Room at the Inn

“Those are round. This is triangular.”

“Don’t try to teach me geometry, boy. I know what I’m talking about. Even once you make shelves that fit in here—and it looks to me like you need to take another whack at that, since I can see daylight at the back of this one—they’re not going to be much use to her. She’ll want to store spices and bottles and jars in here, and she’ll be knocking them over when she tries to reach the ones in the back. Give her two lazy Susans and a shelf with risers, like a staircase, for her spices or canned food. Then she’ll be able to use it.”

Carson stood back and took another look at the closet.

“You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. Go down to Bruce’s and tell him what I want. He’ll get you the hardware. Tell him I said no cheap stuff for Julie.”

By the time Carson got back, his father was making cuts on the table saw Carson had found in Julie’s shed.

“Knew this saw would come in handy,” Martin said.

Carson had noticed that Julie had a lot of good tools. He hadn’t bothered to wonder where she got them from. “You gave it to her?”

“I told her what to buy. Renovating a big house like this, you need decent tools. Bruce and I helped her out.”

“When was that?”

Martin looked at the overcast sky. It was in the low twenties. So much warmer than it had been, it felt balmy. “Three years ago? No, four. You were off in Micronesia or some such.”

“Jakarta,” he said.

“Yeah. That was a good one.”

“What was?”

“That embassy. Had a lot of flair.”

“Didn’t know you’d seen that.”

“Sure. I seen all of them. Your mother always showed me.”

Carson bounced the paper bag clutched in his hand, making the hardware jingle. “I have everything for the lazy Susans.”

“Why don’t you go on in and figure out the dimensions for those risers? Then you can get that going.”

“Sounds good.”

They worked together for a few hours, until they had all the pieces measured and cut, checked for size, sanded and primed for painting. It wasn’t until Carson noticed his dad’s limp getting more pronounced that he realized they hadn’t argued. His father had kept his criticism to a minimum, and Carson was actually enjoying himself.

He liked working on Julie’s place. Liked it far more than he’d liked any work he’d done in years.

And the recognition brought down that feeling again—the heavy, dark Potter Falls pressure he had to breathe through, looking at the sky, telling himself it didn’t mean anything, and he could leave whenever he wanted to.

He forced his dad to take a break in the kitchen and to eat a few of the molasses cookies Julie had made. She was trying out recipes for Christmas. The cookies had lemon frosting, which should have been weird but wasn’t.

She came into the kitchen, stirred something on the stove, and passed behind Carson. Without thinking about it, he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her up beside him.

“We’re making you lazy Susans,” he said.

“For your pantry,” Martin explained. “So you can reach.”

“Sounds perfect. Thank you. How’ve you been?”

Martin shrugged, and Carson recognized the gesture more by instinct than by sight. He made that same recalcitrant movement of his shoulders when he felt threatened and didn’t trust his own words. “Been worse.”

Julie arched an eyebrow. “When, exactly?”