Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
GAbrIEL
I’ve been working on Camryn’s arch for the past three hours. She’s requested a special message.
C loves D, with a heart drawn around it. She wants it small, hidden from a first glance. When the order for this arch came in, I had no idea who it belonged to. The details aren’t my job. My job is to put hands on the wood, to carve and sand and mold. And burn.
Joel has agreed to introduce some of my pyrography pieces on his social media. I’ve brought my wood burning machine with me today, and a few new pens and tips. I have a handful of decorative wood slices finished, but I think custom coasters and wooden spoons will sell better. They are less expensive and easier to give as gifts.
The irony of my past life and my current life intersecting isn’t lost on me. No matter what I do, I end up around fire.
Like most mornings, Avery was my first thought when I woke up. Usually my thoughts are wistful, but today I felt frustrated. Even though she’s so damn close, she’s still so damn far.
My fault. All of it.
Joel walks into the space where I’m set up, finishing a section of the arch. He is a kind man, quick to smile and slow to judge. Thank God.
“Looking good,” he says, surveying my work. “I hate to admit it, but you’re better than me.”
“Nah.” I wave away his compliment, but he’s not having it.
“I’m serious. I thought I had a good ten years left with this business, but looking at what you’re capable of…” He trails a fingertip over a curve in the wood. “You might just edge me out. And I might just let you.”
I look at my feet and smile. Joel is too good to me. His wife, Kimberley, has been just as kind. She sends him to work with lunch for me, and baked goods, and random items she swears are either deeply discounted or two-for-one specials.
“Don’t go retiring on me yet,” I tell Joel. “There’s plenty I still need you to teach me.”
He points at my wood burning tools on the desk across the room. “I think it’s you who should be teaching me. Where did you learn to burn wood?”
He’s probably expecting me to say the big P word, except they wouldn’t have allowed us to have weapons, and wood burning tools could absolutely be weapons.
“I took woodshop in high school as an elective. I wasn’t expecting to love it, but it all clicked for me. The way a person can take something made from the earth and imbibe it with their own creativity. I couldn’t believe I could put my hands on something so precious, and leave a mark. It felt like even if I was just this tiny human, I mattered.”
“I understand what you mean. I never learned pyrography, but building and carving makes me feel the same way.”
He walks around the arch, eyes roaming the details. “Thanks again for watching Dixie for us.”
I returned the dog to him this morning when I arrived here at work, and Kimberley came to pick her up and take her home. I wasn’t expecting how much I enjoyed having Dixie around, and I feel sad thinking about going home to an empty house. “Anytime. It was nice having her there.”
Joel lingers. I can tell he wants to say something to me, so I draw out the work. I go back over what I’ve carved, pretending to smooth and perfect.
After a minute, he says, “That woman from a few days ago… She’s your ex-wife?”
I knew we’d arrive at the topic eventually. “Yes, that’s my ex-wife.” My stomach lurches at the word.
He nods slowly. “I’ve known a lot of guys with ex-wives. I can’t say I’ve ever seen any of them act like that when they see them.”
“There’s some unfinished business.” There really isn’t. The papers were signed. Our assets split or dissolved. On paper, we are done.
“Sure looked to be that way.”
“How long have you been married to Kimberley?”
“Forty-one years.”
I tap the sawhorse behind me with two knuckles. “Did you think it would be easy?”
“Never.”
“I don’t know why, but I went into marriage thinking it would be easy. People talk about ‘hard times,’ but that concept sounded like, well, a concept. Something that couldn’t be applied to me and her.” So arrogant. Like Avery, I’d believed hard times belonged to other people. It didn’t occur to me the hard time could be a living, breathing organism. A person. Me.
“I take it you hit those hard times?”
I laugh once, a hollow sound. “Head-on.”
Joel eyes me. He knows where my story leads, but we don’t talk about it much. The mention of prison makes people uneasy, and for good reason. They immediately think violence, repeat offenders, hardened criminals. Danger. Not someone making the worst mistake of their life, and paying dearly for it.
I learned all about what people think of ex-cons when I was trying to get a job after I got out. One glance at my application and out the door I went. Time after time, I watched the curtain close over their expressions, the polite head nod as they came up with a reason for why they weren’t hiring. Then I remembered Drew, who I’d met on the inside, telling me about his uncle Joel after he learned I liked working with wood. Drew made it sound like his uncle was a salt of the earth guy who believed in second chances. I found a parole officer in the area, packed my bags, and drove up here to Sugar Creek. I introduced myself to Joel and Kimberley, and Joel agreed to take a chance on me.
“Do you think there’s any hope for you two?” Joel asks.
My lips purse and I look down at my dirty jeans. “She said she’s over me. And she doesn’t want to see me again.”
“Hmm.”
It’s a dubious sound, and draws my attention back to him.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“If she’s over you, why doesn’t she want to see you again?”
“Because I remind her of a time she’d prefer to forget.”
“I’m not buying it.”
I smile at his insistence.
“I’m just sayin’”—he lifts his hands—“I’ve been alive for a long time, and I know more about women than you do. I saw that young lady’s face. She’s about as over you as Kimberley is over me.”
“You sound like a romantic.”
He pats his chest, just above his heart. “A man can’t be married as long as I have and not be a romantic.”
Joel’s phone rings and he fishes it from his pocket. “Speak of the angel,” he says, winking and walking away to answer Kimberley’s call.
I turn my attention away from the arch and to my burn machine. Settling in, I create three sets of coasters, each one distinctly different designs. One geometric, one floral, and the other a monogram. I use Avery’s initials.
AWR
According to her manuscript and the title page, we no longer share a last name, but I’m being hardheaded.
I’m just about to call it a day when Joel passes through. He peers over at the work, nodding his head in approval. “We’ll get Mason to take the photos tomorrow.”
