “Not exactly. He ended up getting licensed and started a business several towns over. Heard he’s doing quite well for himself.”
“So, how does it work? You apprentice for a couple of years and then get to work on your own?”
“Four years, and then you have to pass your license exam.”
“That’s practically a college degree!” Sam said.
“There’s a formal-study part to the apprenticeship, but you can do that while you work. Honestly, getting a handle on the basics was a lot harder than I expected when I first started out. We’ve taken on a few apprentices over the years, but none of them lasted long.”
“Why’d you stick with it?”
“You’ve met my dad.”
Sam laughed. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“Sheer stubbornness. He didn’t think I could do it.” Connor paused. It wasn’t the only reason. He remembered his father’s first fall and the look on the man’s face when they got the diagnosis. “Unlike you, Mr. Honor Roll, I was flunking out of school and setting shit on fire.”
Sam clicked his fingers. “That’s what Brian was talking about.”
“What?”
“At trivia the other night.” He turned to Connor, his eyes wide. “You were the one who burned down Krazinski’s woodshed?”
Connor grimaced. “That’s when my old man gave me an ultimatum—come work for him or get sent to military school. So I became an electrician.”
“It’s a decent origin story.”
“Is it, now? Well, what’s yours?”
Sam exhaled through his lips. “Just a classic case of diminishing returns. I thought a business degree would make life easy. Then I got stuck in marketing, trying to pay it off.”
“You’re good at it, though.”
Sam shifted in his seat. “Sure. And there’ll always be jobs, and the money’s decent.” He spoke in a flat, unaffected voice as if money and job security weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Connor decided not to press further.
They drove past the Farewell Oakdale sign and continued on the main road out of town toward Fletcher Graham’s place.
Mr. Graham was selling the old family farm so he could be closer to his daughter in Fairmont.
But the farmhouse was still in its original condition, and Connor was there to replace some of the old knob-and-tube wiring before it went up for sale.
“Your dad,” Sam said into the silence that followed. “He’s retired?”
Connor gave a rueful snort. “If only. Nah, he’s sick.”
“What is it?”
“MS.”
Before the diagnosis, Connor hadn’t even known such a thing existed—that someone’s body could turn against itself, attacking its own nervous system.
He wasn’t sure if his father had been having symptoms for years and hiding them or if he was one of the few multiple sclerosis cases that immediately entered the progressive phase, sending him from his feet to a walker to a wheelchair in eight short years.
“That can’t be easy,” Sam said quietly.
Connor shrugged, flicking on his blinker and turning off the road onto a narrow gravel lane. “It is what it is.”
He pulled the van up beside the house, and they ambled out to meet Mr. Graham at the door. The man was getting on in years and insisted on giving them a walk-through of the property despite Connor having already done so when he’d prepared the quote.
“I’m not paying extra for this rookie, am I?” Mr. Graham grumbled, poking a gnarled thumb in Sam’s direction.
“No, Mr. Graham. Sam’s just here to observe.”
Connor herded the man to his car, and Mr. Graham drove away at a crawl, eyeing them through the driver’s window.
“All right.” Connor turned to Sam. “I’m going to flip the main breaker, and then we’ll get started under the house. You can grab my tool bag from the van.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Thought I was only here to observe.”
“So go observe yourself taking my tool bag from the van.” Connor crouched to jimmy open the slide bolt on the small access door set into the side of the house. “When we get under there, I’ll need you to hold the light.”
“We?” Sam asked, eyeing the dank confines of the crawl space.
Connor grinned. “Time to see what you’re made of, Bryant.”
The easiest way to go about rewiring would have been to cut into the walls, but Mr. Graham’s daughter had requested minimal damage to the horsehair plaster, which she thought potential buyers would find rustic.
So instead, Connor had to go fishing. He’d made sure to disclose the extra labor in his quote for the job.
It was tedious work. He went outlet by outlet, opening the receptacle box and attaching fish tape to the existing wiring.
Then, from under the house, he carefully tugged the wire down through the joists until he got to the beginning of the fish tape.
From there, he reattached standard Romex cable, which he fed back up through the walls from above.
He was on the last outlet of the living room and had just attached the replacement wire to the fish tape when the work light lurched upward and a string of curses filled the darkness.
“Problem?” Connor asked Sam, who was lying on his stomach beside him. Sam had been a good sport, considering the circumstances. Navigating tight spaces wasn’t the most glamorous part of the job, though Connor would hazard to say not much about his job was glamorous.
