Chapter 7
It’s what he said he wanted, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m not forcing my company on a grown man. If he wants to sit in the motel room and rot, then far be it from me to stop him.
I’ve been telling myself that every day for seven days, but it still hasn’t become the truth.
Because I think I’ve been a dick.
I haven’t thought about his feelings in all of this. What I could do to make him feel better. To make the transition easier. He was in jail for nearly a decade, and now, to make my life easier, I’ve been trying to force him into a box of normalcy.
Maybe what he needs is some solitude, to sort out his life without me pressuring him to fit in before he’s ready.
But Joyce called this morning.
Family dinner tonight, bring Will. I don’t argue with my mother-in-law.
So now, I’m doing the exact thing I said I wouldn’t, standing outside room two with Ollie’s hand in mine and Addie beside me, knocking on the door of someone who has no interest in seeing me.
Will opens the door in sweatpants and a worn-out t-shirt, a few days of stubble grown longer than I’ve ever seen on him, a pale shine to his skin. He looks like someone who’s been inside for a week.
And he probably has.
His eyes narrow in my direction, ready to start something, but then his eyes drop to Ollie, and to Addie, and I knew bringing them to the door was the right decision. He can’t help but be happy to see them, his face lighting up the way it always does at the sight of the kids.
I’m saying my thanks to whatever in him makes him such a great uncle right about now because I was one argument away from having to admit to Joyce that I couldn’t handle him.
“Uncle Will!” Ollie pulls free of me and launches himself at Will’s knees, wrapping both arms around them. “We came to get you!”
Will steadies himself against the doorframe, putting his other hand on Ollie’s head, ruffling his hair. And this is the first time I’m noticing that Ollie’s hair is the same color as his. A lighter brown. Different from my brunette and Jess’s blonde.
“You have a mustache like Daddy now,” Ollie says, tilting his head back to look up at him.
“Don’t say that,” Will argues, and I roll my eyes at the classic ‘make fun of my appearance’ thing he always has to do.
Addie is quiet beside me, watching him with an insight that my six-year-old doesn’t have. Will doesn’t look right. We haven’t seen him for a week. And the last time…
“You okay?” she asks.
“Sure thing, kiddo,” he says, and it would almost be convincing if he didn’t look like shit. “What’s going on?”
“Grandma wants us all for dinner,” Addie says. “You too.”
His eyes flick to mine, like an instinct he didn’t mean to have, and he looks away before I can acknowledge him.
“You should come,” Ollie says, still attached to Will’s knees. “Grandma’s making Spaghetti. It’s the best thing I ever ate.” He looks down at Ollie, then at Addie, and I know he wants to say yes. I can see it. He missed them. But spending time with his parents…
“Let me get dressed,” he says, making up his mind quicker than I thought he would.
Addie takes Ollie back to the car, playfully arguing with him across the parking lot, while I linger by the door, hoping to clear the air before another uncomfortable evening.
According to my watch, it only takes him eight minutes to look presentable in a hoodie and jeans, his facial hair shaved to an intentional scruff that suits his face. “This is a terrible idea,” he says, pulling the door shut behind him.
“Maybe it’ll be fine.”
“Not likely,” he counters, moving toward the car. We walk in silence across the parking lot, Ollie’s voice drifting from where he’s shouting at Addie about something.
At the car, Will pauses, his hand on the door handle, and I don’t think this discomfort is about me. He’s worried about dinner. About walking into his parents’ house and trying to find some semblance of normal after he spent the last twenty years being anything but.
I reach out for him, my hand on his shoulder, trying to be there for him the best way I can. But the moment we make contact, he shrugs me off and pulls the car door open, leaving me standing outside my car.
So much for clearing the air.
The fence has needed to be patched up since last winter, when a storm knocked some boards loose, and Frank has never once suggested we do something about it until today. About five minutes after I got here, he came into the living room with his toolbox and told me to come on.
