Chapter 2 #2
With only a few weeks to get fourteen businesses and fourteen houses ready, he needed to work fast. No distractions.
Cody tightened the last screw and stepped back to check his work. The new light switch plates gleamed against the fresh coat of paint he’d applied. He’d picked up the keys from Dani a few days earlier and gone straight to work. Today, he was finishing up with a small storefront on the corner of Main and Ferry.
His phone buzzed with a text from Mia’s number.
Mia
Are you in town? We’re out for a walk. Maybe we’ll see you.
So much for no distractions.
Cody
I’m at Sampson’s. He texted back. See you soon.
He hadn’t been back to Mia’s since that night a few days ago. He’d checked in with her the next day, and she assured him she was fine.
He looked around the space. Floor-to-ceiling windows flanked the front door, bringing great views of Main Street. The building used to house Sampson’s Gallery, but it had stood empty for many years now. After cleaning up the accumulated dust and animal droppings, he’d refinished the wood floor and repainted the walls—three off-white and one a bright golden color. The finishing touches he’d made today were the icing on the cake.
He checked his phone for the time. It was still early enough that, once he finished the light switch covers, he could check the next building on his list and maybe finish that one too. If everything went well, he could even fix the swollen door at the back of this building.
The spring sunshine invited him outside for a breath of fresh air.
He took two steps out the front when he spotted Mia and her kids walking toward him. His breath hitched. A smile spread across his face before the survivor’s guilt swept in to drown it away. The trio stopped in front of him.
Mia brushed a stray brown curl off her face and tucked it into the deep red handkerchief she’d tied around her dark hair. The color brought out the flush of her cheeks. Next to her, Finn and Maggie were dressed in matching rain boots. Maggie wore a fuzzy purple hat topped with a bobble that swayed with her every step.
“Hi, Cody.” Mia’s smile lit her face.
Keep it casual . “Hey, Mia.” He bent down to shake Finn’s hand. “Hi, buddy.”
“Me too.” Maggie clutched a stuffed rabbit under her arm. She reached out and grabbed his left hand with her right and shook it vigorously. Her purple bobble and the rabbit’s ears kept time. “Hi-hi.”
“Hello, to you too, Little Miss.” He winked at her. “What brings you guys into town on this beautiful morning?”
“I have a coffee date with Dani in fifteen minutes,” Mia replied. “But we were all going stir-crazy in the house, so I thought I would take these guys for a walk first.”
Finn chased Maggie around and around his mother’s legs.
“Looks like that was a good plan.”
“Are you working here?” Mia turned to look in the window of the store. “Someone painted.”
“Yeah, Dani asked me to spruce up a few places downtown. I started with this one.” He gestured at the door. “Want to come in?”
“Sure. C’mon, kids.” Mia corralled her charging steeds and ushered them into the unit. “Is the paint still wet?”
“No. I finished that yesterday. They can run around if they want.”
Mia shot him a grateful look and let the kids go. They scampered off to the cabinets at the back of the space. “I remember when this was Sampson’s gallery. It was so sad to watch it decay over the past few years.” She spun in a slow circle. “They used to display art over there to the left and the gift items to the right. I used to love to come in here.”
“You even showed a few pieces here, right?” He’d never forget the expression on her face when she’d told Troy and him about the showing in their senior year. Excitement had lit her up from the inside.
“I can’t believe you remember that.” Mia brushed another stray hair back into her handkerchief.
Cody pushed his hands into his pockets. “How could I forget? You made Troy and me call you Madame Monet for a week straight. Even though Monet painted with?—”
“—oil paints and not watercolors, which are clearly superior,” they said together.
Mia laughed. “I guess I did say that a lot. It seems like so long ago now.” Mia strolled around the small space, ending up in the center of the room. “We were just babies back then. So much has happened in the last six years.”
He tried to see it through her eyes. He’d cleaned up the flooring and painted the walls, and now the seven hundred fifty square foot retail unit looked almost brand new.
“I hardly think seniors in high school are babies. But I know what you mean.” Cody picked up the paint brush he’d been using to touch up a few places on the walls and wrapped it in plastic to clean later. “Troy and I thought you were brilliant. We knew you’d make it big with your art someday.”
“Yeah, well, see how well that turned out.” Mia kept her back to him. “As much as I love Finn and was thrilled to be married to Troy, leaving art school was the death of that dream.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.” Cody reached to touch her shoulder but let his hand fall back to his side. “There’s still time though, right?”
“Sometimes I feel the old spark of inspiration and think about getting my supplies out, but I don’t have time for that right now.” She turned to him, lifted her palms in the air. “My kids need me.”
“Your kids need you at your best. Maybe your art is part of that.”
“I suppose.”
But he could see her shrug off his words. “Do you still have any of your pieces?”
“When the Sampsons closed up shop, they gave me back my paintings. Those must be somewhere at Mom’s house along with the things I painted at Kendall.” Mia spun in a slow circle again. “You did a good job in here. I like how this gold wall warms up the space.”
Okay then. If she didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t push.
He took another look around the room. “It was Dani’s idea. She’s hoping to sell someone on using this as a gallery again.” The gold wall contrasted with the creamy off-white on the other walls and drew out the golden hues of the wood trim around the windows and doors.
“Mom! There’s a hidden room in here!” Finn yelled, his voice echoing from behind the cabinetry.
Mia looked to Cody. “Yep,” he said. “I found a small door and a tiny room back there. I cleaned it up but didn’t do anything else to it. I think it got created through a remodel between this store and the one it’s connected to.”
“Be careful,” she called out. “Watch your sister. We’re leaving in a minute.”
