Chapter Twenty-Nine. Duncan
Duncan felt like a bag of hell.
The back of his neck was sunburnt in an inch-wide strip where he’d missed with the sunscreen, and his knees and ankles ached from hours of roof work two days ago. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep and from the sawdust that had drifted into them yesterday. His wrists were sore. Not because of anything specific—they were sore because sore was the default state for his wrists.
He stopped by the house that morning to grab coffee. Whatever he brewed down at the cabin always seemed to taste worse than anything he got anywhere else. Hell, he’d had better coffee at midnight in a Sheetz than what he was able to make for himself.
The kitchen was deserted, but there were signs of his family everywhere. One of Dad’s novelty aprons was crumpled into a ball on the counter next to the stove, and a sweet trace of something baked and buttery lingered in the air. There was a blue-and-white porcelain vase of fresh wildflowers in the center of the island next to an overflowing wire basket of mail. A near-empty glass of iced tea sat in a fresh puddle of condensation next to a bottle of SPF 50 sunscreen with the cap popped open. At the barstool end of the island were a few empty wineglasses, all with a tiny eye of dried Syrah in the bottom. There was also a gin tumbler with two bone-dry lime slices inside, with a black satin hair scrunchie hugging the outside. Duncan slipped it off and lifted it to his nose, closing his eyes on the inhale.
Her.
He couldn’t get it out of his head, the way she’d looked at his presentation. She’d been fresh-faced and wearing her big-framed glasses, in an old tank top and frayed denim cutoffs. Her hair was twisted up in a thick braid as it usually was, but she was windblown and a little frazzled, with strands of it coming loose all over. When he’d first seen her there in the audience, he thought he was hallucinating. Then she’d given him a tentative little smile and a raise of her eyebrows as she slid down her seat, and he’d almost lost what little composure he’d managed to scrounge up for himself.
When they’d argued in the little access hallway outside the auditorium, she’d looked like a pissed-off tumbleweed. He felt like a full-on bastard for how he’d treated her.
A small box addressed to him sat on the stack of mail on the island. He used the tip of his finger to snap the tape around the edge and pulled out five pairs of XL gloves made by different brands, each equally stretchy and made with lightweight cut-resistant fabric. Nitrile coated the contact surfaces across the fingers and palms.
Beneath the gloves was a crisp new bandana, still in the plastic.
White flag.
There was a note on the packing slip.
TAKE CARE OF YOU.
BYten A.M., he’d already responded to a handful of project inquiries and proposal requests in the Brady Brothers’ email inbox, changed the oil on the Gator, and replaced a bent clamp on its CV boot. Now, he had a tractor torn apart to replace its driveshaft, engine grease up to his elbows.
He’d worn one of the new pairs of gloves. Not only did they protect his skin, they gave him a bit of extra grip. He could get used to this.
He was tightening the bolts to finish the job when he heard the shuffle of something large behind him in the open doorway of the equipment garage, then the characteristic sound of a breath being blown out through big donkey nostrils.
Out of an abundance of caution, Duncan had steered clear of Asparagus since his beard had come back in. Now, she came right for him with her head lowered and her tail swishing lazily behind her. Duncan stood and backed farther into the garage, and he braced for the pain of a headbutt or a bite on the shoulder.
Instead, she nuzzled the bottom hem of his shirt and pressed her forehead against his chest, making soft little chuffing sounds. Then she raised her head and nibbled his beard.
Duncan chuckled, pressed his forehead to the spot between her ears, and scratched her under the chin. She smelled warm and dusty, like sweet hay and sunshine. “I guess we really are friends now.”
LATERthat morning, Duncan found his parents in the tasting room. Their comfortable back-and-forth carried into the main space of the bank barn, peppered with laughter and Ma’s intermittent and off-key singing during lulls in the conversation. Dad said something about the day already being “hotter than a goat’s ass in a pepper patch,” and by the time Duncan came into the room, they were laughing so hard they were crying.