So here I am, putting up some boards that aren’t the same color as the fence, but Frank tells me will settle. And I’m doing a terrible job. No help at all.
Maybe making it more difficult than it should be.
But Frank is patient, watching me with the look of a man who has accepted that his son-in-law doesn’t have a handy bone in his body. “You’re holding it wrong,” he says, gesturing toward the tool I can’t name.
“I am?”
“Tilt it.”
“How’s he doing?” Frank asks, once he helps me angle my wrist the right way, leaning against the fence.
“He’s doing alright. I’ve got him helping out at the practice while we’re looking for work.” Not exactly the truth anymore, but something in me doesn’t want to tell Frank about what happened. Still thinks we need to give Will a chance.
He makes a sound that says he doesn’t believe my opinion anyway.
“He’s trying.”
“Yeah, sure he is. Right up until things get hard and he ain’t no more.”
I set the tool down, finding him staring at the back deck where Will is standing with Joyce, too far away for us to hear what they’re saying. Addie is pushing Ollie on the swing set while he shouts higher, higher.
He’s watching them with a smile on his face, and I think he actually laughs at something his mom says.
“He’s different this time,” I say, nodding toward him. I’ve never seen Will so open, regardless of his anger over the past.
“You say that now, but I know that boy.”
“I know him too.” I get back to work, even though I have no idea what I’m doing. “And I’m still saying it.”
Frank is quiet for a moment, watching his son with his wife, distrust in the lines of his forehead. “You’re really gonna defend him after everything he’s done?”
“Come on, Frank. He didn’t kill anybody. He made a mistake—”
He scoffs. “He made more than a mistake.”
That’s true. I know that. But I stand my ground, lining up another nail with unsteady hands. “People can change.”
“That much?”
“Frank.” I set the tool down again and turn to face him properly, to challenge him, something I never do. But I can’t forget Will’s reaction to the town’s opinion of him. And hearing his own father echo the same sentiment….
I don’t like it.
“He didn’t have to come tonight. He could have said no.
I’m sure he wanted to. But he walked through that door and sat at the table, knowing you feel the way you do.
Because you’re his parents and he loves you.
It would help him a hell of a lot more if the people who are supposed to be in his corner acted like it. ”
When Frank looks at me the way he does, I almost feel bad, but this is important. It feels like we have one more chance to help him.
“I’m his father,” he says finally, his voice gone rough. “You know how many times I’ve watched him—” He shakes his head, looking down at his hands. “I’m tired, Nolan. Lord knows I love my boy. But I’m tired.”
I feel for him. He’s been holding out hope that his son will finally get his life together, and he’s been let down every single time. We all have.
But that doesn’t mean Will doesn’t deserve a chance now that he’s clean.
“I think you need to give him another chance,” I say, fully aware of how much I’m asking.
Frank pushes off the fence, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’m going in. Cold out here. Not good for the old bones.”
“I’ll finish up.”
He looks at the fence and back at me, holding the nail thingy wrong again. “Sure you will.”
It’s apparent now that Frank has gone back inside that I have no idea what I’m doing.
I line up the board the way Frank showed me and pull the trigger on the tool. The nail doesn’t go in.
I try again, and I think I’ve got it this time. Until I let the board go and it swings down, smacking me in the toe. “Shit!” I shout, grasping the fence for balance.
“What are you doing?” A voice comes from behind me, followed by a mean laugh.
I continue what I’m doing, picking up the board, not giving him the satisfaction. “Fixing the fence.”
“That’s not what it looks like from here.”
Will comes to stand beside me, hands in his pockets, his hoodie from before stripped down to a t-shirt, looking at the piece of fence I’ve been working on for the past twenty minutes with an expression identical to the one Frank left me with.
“I’ve got it under control.”
“You’re holding the nail gun wrong.”
“You sound like Frank.”
“Frank may have been right this one time.” He holds his hand out. “Give me that before you kill yourself.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Nolan.” He says my name the way I say the kids’ names when they’re being particularly annoying, wiggling his fingers. “Give it.”
