9. Graham
Graham
The metal door shut behind Riley and stayed shut.
Graham stood in the gravel, the divorce petition crushed along one edge in his hand. Beyond the wall, the presses kept pounding, each stroke carrying through the loading dock as if the shop had already absorbed her back into its day. Nothing inside slowed for his arrival.
He stared at the door until the sun on his neck became impossible to ignore.
A second door opened farther down the building.
Mac stepped onto the loading dock with a clipboard under one arm. He looked from Graham to the Aston Martin sitting across the freight lane. He walked to the hood and rapped the clipboard against the silver paint.
“You planning to leave that car in my freight lane all morning?”
Graham looked toward the car. “I’ll move it out of your way. I’m not leaving town.”
“I didn’t ask about town.” Mac pointed to the lane. “I asked about my loading dock.”
Graham flattened the bent corner of the papers with his thumb. “Is Riley staying on the floor for the rest of the shift?”
“Riley’s doing her job.”
Mac did not lower his voice because of Graham’s name or glance around for cameras. He looked at Graham the way he might have looked at a broken pallet left in the wrong place.
“I’ll stay out of her way.”
Mac tapped the hood again. “Standing in my freight lane is not staying out of anybody’s way.”
“Then I’ll move the car.”
“And after that, you’ll move yourself.”
The presses struck again behind the wall.
Mac lowered the clipboard to his side. “You are blocking my freight delivery route, Delaney, and I couldn’t care less how many magazine covers feature your face.
Climb back into that shiny car and drive it down the highway, or I will hook a tow chain to the axle and drag the damn thing out of my yard. ”
Graham turned from the car and faced him.
The old instinct remained, polished by years of people stepping aside when he entered a room. One call. One credential. One check large enough to make a problem disappear.
None of it opened Riley’s door.
“My wife and my unborn child are inside that building,” he said. “I’m not going in after her. I’m not disrupting her shift. But I’m not leaving.”
Mac’s expression hardened. “Riley is my lead mechanic. When she clocks in, her safety becomes my responsibility. She looked you in the eye and told you to get lost. That means something here.”
“It means I stay out here.”
“It means you leave her alone.”
“I am leaving her alone.”
Mac glanced at the car. “You have a strange way of showing it.”
Graham lowered the papers to his side. The door remained closed. That was Riley’s answer for today. Forcing his way inside would only prove she had been right about him again.
But driving away would be worse.
“I spent months believing there would always be another day to fix this,” he said. “There wasn’t. Walking away from this dirt lot would be the biggest mistake of my life, and I’ve already made enough of those.”
Mac said nothing. Graham looked at the driver’s door, then back at the shop.
“I’ll move the car out of your lane,” he said. “After that, you can call the sheriff, call a tow truck, or curse at me until sunset.”
He folded the petition once. “But I am staying.”
He was staying.
Graham crossed to the Aston and opened the driver’s door. Heat rolled out of the cabin, trapped under the windshield since his arrival. He set the folded petition on the passenger seat, started the engine, and backed away from the loading doors while Mac watched from the dock.
“Far edge of the gravel,” Mac called. “Keep the loading doors clear. And stay off the turnaround. Box truck needs the radius.”
“Understood.”
Graham drove to the edge of the property and parked beside the fence. When he killed the engine, the shop presses reclaimed the yard with their steady pounding. He looked across the passenger seat at the papers bearing Riley’s name, then at the jacket he was still wearing.
Five years ago, clothes like these would have belonged to somebody else.
He pulled the jacket off and dropped it beside the petition. The Rolex came next. Sweat had worked beneath the band, and he had to force the stiff clasp open. Graham placed the watch on the console, rolled his shirt sleeves past his elbows, and shut the car door.
Mac hadn’t moved.
When Graham returned across the gravel, Mac looked over his shirt, trousers, and shoes. Mac’s stare held none of the recognition Graham had spent years receiving in airports, arenas, and hotel lobbies.
“My industrial stitcher costs less than that shirt on your back,” Mac said. “We’re running a fabrication shop, not a rehabilitation retreat for rich athletes. I’m not letting you wreck Riley’s shift because your conscience finally woke up.”
Graham stopped in front of him. Another answer rose out of habit—an explanation, a defense, some polished collection of words meant to prove he understood.
Words had brought him here.
“I’m not asking you to make her talk to me.”
“Good, because I wouldn’t.”
“I’m asking for something useful to do.”
