Breakup In A Small Town

“She’s good.” Wants me to leave the house, but that’s probably for the best, he thought, though Adam didn’t say the words. “Turning into quite the cabinetmaker, or so I hear.” It was actually an assumption. He’d avoided all talk of work since the doctors told him he couldn’t operate the machinery. Bud didn’t know that, though.

Bud held open the door to the coffee shop so Adam could navigate the chair through. The bell over the door tinkled as it closed behind them. A teenager at the counter took his order for a caramel mocha and Bud’s black coffee.

“See ya around, Adam,” the older man said as he headed back to his street sweeping.

Adam waved. He put the cup in the little holder Jenny had installed on the chair when he first came home, and went to a little table in the corner. For a long time, he sat and watched the activity on the street. A few late-season fishermen went into Bud’s, and boats bobbed on the still water of the marina. In another few weeks, the boats would all be in winter storage and the downtown area would be a ghost town.

If Adam turned around, he would see part of Buchanan Cabinetry, and the warehouse where his employees built and stored the cabinets and furniture they made.

Her employees. Jenny’s. As she’d said, he’d abandoned the business. And if he couldn’t make things, he didn’t see the point in going back. His fingers flexed at the thought of making something again. He missed the feel of wood in his hands, missed figuring out how a slab of oak or cherry could have a new life once it had been cut down.

He needed to get back to the plan. He’d screwed up his family’s life enough. He wasn’t going to screw it up even more by just disappearing. Jenny needed to see that he was okay, and the boys deserved a father who was present with them, not just existing in the same space. In the side pocket Jenny had put on the chair when she’d added the cup holder, he found a small notebook and a pen. Adam smiled. Jenny liked her lists. She was always making lists.

For the business. For Christmas. For vacations and groceries. It made sense she would give him a notebook, and it was another failure on his part that he hadn’t noticed it before today. Adam didn’t think he could have been more self-involved over the past few months—hell, few years—if he’d been actively trying to make the people around him feel unimportant.

The first thing he had to do was make sure Jenny and the boys were okay financially. That meant figuring out how to make Buchanan’s work for her. The simplest thing would be to go back to the way things had been before his parents sold the firm to them a few years before. Making and installing cabinets was a solid business. Jenny was a smart woman; she could handle the invoicing and scheduling, and Duane might make a good foreman for the men on the floor. That would work.

The thought of the Adirondack chairs he’d made last winter weighed heavily on Adam’s mind. They’d never sit in a yard overlooking the lake now. Hell, Jenny might not even know they were in that far corner of the warehouse.

Not that it mattered. He couldn’t build anymore, so it didn’t make sense to add the deck chairs or tables to the plan. And it certainly didn’t make sense to add in the other expansion plans.

He stared out the window for a long time. Those plans were part of the past. This list was about moving forward. He had to let those plans go, just like he was letting Jenny go. He glanced at the paper again then tore it from the notebook and stared at it. While he’d been thinking about those chairs and his old plans, he’d drawn a laundry storage unit. Four units. He’d drawn his personal symbol for cherry wood as the links between the different bags. Jenny like cherry the best.

Adam wadded up the paper and wrote the number 1 on a clean sheet. She already knew about the invoicing and bookkeeping, and the business was on solid financial ground. Maybe he should make getting his parents out of Buchanan’s the first thing on the list. He’d figure out how later.

What were some other things he could do? School runs would clear out a little more time from her day. Maybe cook a few meals. She had a shelf full of recipe books—they couldn’t be that hard to follow.

He needed something bigger, though. Something that would really show her he was making good changes in his life. There was always that service dog place. Adam cringed at the thought. A service dog was permanent.

The pen hovered over the page for a long moment, and before he could talk himself out of it, Adam scribbled it down on the list. Service dog.

It was the last thing he wanted.

It was what Jenny wanted, though.

He couldn’t stop staring at the wadded-up sheet. He sat like that for a long time, staring at it and the new list. Thinking about his old life, telling himself it was time to embrace the new. Jenny. Frankie. Garrett. They deserved new.

Slowly, Adam smoothed out the wadded-up paper. He’d certainly screwed up their lives, way more than they deserved.

He read over the first thing on his list: fix things so he could let them go. That was what he had to do.

Then something on the original sheet caught his eye. Beside the hamper he’d drawn were the words Get My Family Back.

