Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
HALF A TURN
The leak begins as a single drop.
I hear it while feeding Noah lunch.
A slow, hollow tap beneath the kitchen sink.
I ignore it at first.
The house makes noises.
Pipes settle.
The refrigerator clicks.
Noah drops things for the pleasure of watching me retrieve them.
Then the sound comes again.
Tap.
Tap…
Tap.
I open the cabinet beneath the sink.
A beat of water hangs from the metal pipe.
I watch it swell.
Fall.
Another takes its place.
I put a bowl underneath.
Then I text Gavin.
The sink is leaking
He responds five minutes later.
I’ll call someone
I stare at the message.
There was a time when that answer would have relieved me.
Gavin will handle it. Gavin knows who to call. Gavin knows what things cost. Gavin will make the problem disappear.
Now all I see is another thing I handed to him because it was easier than learning it myself.
An hour passes.
The drip becomes faster.
The bowl begins to fill.
I send another message.
Did you reach anyone?
No response.
I call Audrey.
Not because I expect her to fix plumbing. Because Audrey always knows someone.
She answers with, “What did he do now?”
I almost laugh. “The sink is leaking.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all today,” I say.
She tells me to call Dean Harper.
I know the name from the block party planning.
Four houses down from me.
He fixes everything.
And he’s been volunteered by Audrey for plenty for the block party.
“I don’t have his number,” I say.
“You do now,” Audrey says.
My phone vibrates with the contact information.
Calling someone I literally barely know to fix my sink feels strangely intimate.
Not romantic.
Just exposing.
The underside of a sink is where people keep the things they do not want others to see.
Half-empty cleaning products. Old sponges. Trash bags shoved into corners.
I look beneath mine.
It’s chaos.
“Call him,” Audrey says.
She hangs up and I watch the water still dripping.
Still no response from Gavin.
I sigh and call Dean.
He answers on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Uh, is this Dean?”
“Depends on who’s asking.”
I smile. “This is Claire… Bennett…”
“You’re Gavin’s wife,” Dean says. I cringe. “From the cafe.”
Gavin’s wife.
The cafe.
Two pieces of my life, both attached to someone else.
“Yes,” I say. “I have a leak under the kitchen sink. Audrey said to call…”
He asks whether I know where the shutoff valves are.
I look beneath the sink and feel helpless. “There are several things under here…”
“That means no,” Dean says with a light laugh.
He’s not mocking.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he says. “No. Wait. I’m sorry. Is it okay if I stop right now? Sorry for just assuming.”
I smile. “It’s completely fine. Thank you, Dean.”
He arrives with a tool bag and a coffee from Audrey’s.
He looks normal.
Jeans. Work boots. A faded shirt.
No dramatic entrance and certainly no reason for my stomach to tighten except that a man is standing in my kitchen one day after I watched my husband kiss another woman there.
Noah crawls right toward the bag.
Dean lifts the bag and places it on the counter. “Fast kid.”
“He becomes fast when he sees something dangerous.”
“Good survival instinct.”
Noah sits back and looks up at Dean, studying.
Dean crouches a few feet away but does not reach for him.
That matters to me.
Paige reaches for Noah differently anymore.
Like access has become ownership.
Dean lets Noah decide whether to move closer.
He does not.
Dean seems unbothered.
I show him the sink.
He kneels and looks underneath.
I wait for him to tell me the name of the broken part and how much replacing it will be.
Instead he asks, “Want to see?”
“No.”
The answer comes too quickly.
He looks over his shoulder. “You could.”
“I called you because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s usually when people learn.”
The sentence hits something raw.
I cross my arms. “Are you always this irritating when someone asks for help?”
“Only when they’re capable of helping themselves.”
I do not know whether to be offended.
He points to the connection beneath the faucet. “See the water?”
“Yes.”
“This is loosened…” He points to a part.
“That is flooding my cabinet?”
“It isn’t flooding yet.”
“It was emotionally flooding.”
Dean laughs.
He reaches into his bag and removes a wrench. He offers it to me.
I look at his hand. At the wrench. “You’re serious.”
“Half a turn.”
“I’ll break it.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
Dean just smiles.
I take the wrench, almost out of spite.
He leans beneath the sink and points.
I crouch beside him.
The space is too tight.
My shoulder brushes against his.
I move away too quickly and bump my head on the cabinet.
Dean does not make a joke.
He simply puts one hand against the cabinet edge so I do not hit it again.
“Right there,” he says.
I fit the wrench around the part.
I hesitate.
“Half a turn,” he whispers.
I pull and nothing happens.
“Don’t put with your wrist,” he says. “Use your arm.”
He adjusts the angle of my hand.
His fingers briefly close over mine.
Not lingering.
Not charged because he intends it to be.
Charged because no man has touched me without lying to me in two days.
I tighten…
“Stop,” Dean says.
“I barely moved it.”
“That’s why it’s called half a turn.”
I hand him the wrench back and stare.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“That’s it,” he says.
“I fixed it?”
“You tightened it.”
“But… I fixed it…”
He nods, “Yes, you fixed it.”
The satisfaction is embarrassingly large.
I stare at the pipe as though I’ve just rebuilt the house.
Dean returns the wrench to his tool bag.
He then refuses payment.
I insist.
He tells me Audrey already covered it with coffee and a threat involving tables for the block party.
He asks me if I like the cafe.
“Yes, but it’s temporary.”
Not sure why I said that.
Maybe because I do not want him to think pouring coffee is all I can do.
“Temporary until what?” Dean asks.
I have no answer to that.
Until Noah is older.
Until Gavin needs me less.
Until I remember who I am.
Until my marriage stops collapsing.
“Not sure,” I say.
“You have my number,” he says to me with a nod. He looks down and waves at Noah.
“For future plumbing emergencies,” I say.
“You handled the plumbing emergency,” he says.
Then he leaves.
I look at the sink after he leaves.
The cabinet is dry. The wrench is gone.
Nothing about the room has changed except one tightened connection.
Still, the kitchen feels different.
Maybe because Gavin did not solve the problem.
Dean kind of didn’t either.
He showed me where to put my hand. He told me how far to turn.
I did the rest.
The leak stopped after half a turn.
I wonder how many other things in my life only look impossible because no one ever showed me where to put the wrench.