Chapter Thirty-Four
“Hey, are you cool if I dip out a little early?” Tony asked.
Grant pressed the heel of his hand against his tired, puffy eyes.
It had not been a good night. He’d cried off and on, fully breaking down when Ivy texted him that she’d made it home safe and sound.
The pillow she’d been using smelled like her, and he’d held it until he was almost asleep, then it occurred to him that he was diluting her scent, which brought him fully awake again, unable to decide if it was more important to preserve the little piece of her or consume it completely while he had it.
Sleep happened at some point because he woke up to a text from Tony asking where the hell he was. Work didn’t stop for a broken heart.
“Yeah, of course. I can finish up here no problem.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a few texts from Ivy that arrived in a bundle.
Ivy: Matcha and mental health walk
Attached was a selfie of her and her green drink out for a stroll in Boston.
It looked cold but dry. The snow they’d been forewarned of in Coeur-de-Lac hadn’t started to fall yet, a fact Grant was salty about.
In his darker moments, he blamed Tim for opening his big mouth about the storm that had yet to arrive.
If he’d never said anything, Ivy might still be here right now.
Ivy: This tastes like grass.
The next selfie was her glaring at her matcha with disgusted betrayal. Grant had never tried matcha, but based on her face alone, he was never going to.
Grant checked to make sure Tony was occupied before making his own disgusted face and snapping a selfie with the jobsite clearly in the background.
Grant: This also tastes like grass.
Ivy sent back a string of laughing emojis, but instead of making him happy, it was a battering ram to the chest. He was supposed to survive five to six weeks of this? He missed who he was yesterday. That bastard had been blissfully ignorant.
“Snow started,” Tony said, pointing out the window. Fat flakes were coming down in a thick sheet. “I’m going to head out.”
“Where to?” Grant asked, his curiosity piqued by how quickly Tony was packing up his tools. “Got a hot date?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tony evaded.
Warning bells went off in Grant’s head. “You and Brad didn’t—”
“I said don’t worry about it.”
If Brad and Tony had already called it quits, that was a serious strike against his own relationship.
He’d been counting on Brad to be a driving force in getting Ivy to visit more frequently.
Brad was absolutely the more spontaneous person in that friendship, and if they had two days free, he’d be dragging her to the airport to come back to Wisconsin.
“Keep an eye on your phone for tomorrow’s schedule. If we can drive, Dad will want us at work.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tony said distractedly, then cleared his throat. “Got a bit of a tickle in my throat.”
Grant had seen this film before, and it was called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Tony was laying the foundation for a sick call.
At about seven or eight that evening, he’d get a text that Tony had a headache and couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get warm.
Then there would be the vomit text between two to four in the morning, along with a, “Sorry, man, I can’t make it.
” It was extremely tempting to show up at his door tomorrow morning with a can of soup that would make an excellent projectile if he found Tony cheating on Brad.
“Gargle something salty,” Grant suggested, then shouted after Tony as he left the house, “Salt water!”
Without Tony to talk to, Grant was able to shut off his brain and get into a flow state waterproofing the bathroom.
The owners had had a bathroom leak at a previous house and never wanted to deal with that again, so they’d paid for the bathroom to be sealed so well it could float like a boat.
Which was fine with Grant, because waterproofing was a great filler task.
There was nothing more satisfying to him than getting his drying times synced up so perfectly around a house that he could move from one project to another seamlessly.
The front door creaked open, and heavy footfalls came down the hall.
“Did you forget something?” Grant shouted, assuming it was Tony coming back.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Tim barked, filling the doorway.
Grant gestured toward the shower stall. “Working.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. I told you this house could wait. Have you seen the snow coming down outside?”
Grant sighed. “Not really, Dad. I’ve been inside working, not staring out the window.” He set down his trowel and straightened. Around his junior year of high school, he’d grown taller than his dad, and Grant drew himself up to his full height. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“You don’t think. You don’t see the big picture. This house can wait; meanwhile the Kellers—”
“Only needed hardware replaced and a mirror hung. So I sent Piper because she’s very capable of doing both of those things. Did they call you to complain that it wasn’t done right?”
Tim sputtered, trying to adjust to the curveball he’d been thrown. “I drove by and no one was there.”
