Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

When the beer was gone and the moon was high, we stood and stumbled into the house. Gary and Lydia hadn’t planned to spend the night, but I had plenty of space, so I set them up in a guest room.

Once I left them, I found Henry in the kitchen, picking up. “Leave it,” I told him. “I’ll get it in the morning.”

He wiped his hands on a dishrag and looked around the kitchen. “I could use a cigar. You?”

I was exhausted from the beer, a long day in my workshop, and the time of night, but Henry definitely had something on his mind. He only spoke when he had something to say, so I’d listen. “Sure.”

Henry didn’t smoke, but since he’d been here, we’d taken to having a cigar out front some nights. I sat on a crate on the porch while Henry stood with his back against the railing and clipped two cigars. He nodded at the porch swing. “That’s new since I was last here.”

“It’s not much. Only took me a couple days.”

Some of the pieces, I hadn’t planned to make. The bench had been the result of a custom order. I’d made a crib and rocking chair for a young couple expecting their first child. The night I’d finished, I’d sat and stared at the pieces in a rare moment of pride. A woman would feed her baby in that rocking chair, put him to sleep in a crib I’d made. Not a day went by that I didn’t wonder about the child Tiffany had miscarried. She’d gone in for a doctor’s appointment, and they’d been unable to detect a heartbeat. Apparently, the baby had died weeks earlier, but it’d felt sudden. One day we were having a baby, and the next we’d lost a boy.

The same night I’d finished my customer’s nursery furniture, I’d kept building, and the result was the porch swing.

“You really put a lot of work into this place,” Henry said, passing me the lighter. “Ever consider selling it?”

“You think I should sell?” I asked.

“Not right for such a nice place to sit here empty. Unless, of course, you had other plans for it.”

I toasted the cigar, looking around the house. It meant everything to me, this place, and Henry knew it. I’d built all this with my bare hands. I’d labored over every detail from laying the foundation to installing the toilets. I’d chosen Big Bear for the space, the privacy, and if I was honest, because there was no better place to see the stars each night. “You know my plans,” I said. “You’ve spent the last three weeks here.”

“I’m not talking about your business. I see all the detail in the woodwork you’ve done,” Henry said. “I see how painstakingly you’ve built this home, throwing out anything that wasn’t perfect. It’s true what they said about Lake.”

I looked up at him, thinking I’d misheard, until it hit me that he hadn’t been asleep earlier after all. “You were awake for all that,” I said.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t news to me.” He exhaled a satisfying cloud of white smoke. “That crush, it ain’t teeny tiny, is it? I saw the way you looked at her at your wedding. You wanted it to be her.”

I let his words sink in. Lake had asked me what Henry was thinking at the altar, and now I understood better. Nobody who knew either Lake or myself had been able to ignore the connection between us, not even a man who’d been in our presence for a day. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did want that.”

“You’ve built a house for a family you don’t have, because you only want it with her. You built this house for Lake.”

I pinched my cigar with all fingers. It wasn’t a shocking realization, really, but I hadn’t had the guts to put it to myself that bluntly. Though Lake had been physically far away for a while, I’d kept her close during all of this. There was insurmountable evidence, though. It was an ugly but unsurprising truth—I’d spent my days building my bird a nest without knowing if she’d ever give me a chance to show it to her. And it wasn’t just for Lake—it was for us.

“Guess I don’t have to ask if you still love her as much now as you did back then,” Henry said.

“More.” I had to laugh at how sad it was. “So much more.”

“So why hasn’t she seen it?”

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “There’s a history there. No way to explain it, really.”

“Try.” When I just looked at him, he said, “Go on, kid. Explain it to me.”

“Where do I start? I’ve hurt her. More than once.” I opened my hands. “The last time was four years ago. She and I decided to give it a shot the same week Tiffany found out she was pregnant. Then after the miscarriage and divorce, I needed time to feel like a man again. When I go back to her, it has to be as the best possible version of myself, ready to give her the best possible life.”