Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Lumberjack (Wrong Number, Right Grump #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

WALDEN

The first log of the morning splits clean down the center.

Red oak, probably eighty years old, pulled out of a barn in Lovelock that was finally giving up the ghost. Beautiful grain.

The kind of wood Caleb Morrow will turn into a dining table some couple in Reno pays four thousand dollars to eat cereal on.

I set the next piece on the mill bed, check the blade tension, pull my ear protection into place.

Maple watches from her spot by the shop door, chin on her paws, one brown eye tracking me the way she's done every morning for the past two years.

She used to watch Cora like that. Now she's stuck with me.

The saw screams through the oak. Sawdust kicks up in a golden cloud, catching the early light through the shop's east windows. I run six boards before the sun clears the ridge, stack them on the drying rack, sweep the platform. My phone buzzes on the workbench.

Probably Caleb checking on his walnut order. Or my brother, who calls every Tuesday at seven like I'm a welfare check on his calendar.

I pull off my gloves, pick up the phone.

Unknown Number:

I just want you to know that I bought the inappropriate underwear for tonight and I am thinking about you in a deeply unprofessional manner.

I read it three times.

I do not own inappropriate underwear. I am not anyone's tonight. The number is unfamiliar, the area code is Reno, and I'm a forty year old custom sawyer who lives alone with a dog who tolerates me because I'm the one who fills her bowl now.

My thumb hovers over the screen. Common sense says ignore it. Delete it. Go back to the oak.

Me:

Wrong number.

I set the phone down. Pick up my gloves. Get halfway to the mill before it buzzes again.

Unknown Number:

OH GOD

Then, rapid fire.

Unknown Number:

Oh god oh god oh god

I am so sorry

Please delete that

Please tell me you deleted that

I am DYING

This is the worst morning of my entire life and it is 6:47 AM

I stare at the screen. Something twitches at the corner of my mouth. A muscle I haven't used in a while.

Me:

Deleted.

I didn't delete it.

Unknown Number:

You're lying. Nobody deletes things that fast. You screenshot it didn't you

Please tell me you didn't screenshot it

I am a KINDERGARTEN TEACHER

I teach CHILDREN

And I just texted a complete stranger about my underwear purchase Unknown Number: At 6:47 IN THE MORNING

On a TUESDAY

Seven texts in forty five seconds. I count them. My thumb moves before my brain catches up.

Me:

I didn't screenshot it. And it's Tuesday for me too.

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

Unknown Number:

Was that a joke?

Me:

Probably not. I'm told I don't make those.

Unknown Number:

Okay but you kind of did though

“It's Tuesday for me too" has real energy

Like we're both just surviving Tuesdays

Which honestly? Accurate.

I lean against the workbench. Maple lifts her head, studies me. Her tail doesn't wag. It hasn't wagged with any real conviction since Cora died, and I don't blame her. There's not much to wag about around here.

Unknown Number:

I should probably stop texting the stranger I accidentally propositioned

Me:

Probably.

Unknown Number:

And yet

Me:

And yet.

Unknown Number:

See NOW you're making jokes

Wrong Number Guy has range

Wrong Number Guy. I've been called worse. Caleb calls me Wal, which I tolerate. Holly Pearce calls me sweetheart when she drops off pie every Tuesday, which I endure. Patty Cole calls me that poor man whenever she thinks I can't hear her at the general store.

Nobody calls me anything that makes me want to text back.

Me:

For the record. The underwear text was impressive.

Unknown Number:

STOP

I will literally combust

I was texting my boyfriend

Who I am now going to murder for giving me the wrong number

Or wait. No. I probably just typed it wrong.

Because I am a DISASTER

Me:

You teach kindergarten. That takes organizational skills.

Unknown Number:

You'd think so wouldn't you

And yet here I am

Sexting a lumberjack at dawn

I look down at my sawdust covered jeans. My steel toed boots. The flannel with the torn pocket I keep meaning to fix.

Me:

What makes you think I'm a lumberjack?

Unknown Number:

You answered a text at 6:47 AM on a Tuesday. You're either a lumberjack, a farmer, or a serial killer.

And serial killers don't say "for the record"

That's very lumberjack

Me:

I'm a sawyer. Custom mill work. Close enough.

Unknown Number:

OH MY GOD

I accidentally sexted a LITERAL LUMBERJACK

This is either the worst moment of my life or the best story I'll ever tell at a dinner party

I haven't decided

A sound comes out of me. Rough, unfamiliar, scraping up from somewhere under my ribs. It takes me a second to identify it.

I'm laughing.

I lean both hands on the workbench, head down, and the sound keeps coming. Maple's on her feet now, ears forward, tail doing something that's not quite a wag but is closer than she's managed in months. She looks at me like she's trying to remember what this noise is.

That makes two of us.

Unknown Number:

Okay I really am going to stop now

I have to go teach 22 five year olds about the letter Q

Which is a RIDICULOUS letter by the way

It can't even function without U

Q is the neediest letter in the alphabet

Kind of like me before coffee

Me:

Go teach your kids about the needy letter.

Unknown Number:

Going. Deleting your number. Pretending this never happened.

Me:

You're not going to delete my number.

Unknown Number:

...

No I'm probably not

Have a good Tuesday, Wrong Number Guy.

Me:

Have a good Tuesday, Kindergarten Teacher.

The screen goes quiet. I stand in my shop with the oak drying on the rack, the saw waiting, the morning getting warmer through the windows.

Maple settles back onto her spot by the door.

The shop smells like fresh cut wood and machine oil, the same way it's smelled every morning since I came back to work six months after Cora's funeral because the alternative was sitting in our house staring at the closet full of her clothes I still haven't moved.

Two years. That's how long it's been since I laughed like that. Since something surprised me in a way that didn't involve grief or guilt or Patty Cole showing up unannounced with a casserole dish she expected back within the week.

A kindergarten teacher in Reno texted me about underwear, and I laughed.

I save her number in my phone. Don't assign a name. Just save it.

Then I put my gloves back on, pull the ear protection into place, and feed the next board through the saw. The blade screams. The oak splits clean. Maple watches from her spot by the door.

But for the first time in two years, the quiet in my chest doesn't feel like the only thing living there.