Chapter 18
Ben
Iwas about to blow up my life, and I'd invited everyone to watch.
The shop was packed. Eleven people crammed into a space meant for half that, breath fogging in the January cold despite the space heater rattling in the corner. The fluorescents hummed overhead, throwing harsh light on faces I'd worked with for years—some of them a decade or more.
I'd called an all-hands meeting. The last time I'd done that was five years ago, when we'd landed the Hadley Elementary renovation. That had been champagne and back-slapping.
This wasn't that.
Nobody was sitting except Linda and Walt.
Linda perched on a stool near the workbench, laptop open, already running numbers in her head.
Walt had his bad leg stretched out, leaning against the drill press like he always did.
Everyone else stood with their hands shoved in pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Dave Sullivan stood near the door, arms crossed over his Carhartt jacket. Fifty-two, broad-shouldered, my most senior project manager. The guy who'd been running jobs for me since I opened this place fifteen years ago.
Collins leaned against the table saw. He already knew why he was here—I'd told him three days ago, right after I signed the papers with Lucia. The kid hadn't blinked. Just nodded and said, When do we start?
Frank Delaney worked a toothpick across his jaw, eyes narrowed.
Walt Turner watched me with that steady gaze he'd had since I was twenty-three and didn't know a miter from a table saw.
Jimmy and Carlos from the framing crew. A couple of younger guys whose names I knew but whose faces still felt new.
The shop smelled like sawdust and coffee and fifteen years of sweat.
I cleared my throat. Eleven faces turned toward me.
"Thanks for coming," I said. "I know it's late."
Frank pulled the toothpick from his mouth. "You called an all-hands, boss. Must be serious."
"It is." I looked around the room—at the faces I'd worked with for years, the people who trusted me to keep the lights on and the paychecks coming. "Ryan Hartley's dead. You all knew him."
A few nods, some uncomfortable shifting. Frank looked down at his boots. Collins had gone to the funeral. Walt had helped Ryan pick out the timber for his own back deck three years ago.
"What you don't know is that he left behind an unfinished house and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar construction loan.
The bank's coming for it in six months. And when they don't get their money from the house, they're coming for his widow's home.
" I hesitated, then led with the truth. "The one she didn't know he'd put up as collateral. "
The room went dead silent.
"Jesus," Frank muttered.
"I bought in," I continued. "Took on half the debt. I'm finishing the house. Six months, or I lose everything."
"Everything?" Dave's voice was careful. "What's that mean, Ben?"
"It means if I fail, this business shuts down. Payroll stops. You're all out of a job by August."
Someone whistled low. Linda's fingers hovered over her keyboard, but she didn't type.
"That's why you're here," I said. "You need to know what's at stake. And you need to make a choice."
"What kind of choice?" Dave asked.
I looked at him. "I need you to run the business while I'm gone. Day-to-day operations, the maintenance contracts, the small renovations we've got lined up. Keep the crew working, keep the lights on."
Dave let out a long breath, shaking his head. "You're asking me to hold this together while you gamble everything?"
"Yeah," I said. "That's exactly what I'm asking."
He stared at me for a long moment, then a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Humorless, but real. "Alright. I'm in."
Linda closed her laptop with a quiet click. "I'll keep the books clean. Make sure every dollar counts."
I nodded at her. One more person betting on me.
"Everyone else," I continued, looking around the room.
"You can stay here with Dave. Steady hours, steady pay.
You'll have warning if things go south." I paused.
"Or you can help me finish the house. Brutal timeline.
Winter weather. Long hours. But if we pull it off, everyone who works on it gets a cut of the profit. "
"And if you don't pull it off?" Carlos asked.
"Then I'm bankrupt, and you're unemployed."
The space heater rattled in the corner. Someone's boot scraped against concrete.
Frank crossed his arms. "You're asking us to bet our livelihoods on a dead man's dream."
"I'm asking you to help me save his widow from losing everything." I looked around the room. "But I'm not asking anyone to go down with me. If you've got families, mortgages, kids—I get it. Dave's got enough work to keep half of you busy through summer."