Sam repositioned the light, illuminating the section of wiring Connor was working on. “I swear, that one crawled down my neck,” he hissed.
“They’re spiders. More afraid of you than you are of them.”
“Pretty sure that’s not true.”
Connor tossed his pliers into the tool bag between them and zipped it closed. “Well, we’re all done under here. For now, at least. Let’s go pull this up, and then the attic’s next.”
“Thank God,” Sam muttered. “What do you usually do when you don’t have some flunky to hold your light?”
Connor took the lamp from him and flicked a latch at the back so that a small stand popped out. He placed it on the ground, and the light shone upward to where Sam had been pointing it moments before.
“Asshole,” Sam grumbled, and Connor snickered.
Then Connor turned off the lamp, and together, they army crawled across the soggy ground toward the entrance to the crawl space. He and Sam emerged, blinking into the midday sun, dirt smeared from chest to knee as though they’d gone headfirst down a mudslide.
Sam pulled out his phone with a laugh. “This is too good.” He snapped a photo of Connor in his muck-stained glory. “This’ll work so well for socials.”
Connor brushed his palms against the legs of his overalls. “Yeah, we don’t really do any of that.”
“We do now.” Sam smiled, and the sun caught on a stray wisp of spiderweb twined in his hair.
Before he could stop himself, Connor leaned over and gently plucked it out.
Sam rode along with Connor every day for a week.
He would observe him on the job, ask questions, and help where he could.
Connor certainly wasn’t shy about asking for help.
He had Sam carry gear and hold ladders and fetch random tools from the van.
Sam now knew the difference between wire cutters and cable cutters and single-conductor and multiconductor cables.
He also understood the basics behind connecting and terminating wires and when to use three-way and four-way switches.
They would stop somewhere for lunch, and then Connor would drop him back at the office in the afternoon to catch up on his regular duties.
It was the most fun Sam could remember having at work.
Which was high praise considering he’d once spent four days at a client’s Palm Beach mansion, putting the final touches on a campaign for alligator-leather shoes.
It wasn’t so much the experience—which was grimy and physically demanding—as it was the company.
Working with Connor was easy. He didn’t take himself or his job too seriously, which was a stark change of pace for Sam, who was used to tiptoeing around overinflated egos.
Connor took the time to describe what he was doing and explain why things were done a certain way and seemed to possess the unwavering belief that Sam was capable of keeping up.
It was stupid how accomplished that made Sam feel.
He collapsed at the end of each day, too exhausted to think of Felix and his life in Austin and how spectacularly he’d fucked it all up.
Sam discovered a new respect for the trades and was ashamed to admit that before taking the job, he’d bought into the misconception that it was low-skilled work.
Connor was tenacious and analytical and possessed a library of complex technical knowledge.
He also had a natural rapport with his customers, most of whom he’d known growing up.
He always stopped for a chat and took his work boots off when entering someone’s home, a habit Sam prodded him about on the drive back to the office one afternoon.
“My dad’s a stickler for stuff like that,” Connor said. “When we worked together, he’d rail at the service guys who’d tromp inside with filthy boots. Said the best way to get repeat business is to act like you’re visiting your grandma.”
“Your dad was onto something there.”
Connor’s expression turned sour. “I don’t know.
When I was a kid, he was always harping on about the most inane crap.
How disrespectful it was to leave your plate in the sink or not take the trash out when it’s full.
It didn’t matter if I was on my best behavior—he’d still pull me up about tone or attitude.
Sometimes I think his fixation on common courtesy is a substitute for actually being a nice person.
” He shot Sam a glance, catching himself.
“Not that he isn’t, you know, a nice person. ”
Sam recalled the knot in his stomach when Ian Finnegan had talked about him like he wasn’t there. “It’s okay if he isn’t. Not everyone is. Common courtesies aside, you clearly are.”
“Now you’re just being a suck-up, Bryant.”
Sam laughed. “Do you remember back at school, that time in civics class?”
“I try to think of high school as little as possible.”
“When Adam Ronan made the substitute cry?”
Connor shook his head. “The poor woman. Hadn’t she just had a baby?”
“And you stood up and grabbed the can of pencils from her desk and told Adam if he didn’t apologize, you’d throw every one of them at his head until he did.”
“I think I managed three before she sent both of us to the principal’s office.”
“But Adam apologized,” Sam said.
“He’s still in town, you know. Works the register at the sporting goods store.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is—that me and Adam Ronan are both losers?”
“No!” Sam cried, exasperated. “That you’re a nice person.”
Connor said nothing, but Sam saw the careful way he tried not to smile.