“Because Piper finished”—Grant checked the time stamp on his sister’s text—“more than two hours ago. It made sense for Tony and me to do things like waterproofing the showers here, so if we don’t go to work tomorrow because of the snow, they’re already drying and we’re not behind another day.”
“That’s not what I told you to do, Grant.”
Any other day, he would have let his dad’s criticism roll off his back and gone on with his life.
But it wasn’t any other day. Grant was tired and emotionally raw.
He didn’t want to be at work. He wanted to be in Boston or Paris or wherever Ivy was.
He didn’t need whatever bullshit lesson his dad was trying to teach him.
“You know what, Dad? I’m done.”
“No you’re not. You need to clean up.”
“No, I’m done with you. I’m done with you and whatever the fuck this is, because nothing I do is good enough for you.
My entire life I’ve been told that I was going to take over.
Not asked. Told. I was born the son in Underwood & Son, and that was the end of the discussion.
But if you can’t trust me to run my own schedule, how can I run the business?
If you can’t go one day without showing up to my jobsites to tell me what I’m doing wrong—which is everything—then why the hell haven’t you fired me?
If I’m such a fucking dipshit that I can’t be left unsupervised, why keep me around?
I could’ve done something different with my life, but I wasn’t given a choice. So fuck this and fuck you.”
Grant shouldered past his dad, knocking him into the doorframe as he moved toward the front door.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” Tim bellowed down the hall. Grant stopped and turned to face him.
“Maybe if you weren’t so obsessed with this business, you’d be able to see that your marriage is ending right under your nose.
Did you know Mom joined a bowling league?
Did you even notice she was coming home late a few times a week?
” Grant shook his head in disgust. “This business has ruined our relationship. Do you want it to ruin your marriage, too?”
Tim’s face was red, and sweat bloomed on his forehead. His jaw tensed, but he didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought,” Grant said and grabbed his coat. “You can keep my tools.”
“Grant.” His dad’s voice was strained, but Grant was done. He held up his middle finger as he walked out of the house.
The snow had really come down since Tony had shown him the first flakes. His boots crunched through the fresh coating as he stomped to his truck. He would have to give the truck back eventually, because it was a company vehicle. He had savings, but he would miss not having a car payment.
Fuck. He was going to need a job.
Grant drove through Coeur-de-Lac, unable to see the pavement because it was covered in white, and pulled into the alley behind the movie theater. The windshield wipers were still going full speed while the truck idled. What the hell was he supposed to do?
So he went to the place that always made some sense to him.
The beauty of living above the movie theater was that the current staff knew him on sight. He gave them a nod as he passed and went into the current film. It’s a Wonderful Life. If that wasn’t a film that showed up whenever there was a whiff of depression, he didn’t know what was.
Grant sat in the last row and wished he had his own Clarence to bring him some clarity.
Clarence. Clarity. He wondered if the screenwriters made those close on purpose.
It certainly felt like they’d looked into a crystal ball and modeled the plot after Grant’s life.
The dutiful son who sacrifices his own happiness for everyone around him.
What happened when the movie ended? Did George Bailey get up on Boxing Day and return to the bank? Did anyone ever ask George what he wanted out of life?
Grant stood, strode through the lobby and straight into the manager’s office. Mr. Donaldson looked up from the old-fashioned pen-and-paper ledger he was working on. A wide, friendly smile broke out across his face.
“Grant! Hello. What are you doing here?”
“Mr. Donaldson, I want to buy the movie theater.”
Mr. Donaldson frowned and adjusted his hearing aid. “What did you say?”
“I want to take over the movie theater. I want to buy it from you and run it.”
His former boss looked skeptical. “I don’t think your dad is going to be happy about that.”
“I don’t care what makes him happy. This place makes me happy. Can we figure it out?”
They talked for more than an hour. Grant’s phone buzzed in his pocket over and over, but he didn’t want to talk to his dad at the moment. No one else would call him that many times in a row.
When he left the movie theater, he felt lighter than he had in years. He couldn’t wait to tell Ivy. Grant took his phone out of his pocket.
Fifteen missed calls.
Mom.
Lorelai.
Piper.
Austin.
They’d all called him multiple times. None of them had left voicemails.
His finger hovered over Lorelai’s name to call her back when her name filled his screen.
“What the hell, Lor? What’s going on?”
There was a shaky breath, then she said, “Dad had a heart attack.”