I paused, meeting each man's eyes. This was the part that hurt.
"But I know that might not be enough. I know some of you need more than hope and a profit share that might never come.
" I rubbed the back of my neck, the words sticking in my throat.
"So I talked to Bill Alderman at Alderman the least I could do was leave him a shop that wasn't buried in my clutter.
I started in the break room, tossing out the expired milk and wiping down a microwave that had seen better decades. It was mind-numbing work, the kind that usually kept the ghosts at bay.
Then I found the mug.
It was shoved behind a stack of unclaimed plastic containers, blue ceramic with a chip in the rim. I pulled it out and turned it over in my hands. The white text across the front—I’d Nail That—was framed by a cartoon hammer.
Ryan and Olivia had given it to me five or six years ago at one of those backyard birthday things. I remembered the heat of the grill and the way Ryan’s voice always seemed to carry over the fence. I’d shown up with a six-pack and the low expectations of a man who didn't much care for parties.
Olivia had handed me the gift bag with a small, expectant smile—the kind she wore when she was hoping she’d gotten a detail exactly right. Ryan was already halfway through a story about a site inspection, barely glancing over as I pulled the mug from the tissue paper.
I’d laughed, despite myself. "I’d nail that. That’s terrible, Liv."
"I know," she’d said. There was a spark in her eyes then, a quiet sort of mischief. She’d known exactly how bad the pun was, and she’d picked it specifically because she knew it would be the only thing that could make me crack a smile in a crowd.
Ryan had clapped me on the shoulder, his attention already drifting to the next person with a beer, but Olivia had stayed there for a beat longer. She looked pleased, watching me hold the mug like she’d just handed me a secret code.
I ran my thumb over the chipped ceramic now, and the memories I usually kept under lock and key started to leak through.
I thought of all those Sunday afternoons in their kitchen.
Ryan was always the center of gravity, holding court on the patio about zoning variances or structural loads.
I’d usually be at the island, nursing a beer and watching Olivia move through the house.
She was the one who kept the engine running—refilling drinks, setting out food, asking the questions Ryan never thought to ask.
How’s the Morrison job, Ben?
She’d remember the answer, too. Two weeks later, she’d be the one asking if I’d resolved the issue with the permit office. She noticed the small things—the friction points of my life that Ryan walked right past.
There was one Sunday I’d spent three years trying to forget.
It was late summer, that heavy, golden hour light pouring through their windows.
Olivia was reaching for a serving platter on a high shelf, her shirt riding up just an inch to reveal a sliver of skin at her lower back.
Ryan was outside, the smell of charcoal and burgers drifting through the screen door.
I’d been standing right there, too close to be polite. I was close enough to see the small mole just above her waistband, close enough that when she turned around and nearly collided with me, the world seemed to shrink to the space between us.
She’d laughed, startled, and steadied herself with a hand on my chest. Sorry—didn’t see you there.
Her palm had been warm, the heat of it soaking through my shirt.
She smelled like vanilla and laundry dried in the sun, a scent that felt like home and danger all at once.
I’d stepped back fast—too fast—and handed her the platter without a word.
I’d spent the rest of the night outside, watching Ryan burn the edges of hot dogs and telling myself that the kick in my chest was just the beer.
She was Ryan’s wife. That was the boundary. That was the law.
But standing in the empty shop, holding that stupid mug, the law didn’t exist anymore
Ryan was gone. Olivia was standing in the middle of wreckage, and I'd just bet everything I had on pulling her out of it.
Six months. Timber frame to finished house. That was the job.
I washed the mug, dried it with a shop rag, then set it in the cup holder of the cab of my truck, wedged tight so it wouldn't slide.
It looked out of place there—too small and too clean against the dash—but I wanted it with me.
If I was going to be living out on Route 9 for the next six months, I might as well have a decent cup for my coffee.
Sunday morning, the work would start. And as long as I kept my eyes on the wood and the nails, I could keep convincing myself that the work was all that mattered.