Adam closed his eyes. His brain kept telling him his family deserved more, deserved better. But his heart... His heart wanted them back.

* * *

“YOU’RE LEAVING? IT’S barely eleven.” Nancy sat behind a broad, built-in desk that Owen had installed when they first turned the second floor of the old warehouse into offices for the business. She’d tied her bobbed hair, streaked with silver and white, at her nape and wore an orange-and-green-striped polo with her denim capris. She held the phone in her hand and scribbled something on a notepad beside her.

“I have a lunch meeting.” Self-consciously, Jenny swiped a hand at her naturally curly hair. When was the last time she’d had it trimmed? She couldn’t remember. The past few months she’d taken to simply pulling it back into a ponytail. Today it hung just past her shoulders. Maybe she would stop by the house to pick up a hair tie. She didn’t want to look like Little Orphan Annie or something for these meetings. The first was important to keep the business going, and the second important for future growth. For the plans Adam—No, the plans she had for Buchanan’s. She waved the clipboard of papers. “Two, actually.”

“At eleven? You don’t usually eat lunch until noon.”

True enough, but she wasn’t technically eating now. She just needed to get through coffee with the construction company representative so that she could meet with the Springfield distributor at Rock Pizza at twelve-thirty. Her fight with Adam this morning made one thing crystal clear: she had to take her life back.

Adam didn’t care about the business, which left its stability in her hands. This was one ball she was not going to drop. She had the designs that he’d come up with last winter, and the guys in the shop could put some sample pieces together from that. Adam might not want to move forward, but she still wanted to make Buchanan’s more than a cabinet shop.

“I didn’t have breakfast this morning,” she lied. “And I have a meeting right after, so I won’t be back in the office until at least two. I’ll have my cell phone if you need me.” Not that Nancy would call.

“We haven’t spoken since yesterday afternoon. There are things we need to discuss.”

“Like you leaving me to answer phone calls so you could do the laundry for Adam?” Jenny shook her head. “There is nothing to talk about.”

“Adam is sick. You can’t expect him to become a housewife just because you’re working now.”

Jenny gripped the clipboard tighter. She skipped over the Adam-as-a-housewife bit because that would lead to more than the two minutes she had before leaving for the first meeting. “I’ve been working at Buchanan’s since I was eighteen. First, answering phones like you’ve always done. When you and Owen retired, I took on a larger role. This is our company, and I’ll run it the best way I know how.”

“Buchanan’s is fine just the way it is.”

“Buchanan’s could be more than a cabinet shop. Adam wanted it to be more—”

“That was before he got sick.” Nancy’s words were staccato, but Jenny refused to flinch.

“Adam isn’t sick. He doesn’t have a cold or the flu. He has epilepsy, and it may never go away. He has to learn to deal with that.”

“By doing your laundry?”

“No.” Jenny put her hand on Nancy’s and felt a slight tremor from the older women. “By showing him that he can still do whatever he wants to do.”

“He can’t operate the machinery here.”

“He can still design.”

“He can’t drive.”

“He can walk.” Jenny squeezed her mother-in-law’s hand. “He isn’t an invalid, and you running to his rescue when he calls isn’t helping.”

“I just...” She cut her eyes to the big window that looked out over the warehouse floor below. Owen would be down there with the employees, working on cabinet runs and packing up trucks for shipments. “We just want him to be Adam again.”

A half smile slid over Jenny’s mouth. “So do I, but he has to want it, too. Right now, he just wants to quit.”

“And you think when I went over to fix the laundry situation, I let him quit?”

“He knows how to use Google to figure out the best bait for walleye, and to look up woodworking videos. I’m sure he could have figured out how to get those color runs out of a few shirts.”

Jenny swallowed. She should tell Nancy that she’d asked Adam to move out, should tell her about the problems the boys were having. Nancy doted on her grandsons as much as she had doted on Adam and Aiden when they were little; she might understand better where Adam’s mind was if she could see the impact he was having on their children.

Telling her, though, would be a betrayal of her husband. He didn’t want to be seen as weak or injured. He wanted all of this to go away. Putting Nancy on his case might only serve to make him retreat even further into himself. Jenny couldn’t bear to see him fade away any more. She couldn’t live with him, not this way, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to completely disappear from her life. So she held back the words.

