Chapter 9
The ledger’s a catastrophe, and if there’s anyone else in Vermont still bothering with one, I’ll eat my own pencil.
Maybe that’s why I’m the only one around with graphite-stained calluses, too—a badge of honor, or maybe just stubbornness.
It’s Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday; the days lose all distinction when you’re wading through inventory spreadsheets and Melvin is grumbling in the background like a simmering tea kettle.
At the counter, my sleeves are shoved to my elbows and there’s a streak of lavender paint clinging to my left thumb, a trophy from the weekend’s bedroom shenanigans.
“Morning, Picasso.”
Of course I look up, helpless against the pull.
Jordan’s at the counter, flannel rolled up, hair doing that half-tamed thing, a stripe of dark soot on their temple.
Their eyes are bright, that easy kind of bright that means sleep and good moods and probably both.
My stomach cartwheels. I pretend not to notice.
“Morning, Trouble.” I thump my pencil against the ledger. “What’s on the shopping list today? Pipe fittings? Caulk? Or are you here to bamboozle me with something so obscure I’ll have to excavate it from the stockroom while you gloat?”
“Three-inch deck screws, actually.” Jordan leans in, folding into my space, and I can smell cedar, woodsmoke, and the maddening hint of whatever deodorant they use. “Phillips-head. I’ve got a restoration gig.”
“Another chimney?”
“Whole-house restoration. Old Victorian by Burlington. Two weeks, decent money.” Jordan’s voice is casual, like this is just item number eight on today’s to-do. “Worth the drive, too.”
Two weeks. Out of town. Decent money. It’s not news, exactly, but the numbers line up in my head and make a pattern I don’t like.
My pencil stops, hovering in the air like it’s waiting for permission to fall.
The ledger numbers smear into static. Two weeks.
Out of town. The kind of thing Jordan can’t say no to, not with Sleighbell Springs coughing up odd jobs and the housing market stuck in the last century.
I force my face to do that thing. Neutral, steady, all the right shapes. Jaw loose, eyebrows flat. I could win awards for this face. I’ve practiced it for years, in mirrors and checkouts and right here behind this battered counter.
“That’s great,” I say, and I sound exactly the way I want to, solid, warm, supportive. If you don’t listen for the fraction of a pause, the sound of the words crossing a little too much distance before they come out. “Good money is good money.”
Jordan watches me. I can feel their eyes, picking apart the ghost of my mood in the half-inch between words. I keep my mask tight.
Jordan’s always been good at reading a room, even better at letting the silence hold when it needs to. They fetch the screws from Aisle 4, pay up, and skip the small talk. At the door, one hand on the frame, they pause.
“I’ll text you,” they promise. “Keep you posted.”
I nod. The bell rings, clear as a line break. Gone.
The store sort of exhales. Not empty exactly, the plumbing aisle is alive with some customer fiddling with pipe fittings, but thinner, somehow.
Like a draft sneaking in through a crack in the old window frames.
I stand with the ledger splayed out in front of me, not reading a single number, thumb tracing the lavender paint like it’s a talisman.
Melvin shuffles past, arms full of caulk tubes, cap shadowing his eyes, measuring every step so the floor doesn’t trip him up. He doesn’t even glance my way. Melvin’s silences have mass. This one tells me: I heard. I know. But I won’t make you say it.
The ceiling fan hums overhead, relentless as always, spinning the same song it’s played for years. I turn a page in the ledger. The numbers blur; my brain won’t let go of its new favorite loop: two weeks, out of town, a job Jordan can’t afford to refuse.
Temporary. The word clings like a splinter, hard and familiar.
My life’s been defined by temporary things: housing, loss, duct-tape solutions for things that need rebuilding.
I’ve gotten good at making impermanence look like a lifestyle.
And Jordan Vale, with their calm hands and impossible optimism, is the most permanent thing I’ve let myself hold in years.
Which is precisely why it hurts.
After lunch of a halfhearted sandwich, wolfed down at the counter because sitting feels like giving in, I drift to the back office.
Technically, it’s a closet shoved full of a battered metal desk, a corkboard crowded with Drew-era invoices, and one grimy window facing the alley dumpster.
I pull out the entire history of the store since he took over, almost a decade of ledgers, all uneven numbers and truthful math, the fingerprints of a business just barely clawing along.