The tasting room floor still bore the footprints of the animals that had come in seeking his abandoned pastrami sandwich at the end of spring. He’d smoothed out the edges of the prints himself with a carbide masonry file and filled each of them with a clear resin to bring them level with the rest of the concrete. Then he’d covered the floor with an agricultural-grade sealant. Now, the prints seemed to be an intentional design choice, and he was particularly proud of turning that embarrassment into an aesthetic win.
Dad rubbed oil into the reclaimed barnwood bar, and Ma did the same on the wine racks behind it.
“Hey,” Duncan said, and they both looked up. He turned a chair around and sat on it with legs spread wide, propping his forearms on the backrest. “Got a minute? I need to tell you something.” He waited until he had their attention before he continued. “I’ve been going to school again. In Linden, at the community college.”
Ma tossed her cloth to a little tray on the sink behind the bar. Her face fell. “You kept a secret from us?”
“Ah—it’s complicated. Mostly because if I failed out again, I didn’t want anyone to know I’d even tried.”
Ma said something under her breath in Spanish. “You didn’t fail the first time. You gave up. There’s a difference.”
“Well, no, Ma.” Duncan scratched his cheek. “I might not have been entirely forthcoming about the circumstances there. It doesn’t matter, though. I wasn’t ready then.”
“What classes?” Dad asked.
“Gen ed, at first. Then their architecture diploma program. I’m starting at Drexel in the fall.”
Dad finished a final swipe with his cloth and lobbed it into the tray with Ma’s. He removed his gloves. “Say again?”
“I got accepted at Drexel, Dad. Just found out yesterday.”
Dad pinched his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose. “This is a two-weeks’-notice conversation, isn’t it?”
Duncan’s throat tightened. His heart raced. He’d wanted to have this conversation for most of his adult life, and now that it was happening, he felt like he’d stepped into a different reality. “I don’t want to manage Brady Brothers, Dad. I don’t want to be a general contractor. I should have told you a long time ago.”
Dad looked up with lips pressed tight, but his eyes were soft. “When did you realize this?”
“Remember that summer we stopped at Fallingwater?” Duncan said.
“You were ten years old.” Dad’s voice was gentle.
Duncan cracked his knuckles. “Exactly.”
“Oh, patito. That long?” Ma said.
“Why are we just learning about this now?” Dad asked.
Christ, where to even begin? It was simple, at first. Going back to LCC seemed a straightforward way to right one of his own wrongs. As long as nobody else knew, the stakes were his alone. If he fucked up and failed out again, he wouldn’t have to smile and nod at anyone’s awkward expressions of encouragement.
He didn’t fail, though. It was hard, but he was good at it, and that path he’d convinced himself he was too old and too overburdened to start down was suddenly right there in front of him.
“I don’t want to have to look back and wonder where I’d be now if I’d just kept going,”Millie had said to him once, in their first semester at LCC. That had stuck with him.
Later, the secrecy became more about how the hell to tell Dad he wanted out of Brady Brothers and less about school itself.
“You asked me to take over Brady Brothers five weeks before I started at LCC, Dad. I thought I could handle both. Hell, I did handle both,” Duncan said. “I didn’t want to let you down.”
“You’re my son, not a resource, damn it. You let yourself down by not doing this sooner.”
“You’re right. I did.” Duncan’s temper heated. “So I’m trying to fix it now, before I get any fucking older.”
Ma made a noisy hum in the back of her throat as a warning for the language.
Dad spun a chair around and sat down to face him. Eye to eye. “Son, I gave you Brady Brothers because it seemed like you wanted it. You’re damned good at everything you’ve ever done—”
“I’m good at other things, too.”
“Well, obviously.” Dad’s brow furrowed. “But you didn’t have to go to LCC to prove it. To anyone. And you don’t have to do more now.”
“That’s exactly it, Dad. I didn’t do it because I felt like I had to. I’m doing this for myself. I’m earning what I want.”
“You already have everything you need here,” said Dad. “‘If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.’”