“I appreciate that you tried to help him, but maybe the next time he calls, you let him figure it out for himself.” She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes until coffee with the contractor. She needed to hurry. “I’ll be back after two. Phone me if you need anything,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairs leading to the street.

It took only a couple minutes to walk to the coffee shop, The Good Cuppa, downtown. Jenny ordered an iced coffee with extra ice before choosing a table in the corner. The contractor, a man in his midfifties, hiding a spare tire beneath his navy polo, arrived a few minutes later. He ordered black coffee, and when he got to the table, added four sugars to it.

“I thought Adam might make it,” Leo McCartney said.

“He had another commitment.” Funny how easy it was to lie for her husband. Jenny pushed that thought out of her mind to focus on the contract at hand. “I worked up a few numbers on what we can provide your company. You know we do the design, and build on an individual basis, so our costs will be higher than those companies who offer prefabricated cabinetry.”

McCartney flipped through the pages as he spoke. “My clients want economical, but they’re will to pay for quality products. Cherry and mahogany, oak.”

“We are familiar with all the best woods. Last winter, the design team tested out bamboo. We aren’t quite ready with that option, but we’re getting there.”

McCartney sat back in his chair. “I like a prepared contact. I know about Adam’s, ah, problems.”

“He is still very involved.” Jenny squeezed her hands together in her lap at yet another lie that slipped from her lips so easily. “Before the accident, we had divided the work. He built and designed, I handled contracts. Nothing has changed.” Nothing except everything. Nothing was the same as it had been before the tornado in May, but if it took another year, she would stabilize her life. The business. The boys’ outlooks.

“I’ll take this to my office manager—” Leo grinned “—who also happens to be my wife. I’m sure she’ll be as pleased as I am.” He stuck his hand out and Jenny took it. “I’ll be in touch.”

When the older man had gone, Jenny sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. Step one in her plan to get the business back on track was complete. Leo McCartney was one of the best builders in their part of the state. He handled contracts for subdivisions as well as single builds. Partnering with him would lead to more contracts. A stronger profit margin. More financial stability for the boys would be important if—no, when—Adam moved out.

Now, she just needed her meeting with the Springfield distributor to go as well. She finished her coffee as she went over the proposal one more time.

* * *

ADAM’S ARMS WERE TIRED. He didn’t think he’d expended this much energy since...well, since he’d been in high school. After taking the boys to school and stopping in at the coffee shop, he’d wheeled himself to the police station to see his friend James, who hadn’t been in the office. So he’d continued to the new grandstand area, which had been built after the tornado decimated much of the downtown. It was impressive.

Several of his employees had worked on the project, and from what he could see from the outside, they’d done good work. The live oak that Collin Tyler and Savannah Walters had planted soon after the dedication of the grandstand looked good, too. The two of them had placed a plaque, too, which read, “The strength to rebuild is one of the finest acts of courage.”

Adam cringed as the words circled his mind. Walking away might not be courageous, but he would make sure Jenny and Frankie and Garrett would be okay before he bowed out of their lives.

He blew out a breath when he reached the corner of the street. All this wandering, which would have taken him an hour, max, before the accident, had taken closer to three, and he was starving. For a moment he considered going to Buchanan’s to see if Jenny wanted to have lunch.

Not the best idea, after this morning when she’d suggested he move out. He didn’t think a quick pop-in for lunch would help that situation. On the next block, Rock Pizza’s sign beckoned, as did the smell of baking pizza. The growl from his stomach shocked him. It had taken a while to regain his appetite after leaving the hospital, but most of the time he still ate out of necessity, not for enjoyment.

A truck honked from the street and he raised his hand in a wave. Calvin Harris, an older gentleman who ran a dog school near Walters Ranch, stuck his arm out the truck window as he passed. A few minutes later, Adam made it to Rock Pizza, a fine sheen of sweat covering his face and rivulets running down his back. He was tempted to leave the chair, just to give his back a break from the vinyl covering. If something happened, though, it would be better to be safely sitting. He reached for the door handle and froze.

Jenny sat at a table inside with a man Adam didn’t recognize. A handsome man. He forgot about food and simply stared. What about her having no time to do her job because his parents were messing things up? This didn’t look like work to him. Which left one explanation: this was the real reason she had asked him to move out. Because she was ready to move on. It made much more sense than the idea of his doing laundry sending her over the edge.

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