Mac glanced toward his rolled sleeves. “Rolling those up doesn’t make this a costume change.”
“I know.”
“Those hands ever do anything besides hold a hockey stick?”
The question should have insulted him. Instead, Graham looked down at the faint scars across his fingers, marks that existed long before sponsorship contracts and equipment managers started doing everything for him.
“I hauled lumber before hockey paid enough to cover rent,” he said. “Minimum wage. Double shifts when I could get them.”
Mac’s mouth tightened. “And now?”
“Now I’m standing in your yard asking you to point me toward the manual labor.”
“You expect me to be impressed because a millionaire remembers working for an hourly wage?”
“No.”
That answer bought the first stretch of silence Mac hadn’t filled with an order to leave.
Graham resisted the urge to decorate it. Riley had spent years doing work nobody praised because the work still needed doing. If he turned this into another performance, he deserved to be sent back to the highway.
Mac shifted the clipboard under his arm. “You said you wanted to stay out of her way.”
“I do.”
“Then you work where I put you, you don’t wander through my shop hunting for her, and you don’t slow anybody down because your back starts complaining.”
“Fine.”
“Not fine. Listen.”
Graham held his silence.
Mac pointed around the side of the building. “Find Wade. Truck dropped pallets of sole leather this morning. Bundles run close to a hundred pounds each, and they have to come off before the next delivery gets here.”
Graham looked toward the corner of the building.
Mac continued, “Wade works at his own pace. You keep up with him. You do not turn yourself into another problem somebody else has to solve.”
For once, Graham had been offered terms that money could not improve.
He nodded. “I won’t. Thank you.”
Wade was already beside the box truck when Graham rounded the building. Two pallets sat behind him, stacked with stiff bundles of sole leather. Wade looked once at Graham’s rolled sleeves, reached into a crate, and tossed him a pair of canvas gloves.
“Mac send you?”
Graham caught them against his chest. “Said you had freight.”
“Gloves. You’ll want them.” Wade hooked both hands beneath the nearest bundle. “Start with the outside pallet. Don’t drag anything across the gravel.”
Graham pulled the gloves on and stepped beside him. “Where do you need me?”
Wade nodded toward the open loading bay. “Inside wall. Keep the stacks square.”
The first bundle punished every mistake. Graham grabbed too high, forcing his arms to carry more of the load than necessary, and the stiff leather edge scraped across his shirt as he wrestled it off the pallet.
“Get underneath it before you lift,” Wade said. “Fighting the top edge wastes your arms.”
“Show me once.”
Wade reset the next bundle, slid his hands beneath it, and brought the weight against his body before turning toward the shop. “There. Keep it close and walk it in.”
“Got it.”
The next one went better.
By the time the outside pallet was empty, sweat had soaked Graham’s shirt from collar to waist. Dust streaked the fabric where each bundle pressed against him, and grit had worked its way inside his shoes. Wade kept moving with the same workmanlike rhythm, never rushing, never wasting a step.
“You need water, say so,” Wade said as Graham reached for another bundle. “Passing out just gives me another thing to move.”
“After this pallet.”
“After this bundle. Don’t get heroic.”
Graham carried it inside, set it against the stack, and took the bottle Wade pointed toward without arguing.
Two hours later, Mac appeared at the loading door and jerked his clipboard toward the back of the shop. “Freight’s handled. Grinding Room needs clearing.”
The room trapped the afternoon heat beneath a ceiling stained by years of production dust. Rubber shavings clogged the exhaust traps under the machines, packed together with leather scraps and old cement until the mess resisted the shovel.
Graham filled one bin, dragged it aside, and started on the next station.
His shirt had lost any resemblance to something designed for a sponsor dinner. Black dust coated the front, sweat pasted it to his back, and a smear of contact cement marked one cuff.
Wade stepped up beside the workbench and set down a wire brush and scraper. “You have to drive your shoulders into that scraper. Wiping the surface is useless. If that mixture of rubber dust and cement settles in the traps, it turns directly into concrete.”
Graham wedged the scraper beneath the hardened ridge and pushed. The first pass barely chipped it.
Wade pointed lower. “Change the angle. Let the edge get underneath it.”
Graham reset his grip and leaned into the tool. A strip of cement broke free and dropped into the tray.
“There you go.”
Another section waited beneath it. Graham attacked that one slower, forcing the scraper underneath before putting his weight behind the handle. The residue broke away in chunks instead of powder.