“They’ll be fine back there. There isn’t anything to get hurt on.”
“I think you underestimate a small child’s ability to find danger.” Her smile warmed the room.
“We’re right here. This place isn’t big enough for them to get into any trouble. Come and see the cool doorknobs I found for the front door.” He gestured at the glass door. “They’re practically a work of art.”
“Knobs? Seriously?” She raised her right eyebrow.
“What? I like antique hardware.” He shrugged. “I found a pair of cut-glass knobs a while back and thought they would work well here.”
“Okay, but then I need to go.” She checked her phone in a quick gesture. “Dani is expecting us in less than five minutes.”
They walked to the front door. The fluted doorknobs shone crystal clear in their brass setting. “A lot of these antique knobs get cloudy after a while. I’m surprised these ones still look so great.” The back of his neck prickled with the heat of her gaze.
“Doorknobs.” She reached out to touch the knob. “You know, Troy would have given you such a ribbing about this.”
He gave a short laugh, no humor in it. “Why do you think I never brought it up?”
“Um, Cody?” She gave the knob a twist. A thunk sounded, but not the corresponding click of the latch being opened. “I think there’s something wrong here. The knob is turning, but the door won’t open.”
Strange. “Maybe you have to jiggle it. The knob worked fine when I came in this morning.”
“I am jiggling it.” She gave a twist and a pull, and the glass piece came off in her hand. She held it up to him like a child presenting the baseball that just flew through the front window. “Oops.”
“Seriously, Madame Monet? Breaking my stuff?” He put his hands to his hips in mock anger.
“Don’t call me that. And, if you had a more practical knob this wouldn’t have happened.” She glared at him. Hopefully he wasn’t imagining the glint of humor in her eyes.
“A more practical knob is way less fun.”
“Fun isn’t all there is to life. Now we’re stuck in here.” She popped a hand to her hip.
“Wait, are you mad at me?” Weren’t they just having fun a second ago? He took a deep breath. The scent of paint and cleaning fluid tickled his nose. Come to think of it, if they were trapped here, he wouldn’t have time to finish that next building. He really needed that money.
“I’m supposed to be meeting Dani.” She didn’t yell, but it was close. She checked her phone again. “I’m already late.”
Great, more guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you late. Let me see what I can do.”
She sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just on edge. I’ve got a lot going on right now. I was going to ask Dani if she needs help with the new initiative. I need something more steady than occasional shifts at Martha’s.”
He got a flashlight from his toolbox. “Here, point this toward the door.” The light jiggled. He glanced up and saw her looking toward the hidden room. “Hey. Keep it steady.” The room echoed with Finn and Maggie’s laughter. Mia readjusted, bringing her gaze and the light back to him. After several attempts to reattach the glass piece, he could see there wasn’t anything he could do while the set was still attached. “Someone will have to open it from the other side.”
“Isn’t there a back door to this place?” Mia clicked the flashlight off and swung toward the back.
He sighed. “Yes, it’s code to have two doors, but the other one is swollen shut.”
“So we are stuck in here.”
He watched her shoulders creep toward her ears and scrambled for a way to fix this. “I can possibly take the door off its hinges, but that will take a while.”
“I’ll text Dani. Maybe she can come and free us.” She swiped at her phone then tapped out a message. A moment later he heard an answering ding. “She’ll be over in a minute.”
A heartbeat passed.
The silence was broken by a chuckle from Mia.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about the story Troy would have told about this. He would have made it long and complicated and full of danger.” Mia swiped at her eye. Sad, or just from the laugh? A pang seized his heart. He was the cause either way.
“His storytelling was part of what made him such a great fisherman; he fit straight into the stereotype,” Cody agreed. “His tall tales made every sunfish into a five-foot sturgeon.”
“It sure was.” Mia’s mouth curved into a small smile. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for what? Locking you in here and making you late?”
She laughed. “No, thank you for keeping me calm when I freak out for no reason. For being a good friend to me all these years, especially the last few.”
Friend. The word held the same taste it always did when applied to Mia. Not quite right, a bit sour, but still sweet. Because if friendship was all he could ever have with her, he’d take it just to have her in his life.
“Always.”
She lifted her gaze to him, fully meeting his eyes. His mouth dried.
Two small bodies barreled into them at the same time as Dani opened the door from the outside.
“Auntie Dani!” Finn pushed past them and grabbed Dani around the knees. “We found a secret room!”
“Did you?” Dani looked from Cody to Mia and back again. “Why didn’t you guys just use the back door?”
“It’s swollen shut,” they spoke at the same time. Mia swallowed.
“It’s still on my list to fix,” Cody said. And he would be doing that in a minute, once everyone cleared out.
“You know how to do that?” Mia looked surprised. Her statement jabbed him like a fishing spear straight through the heart. He’d been doing odd jobs at her house for the past two years. Did she really not notice his skills? “My front door sometimes swells shut at home,” Mia said. “I have no idea what to do about it.”
How had he missed that? “I can come take a look at it, if you want.”
Mia moved past him and out to the sidewalk. She laid a hand on Maggie’s head. “Would you? That would be amazing. It seems to get stuck whenever I have my hands full of everything.” The tilt of her head toward her kids at the word “everything” and the wry smile made him chuckle.
He leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “Sure, I’ll stop by later this week.”
The group headed away from him. He watched them walk away for a minute, trying to swallow back the longing. Overhead, a cloud passed over the sun and he shivered.
He turned back to finish his tasks in the empty gallery. The sooner he finished, the sooner he’d get paid. Time to focus on a dream he actually had a chance at achieving.