Breakup In A Small Town. Kristina Knight
thing looked like a tombstone, and although Adam couldn’t see it, the thought sent a shiver up his spine.
He hadn’t been a football player in a long time, and he might be in a wheelchair right now, but he wasn’t dead.
They reached the school, and he realized he couldn’t go any farther because of the steps.
“Want me to push the chair up the stairs for you?” Jackson asked.
Adam shook his head. “I’ve got it.” Jackson shrugged and continued on, as did Ruby.
Adam called to the boys. “You guys have a good day at school, okay? Frankie, work toward that Xbox thing, and Garrett, don’t let anyone sit on your lunch.” The little boy giggled. Frankie rolled his eyes.
“Will you walk us back after school?” Garrett asked, his hazel eyes looking so much like Jenny’s it hurt Adam’s chest. His son threw his arms around him, hugging him tightly.
“Sure, I can walk you home.”
“Mom drives,” Frankie said, and Adam was getting tired of hearing those words.
“It’s a nice day, and I’m sure your mom would like the break. I’ll see you both right here at three.”
“Three-oh-five,” Frankie corrected, his voice quiet. The warning bell rang out.
“Three-oh-five,” Adam repeated solemnly. He remembered what Jenny had said the night before about Frankie wanting to know where she was. “I’ll be here,” he said, and squeezed the little boy’s hand.
Garrett hopped up the steps that led inside. Frankie watched Adam for a long moment.
“I’ll pick you up right here,” he said again. “Everything okay? Did you forget something?” What was going on here?
“I have everything,” the boy said after a long moment. “You sure you can be here?”
Adam swallowed, Jenny’s words of he day before ringing in his ears.
Garrett’s drawing attack tornados in art class and Frankie won’t let himself sleep until I promise him Buchanan’s is a safe place to be.
“I’ll be here, Frankie. Mom will be at work, but I’ll be here.”
His son nodded and started up the steps. At the top he turned and waved. Adam waited until Frankie disappeared inside the big double doors, then he turned the wheelchair and started back toward the house.
Adam blew out a breath. Yes, his wife and his kids deserved more than the shell of a man he was now, but he couldn’t just vanish on any of them. He needed to figure out how to make sure they were taken care of first.
He needed coffee. Caffeine was on the list of things the doctors told him to limit, but one cup couldn’t hurt anything. He texted Jenny to let her know he’d taken the kids to school, and that he’d promised to pick them up.
A few minutes later she texted back, Thank you.
Adam wheeled himself past the house and noticed the Mustang was still in the drive. He considered going inside to talk to Jenny, but he needed a plan. Their last two conversations had ended badly. She was better off without him, but he didn’t want to fight with her. He could wheel himself to the backyard. Sit on the patio to think. But if she saw him, she might want to talk, and he needed a solid plan before talking to her again.
Mr. Rhodes from across the street waved and started toward Adam. He didn’t want to talk to the older man, so he pushed the chair a little faster. Adam didn’t want to deal with the public, but if he had to choose between Jenny and the public at large at this point, he was going public all the way.
A few minutes later, he crossed the street into the downtown area. Parking slots were filled with trucks and SUVs. Patrol cars were parked outside the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department. He waved to a few people he knew, but didn’t stop. Bud stood outside the bait shop, sweeping his section of concrete. He crossed the street when he saw Adam, and pointed to the new farmer’s market.
The foundation of the old building remained, but the rest had been gutted by the tornado. Now, new picture windows fronted the structure, and new brick had been laid to reinforce the walls. Slippery Rock Farmer’s Market was painted on the windows, and someone had painted a water scene on the sidewalk in front with the words Clean Water Makes the Earth Happy painted around it. Adam had heard about the storm drain art, but this was the first he’d seen. It wasn’t bad.
“Headed to work?” Bud asked. Adam pushed the chair a little faster, but the man kept pace.
“Still on the disabled list,” he said, and for the first time, the words actually felt a little like a joke. Like walking his kids to school meant something. “Going to the coffee shop.”
“Want some company? Haven’t had my fourth cup yet.” Bud didn’t wait for Adam to approve, just continued walking beside him. “How’s that pretty wife of yours?”
“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