Chapter 14 #3
She didn’t get as far as the door, however.
Emerging from behind a bank of vehicles that formed a massive wall between the house and the shop, she spotted Grant in full rain gear.
He had rigged a large shelter out of tarps and appeared to be moving vehicle parts, tools, and miscellaneous other heavy metal things that lay blocking the shop’s big bay doors.
The heavy rain had no doubt muffled the sound of Madeline’s vehicle, and now it obliterated the splash of her booted footsteps.
When Grant caught her movement in his peripheral vision and turned, Madeline stifled a nervous laugh. His face was a cartoon-worthy portrayal of surprise, complete with round eyes and an O-shaped mouth, which quickly morphed into a frown.
“What are you doing here?” he growled.
Madeline blinked, then rallied. His surliness, though disappointing, wasn’t a surprise. She hadn’t expected him to be all roses and sunshine. “We had a deal, remember?”
“Yeah, but it’s been a month.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Besides, I thought, you know . . . that you were out. That you ‘can’t do this’ or whatever.”
Madeline sighed heavily and crossed her arms. There was no point trying to hide her desperation. If he rejected her . . . well, she’d figure out something else. Maybe she could volunteer somewhere?
“You need the help,” she stated, “and I . . .” She what? Needed to fill her time, so she didn’t go crazy? Needed to find a purpose that would keep her from dying, if not literally, at least metaphorically?
She clenched her jaw. Just one more thing lost in an endless list of losses. Her useless, pointless pride. “And I . . . I need a friend.”
“Huh,” Grant said, staring at her with an unreadable expression, his face an alien blue-gray in the strange light of the tarp tent.
“You . . . ” He broke off with a shake of his head.
Then smile lines creased his eyes, though his tone remained dry.
“You not only sign up for bad deals. You have terrible taste in friends.”
The giddy, weird feeling of kinship or like-meeting-like that had so unhinged Madeline that evening in Grant’s tiny, perfect home all those weeks ago flared again. She grinned but didn’t know what to say, so settled for handing him the plastic sheath of papers.
Grant moved deeper into the cover of the tarp, where a trouble light hung from a makeshift wire hook.
Madeline followed and saw Grover was indeed present and accounted for—deep asleep on a dilapidated old truck seat and seemingly right at home on the exposed foam and springs, so long as his human friend was nearby.
Grant withdrew the papers she’d given so much thought to.
“What’s all this?”
“I thought it might be helpful to create a hierarchy of tasks, which I then broke into steps. I also came up with a list of categories to help us weed out the obvious trash before starting the epic work of determining things to keep, things to donate, and things to sell.”
Grant shuffled through the sheets, giving them a quick scan.
Rain battered the tarp overhead, creating a loud but weirdly pleasing beat, and water streamed from a low corner of the tarp, creating a pool of water that would no doubt be a lake soon.
Grant was no longer scanning. He had flipped back to the beginning and was poring over each page again, reading closely.
Then, without a word, he sank down beside Grover—apparently as oblivious to the moldering foam and uncomfortable-looking springs as his dog was. Madeline worried she’d offended him somehow. He hadn’t appeared to have an action plan, but maybe she was wrong about that.
“I hope I haven’t overstepped. I mean—”
Grant shook his head, “Not at all,” he whispered without looking at her, then his voice dropped even lower like he was talking to himself. “I don’t know why the hell you’re helping me but thank you. I mean it. Thank you.”
They did not start in with her list right away, however.
Since they were both already suited up for bad weather and Grant was in the middle of a job, Madeline jumped into the task at hand—or rolled with it, so to speak.
She spent several hours trundling old tires up a ramp Grant had constructed out of a two-by-eight plank onto a trailer that he’d use to take them away.
When she called it a night, just as the rain finally stopped, Grant retrieved the plastic envelope of papers and waved it at her.
“Thanks again,” he said gruffly. “This plan of yours . . . seeing everything broken down . . . it’s already helped me so much. It makes me think it’s not impossible.”
Madeline’s thighs and glutes were burning, and she was so tired she could hardly lift one foot and place it in front of the other.
Still, she found herself smiling as she climbed into her car, then gave Grant a nod through the window and raised her arm in a silent farewell.
The work had indeed kept her nerves and dark thoughts at bay, but it also felt good to help someone who apparently felt as hopeless and overwhelmed as she often did.
She knew personally how even the dimmest bit of light in a dark tunnel could give the strength you needed to take another step, just when you thought you’d never manage to.
The idea that maybe she’d provided that ember of a spark for someone else was .
. . well, another small flicker that might help her keep taking more steps too.