“Are you seriously sitting there, in a pit-stained Wawa T-shirt, quoting Thoreau?”
Dad lifted his chin. “I am a man of nuance and complexity.”
Duncan sighed and closed his eyes to regroup. To Ma, he said, “Is he always this much of a pain in the ass?”
Ma simply pressed her lips together.
“You and Nathan are the Brady Brothers now,” Dad said. “He’s the one you need to be working this out with.”
“I told you. I don’t want to run Brady Brothers.”
“How are you planning to pay for college? Loans? Why in the Sam Hill would you want to go into the same kind of debt your siblings have?” Dad said.
“You want to talk about money? Really? You two weren’t exactly conservative with your decision to spend most of your retirement savings on this place.”
“We’re not talking about us.”
“I have plenty of money.” Duncan was intentionally vague. The money was yet another layer to this shit sandwich. How did he explain he could pay out of pocket for tuition without breaking a sweat? “Even if I didn’t, the program is designed so students can keep a day job. I won’t need loans.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying, son. Brady Brothers can be whatever the hell you want it to be. You want to do green retrofits, sustainable architecture, whatever? Do it.”
“I can’t call myself an architect if I’m not a licensed architect, Dad.”
“I was a contractor for forty years, son. I know the rules. You can get back to designing and drafting more, starting today. Get your plans reviewed and stamped by one of our architects, then move on to the next project.”
“I want to be the one doing that, damn it.” Duncan pressed his fist to the middle of his chest. “Jesus, did you ever try to talk Nate or Patrick out of their ambitions? Mal, or Harry? Or Arden?”
“You need to stop comparing yourself to the people around you,” Dad said. “The only person you should compare yourself to is the person you were the day before.”
“Look. I know you think all of this is helpful. I know you think you’re creating opportunity for me by making things seem straightforward. But ask yourself—what is it about me, compared to everyone else in this family—that makes you feel like you need to make things easy for me?”
Dad was silent for a long time. He looked out the big window that overlooked Cloud Tide, nodding intermittently. Like he was agreeing with his own internal monologue. “Okay,” he finally said. “You’re right. And I’m behind you. All the way. But while we’re on the topic of chasing dreams—” Dad glanced over to where Ma watched them by the bar. “Let’s talk about Temperance.”
Ah, hell.
Duncan cracked his knuckles and looked down at his boots. “What about her?”
“You can’t sneak a sunrise past a rooster, son.”
Duncan stood and dragged his hand over his face.
“How’s she fit in to all this? You doing this for her?”
“Jesus, Dad. I just told you how I was doing this for me—”
“Look at this.” Dad ran his hand along the edge of a joint in one of the open drawers behind the bar. “Dovetail joints like this are strong, but they take time and attention and skill. And if they break—what happens?”
“They don’t usually break if they’re done right—” Duncan said.
“Everything can break, Duncan. I know you’ve seen snapped dovetails before.”
Duncan met Dad’s gaze. “Each half leaves pieces of itself in the other side.”
“Now, I’m not good at metaphors like your mother is—”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Dad—”
“Is he always this much of a pain in the ass?” Dad echoed, looking to Ma.
Duncan sighed. “Temperance Madigan is too good for me. Always has been.”
“Nonsense,” Ma said. “She’d be lucky to have you.”
“You can’t stick a flower in an asshole and pretend it’s a vase, Ma.”
“Now that’s a good metaphor,” Dad said.
Ma pinned him with a look. “Temperance is an egg. You squeeze her hard, and she remains strong. Gentle focus is what will crack her.”
“I don’t want to crack her, Ma.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
Duncan hoisted his tool bag over his shoulder and gave her a one-handed hug and a kiss on the top of her head. “Your metaphors are weird.”
Dad’s laugh echoed in the big space of the barn behind them. “The asshole vase is weirder, son.”
Ma cupped his cheeks with cool hands. “Love breaks us open to make a way for someone else to climb inside, patito. You should both be eggs.”