I hand it over, no idea why I’m arguing in the first place.
He takes it, and it looks right in his hands, like he has some idea how to use it. “Hold that flat against the post.” Lining up the nail gun, uncomfortably close to my fingers, he pulls the trigger. The nail goes in straight on the first try.
“How did you do that?”
“Dad taught me,” he says, already moving to the next section.
We work our way down the fence line, me holding boards and Will doing the actual work, and we’re actually efficient, unlike the previous half hour I spent out here. He knows what he’s doing.
“You held it crooked that time,” he speaks up, breaking the comfortable silence we’ve fallen into.
“I’m a doctor, not a carpenter.”
“Yeah,” he says, turning back to the fence. “We all noticed.”
On the next board, my eyes catch on his arms. The muscles that flex under his short sleeve when he lifts the nail gun. The goosebumps pebbling his skin from the wind…
That board is crooked, too.
When we finish, Will steps back and looks at the fence with his hands on his hips. I look at it too. “Well, it looks like shit, but it’s what the old man wanted.”
“He said it would blend in with time,” I inform him.
“Let’s hope so,” he says, reaching down and grabbing the hem of his shirt, lifting it to wipe the sweat from his face. Right about the time I’ve turned to look at him.
My eyes catch on his torso. On the definition of his toned stomach, the lines and the trail of hair leading lower…
“What? I got something on my shirt?”
I flinch, looking up quickly to meet his eyes. He’s dropped his shirt, and his eyebrows are raised in question. “Oh. Um. No, nothing,” I stutter, turning away from him. I can feel his eyes on me, burning a hole in the back of my head, heating my ears. “Are we done?”
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “We’re done.”
I hesitate, looking in the rearview mirror. Addie has her phone out, and Ollie is resting on her shoulder, watching a video. She must feel me looking at her because she meets my eyes through the mirror.
“I’m gonna go talk to Uncle Will for a second. Lock the doors.”
He turns around when he hears me behind him, letting out a full-body sigh. “Dude.”
“This won’t take long. I have a proposition for you.”
He crosses his arms, leaning against the door to his room. “What kind of proposition?”
“The practice needs work. You saw the wall the first day.” I pause, trying to think of a way to say this, the way I’ve been since we had apple pie and I realized I have a job he can do. “You’re handy. You know how to use tools. And I’ve got a half-finished project that needs to be done.”
He’s watching me with the same flat expression he always has when I talk, but I know if I hadn’t piqued his interest a little bit, he would’ve already gone inside.
“I can’t pay you what the job is worth,” I admit. “But it’s better than nothing.”
“You want me to renovate your practice.”
“I want you to finish what I can’t do on my own. Walls, floors, whatever you think needs doing. I’ll cover materials.”
“And you’d pay me.”
“Yes.” He looks off toward the road, chewing on his lip, considering my offer. “Just until something better comes along,” I add. “We’ll keep looking in the meantime.”
“Anything that comes along would be better than working for you.”
“Think of it as a temporary position. And if you hate it, you can quit.”
He meets my eyes, the teal color flashing under the porch light as he narrows them slightly, looking for the catch. “You’d have to leave me alone while I work. And you have to trust me not to screw up. No hovering.”
“I don’t hover.”
He raises his eyebrows in disagreement with that statement, but before I can argue my case any longer, he exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose like he already regrets what he’s about to say. “Fine. What time do you need me there?”
The ball of nerves that’s been sitting inside of me since the day he asked me to leave him alone begins to loosen for the first time. “Early, before patients arrive, so I can help you get started.”
“I’m not wearing a uniform.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
“Good.” He reaches for the doorknob, and I head back toward the car, ending the conversation before I say something to ruin what little progress we’ve made.
I can’t help but notice on the drive back home that for the first time in about a week, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
But that doesn’t mean anything.
I’m just glad we’re back on track.