I’m glad he has his grandson to run the social media, because that’s way out of my wheelhouse. Even before I went to prison, I never bothered with it.
“Sounds good,” I answer, packing away my pens and tips.
Joel pushes off the table, and starts to walk away. He turns back. “You may be down”—he slides his hands into his pockets and shrugs—“but you aren’t out.”
I like that. A lot. It sparks hope into a place I’m not sure hope is allowed to be.
I finish out the day, and go home to an empty house. I make dinner for one, which is depressing because most recipes are meant for at least two. I wrap up the leftovers and store them for tomorrow. Instead of reading one of the books I’ve borrowed from the Sugar Creek library, I page back through Avery’s manuscript, picking and choosing what I read a second time. I like how she describes our first date, and all the intimate moments. I love reading about how I made her feel. In this form, I get to relive it as much as I want.
The brightness of these parts still manages to cast a shadow. Tiny stabs assail my heart, and still I marvel at the woman behind the words.
Avery wrote this. I let her go, and look at her.
She soared.
I hate to know I was right.
It would be worse had I been wrong.
Joel volunteered me to help unload and set up tables for the county fair being held this weekend. He made a comment about needing brawn, and he would serve as the brains. Not that much of either is needed in this situation.
Which is fortunate, because only half of me is here, unloading tables and carrying them to where I’ve been directed to go. The other half is stuck on Avery’s book, living our relationship through her eyes.
I vividly remember the day we met, too. Not in the fire, but for real, in the fire station. In my version, she was the one who stopped my breath. She wore a skirt that swished around her ankles, and a white T-shirt tied in a knot at her waistline. When she lifted her hand to shake mine, her shirt rode up and revealed a line of her skin. She stunned me that day. She stuns me now.
On my way here I drove past the cabin where she’s staying, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I didn’t, but I saw her car. She was there, and somehow that was enough. Well, not enough, but it was something. More than I’ve had in a long time.
“Gabriel?”
I turn toward my name. Jane from Lady J Bakery walks my way.
“Where is your head right now?” The bracelets on her arm clack together as she gestures in the air. “I’ve said your name three times.”
“Sorry about that.” I duck my head at her. “In my own world, I guess.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her eyebrows raise. “Does this world of yours have a young lady in it?”
I palm my chest with exaggeration. “Jane, come on. You know you stole my heart the first time I stepped foot in your bakery.”
Jane laughs, her lined face wrinkling further. “My blueberry muffins have a reputation for doing that.”
Jane is fifty-eight, and splits her time between her bakery and church. She’s beautiful, in a regal sort of way. Kimberley once told me Jane showed up in town one day, all by herself. No ring, no moving truck, no nothing. She rented a little place outside town that doesn’t even have a proper address, but every Sunday she went to church. Before long Jane had melted into the town of Sugar Creek as if she’d always been there. She was gorgeous, according to Kimberley, and fielded advances from single men of varying ages, but always said no. Eventually they all quit trying. Kimberley swears Jane’s true love is baking, and there isn’t room for anything else.
I disagree. After Kimberley told me all this, I watched Jane every time I went into Lady J. There is something inside her that keeps her from being truly happy. She ran away from wherever she was before, and she came all the way here to Sugar Creek. How can I tell?
It takes one to know one.
I ran here, too. It wasn’t just the difficulty finding a job, but everything else. Going to a restaurant and listening to someone complain about the food not being to their liking. My mother, hovering over me. My dad, slapping me on the back and telling me I needed to get back on the horse. If only it were that simple. Maybe for some people it is, but not me. I couldn’t slip back into my old life. For one, there was no Avery. For two, nothing fit quite right anymore. As if all the old shapes were circles, and now I’m a square.
Jane pulls the lid of a plastic container and holds it out to me. “Hungry?”
I reach in eagerly. Jane’s blueberry muffins are legendary.
“So,” Jane says, putting the top back on the container. “What has you so distracted you don’t hear your own name?”
I brush crumbs from my lips as I chew, shaking my head. “Memories.”
“Memories,” she repeats, the word heavy, as if she knows exactly what I mean. “Isn’t it amazing what we’ll do to ourselves with memories? How willing we are to experience pain over and over again?”
“Or joy,” I add, thinking about that day I saw Avery in the fire station.
“Right,” she says, and I get the impression joy isn’t a part of Jane’s memories. “Your memories are good ones, then?” Her eyebrows lift as she asks the question.
“Some more than others.” I swallow another mouthful. “I’m sure that’s typical of most people.”
She nods slowly. “Anyway…” She pushes off the wall she’d been leaning on. “Would you mind setting up the awning over my table? I’ve been feeling stiff lately. Starting to feel my age,” she jokes, rubbing at her lower back and pretending to hobble.
“You aren’t a day past forty,” I say, walking beside her to her table. She laughs.
It only takes me a few minutes to set up the awning for her. There are pockets at the bottom, and I fill them with rocks to keep the awning in place. Jane pays me with another muffin. Cinnamon sugar this time.
Jane looks out at the work being done to convert the space into a fair. “Do you ever wonder what it’s all for?”
My eyebrows scrunch and I gesture out with one finger. “All this, you mean?”
She crosses her arms in front of herself. “Life. Everything we do. What is it all for?”
In the short time I’ve been in Sugar Creek, I’ve grown close to Jane. She’s almost like a mother figure, one who doesn’t judge me or wish I were someone else.
I squint at Jane, trying to figure out where this is coming from. I’ve never heard her sound this melancholy. “Love, I suppose.”
She purses her lips as she considers my answer. “Awful lot of mess for that one thing.”
In my mind, I see Avery. Our situation is more of a disaster than a run-of-the-mill mess.
“Though,” Jane adds, “I guess there cannot be light without darkness.”