“It isn’t guilt—it’s a social conscience.” I try to suppress my defensiveness. “I can’t just stand by and do nothing.
Because my life is easy in comparison, and that isn’t fair.”
“Don’t, you know, fly off the handle or anything—but doesn’t the fact that you think it isn’t fair make you distrustful of the idea of a ‘higher power’ orchestrating everything?”
“No.” His eyebrows rise at my quick reply, and I can’t let him know how close to my doubts he’s come. “Because people like my Dad exist. Because faith is part of who I am, and a measure of faith is being wil ing to do what’s needed.
I just want to make a difference. I have to believe I have a purpose. Maybe you don’t understand that, but that’s how I feel.”
He’s quiet for a minute, and I’m thinking I’ve wasted my breath and gotten worked up for nothing. “You’re right, I don’t understand,” he says. He tilts his head like Esther does when I talk to her and I use words outside of her canine experience. “Your principles seem real, though.
Usual y there’s something deceptive about people who throw words like faith around. Like they’re using it to mask ulterior motives or baser desires…” He smiles a wicked little smile and my heart flips over. “The sorts of values I do understand.”
Chapter 22
REID
The camaraderie lasted al morning. We ate lunch separately— she sat with Roberta, and I sat with Frank, Darlene and Gabriel e —but I don’t think that’s what changed her mood. She was on the phone again after lunch, and though she was standing too far away for me to hear anything specific, her tone was on edge. She’s been bitchy since she hung up.
She’s instal ing brackets in the closets, and I’m adding the shelves and bolting them in. Since we’re working on the same closets at the same time, we’re almost on top of each other. The third time she criticizes something I’m not doing perfectly and then takes over and does it herself, I can’t take any more of this shit.
“Look, just because you had a grisly breakup yesterday doesn’t mean you can take it out on me today. I wasn’t responsible for it.”
She glares at me. “What. Are. You. Talking about.”
“The phone cal yesterday? The crying?”
Her mouth drops open and snaps closed. “Were you listening to me?”
We’re standing inside a closet having this conversation, and the harsh resonance of our voices ricochets around and through us, unable to ful y escape the confines of the space. “You were outside, in public, talking on your phone.
It’s not like I f**king wiretapped you.” Her jaw sets. “First, you shouldn’t have been listening to what was clearly a private conversation. And second, there was nothing to break up. We just agreed to never actual y start… whatever we might… flippin’ flapjacks. It’s none of your darned business.”
Once I start laughing I can’t stop. “Flipping what?” Where the hel does she get these things?
“If you were capable of doing any of this without assistance, it would be a joy to leave you to it,” she says, glaring.
“Oh, please. This isn’t rocket science. It’s screwing a bunch of boards to a wal . Big f**king deal.” Side note: I love how much it bothers her when I say f**k. She winces every time, like she’s being jabbed with a needle.
“You don’t even know how to use the studfinder to find the studs first.”
“Pardon me?”
She sighs exaggeratedly and fixes me with a stare. “You have to locate the studs first—”
“Studfinder? ”
“You use it to find the framework? Inside the wal ?” Her sarcastic pitch is hitting a boiling point inside me, because frankly it’s a little too reminiscent of Dad, which I can’t handle from more than one person in my life. “The skeleton to which we attach stuff that needs to be anchored—like, I don’t know, shelves?”
I stopped listening before she resumed talking. “You finish in here,” I say. “I’l do Gabriel e’s closet.” In answer, she hands me a smal gadget containing a miniature leveler and a red arrow-looking thing. This must be the wondrous studfinder. I have zero idea what to do with it, so I slip it into my pocket as I leave the room.
*** *** ***
Dori
“I’m an idiot,” he says.
“No argument,” I say.
He’s instal ed the hanging rod and an entire row of shelves without finding the anchoring studs first. The weight of the brackets alone probably seemed fine, but when the shelves were added, the weight began pul ing the brackets out from the wal , screws and al . If Gabriel e adds so much as a pair of boots to a shelf or a couple of hangers to the rod, the whole mess is coming down.
Without speaking, we begin to angle the shelves to remove them from their unstable brackets. The boards scrape the wal s on both sides, wringing simultaneous exclamations— fucking hell from him and gosh almighty from me—which makes him laugh. “It’s not funny,” I mutter.
And then I glance at him and he grins and for no reason it is funny and we’re both laughing.
Once the boards are removed, we survey the damage.
Once the boards are removed, we survey the damage.
He sighs deeply, arms crossed over his chest. “Man. That looks like shit.”
I can’t dispute his opinion, but something about his defensive pose and his dejected inflection reminds me of five-year-old Jonathan from my VBS class. Slumping against one of the ruined wal s, I calculate that the repair and repainting wil add a couple of hours to finishing out the closets. I was hoping to leave at three, which is not going to happen.