I cover the desk with vendor sheets, outdated since Drew died, sticky notes in my own rushed scrawl, receipts, a battered wish-list for a business plan I’ve never found the guts to actually put together until now.
Inventory control, seasonal displays, DIY workshops (not a question, an answer this time), online ordering.
Because, shocker, it’s not the 90s and not everyone wants to trek to Sleighbell Springs for a handful of screws.
Repair and referral services, because every other phone call is someone begging for help with a leaky faucet or a stubborn ceiling fan, and I always say no, because the only person I trust for that is probably already packing for Burlington.
The list snowballs. My handwriting degrades, urgency and hope tangled together. I sketch a rough floor plan, shoving Aisle 4 to the left, expanding the paint section, carving out a workshop from the old stockroom with its coughing water heater. It’s messy, but it’s something. A direction.
This store doesn’t need to be sold; it needs to be built, actually built, shaped with my two hands and all the stubbornness I can spare. My vision, paint-flecked but honest. Not a tombstone; a beginning.
And even before I write it, I know exactly who should run the repair and workshop side. The only person with hands steady enough, heart reliable enough to make it work. Someone who knows every chimney in this town and half the people inside. Someone who texts good morning and always means it.
I don’t write Jordan’s name. That dream is too big, too close, and anyway, Jordan’s probably already on the interstate, headed for two weeks of hard work and temporary comfort. So I cap my pen, fold the pad in half with a sharp crease, and tuck it beneath the ledger like I’m stashing a secret.
The alley window is a sliver of blue sky and not much more. I just sit there, listening to the store breathe around me, trying not to think about how hollow it’ll sound with Jordan gone for two weeks.
The next afternoon, I’m elbows-deep in the paint sample display, reorganizing by color family because the current system is basically organized chaos and also because it gives my hands something to do besides check my phone every two minutes, when the bell rings and the universe sends in my cousin Renee like a well-dressed tornado.
She strides through the door in a tailored blazer, a rolling carry-on trailing behind her, a tote bag slung over one shoulder, and low heels that click against the hardwood.
Her dark hair is swept back in a clean ponytail, and her lipstick hasn’t budged since whatever meeting she swanned out of this morning.
I, by contrast, am wearing paint-stained jeans, a faded t-shirt with a hole near the hem, and my hair is doing that thing where it looks like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket and decided to roll with it.
“Surprise,” Renee says, arms open, and even her surprises sound rehearsed.
I drop a paint chip. “Renee. Hi. This is…” I gesture at the store, at myself, at the general state of affairs, which is approximately one step above controlled disaster. “A surprise.”
“I had a client in Burlington. Figured I’d drive the extra hour.” She scans the store, her gaze landing on the shelving units, the hand-lettered signs, the plumbing aisle with its eternal dusting of pipe-dope and optimism. “It’s exactly how I pictured it.”
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment. With Renee, it rarely is.
She abandons her luggage by the door and clicks through the aisles, fingers trailing along the shelves like she’s taking inventory of my entire existence. Which, given the tote bag, she probably is.
“These shelves are original?” she asks, tapping a support beam.
“1920s, probably. Drew’s dad replaced some of the brackets in the ’90s. They’re holding.”
“Hmm.” The sound carries approximately zero confidence. She pivots, heels catching on a loose floorboard, and moves toward the counter where my ledger sits open, numbers glaring up at us. “You’re carrying all this alone, Mads. The store, the house, the…everything. It’s a lot.”
The words land like she dropped a toolbox on my foot. Not cruel, just heavy, and exactly the kind of direct hit that makes my jaw lock tight enough to crack walnuts.
“I’ve got Melvin,” I say, which is true but also not the point, and I know it.
“Melvin’s seventy if he’s a day.”
“Seventy-two, and he’d gut you with a pipe wrench if he heard you say that.”
She doesn’t laugh. Renee’s sense of humor runs on a different operating system than mine…
more spreadsheet, less stand-up. She pulls out her phone, taps the screen a few times, and holds it up.
A condo, white walls, exposed brick, gleaming countertops.
The kind of place that belongs in a magazine about people who own more than one type of serving spoon.
“Two-bedroom near the South End. Walking distance to that gallery you used to love, the one with the weird sculpture garden.”