Breakup in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

“I think your iPod or DS would be a better option. For the Xbox, you’d need a TV and the system and the games. That’s a lot to bring in.”

  “I’m bringing the Xbox,” Frankie said through clenched teeth.

  A few kids turned onto the street ahead of them, and Frankie took off at a run to catch up with them. Adam returned the waves of the parents. The faces were familiar, but most faces in Slippery Rock were. Ruby Kildare, who had been a couple years ahead of him in school, trailed her son, Bobby. There was Jackson Crane and his twins, Blair and Bree. The other parents watched him, but didn’t say anything, and Adam was grateful. Blair and Bree started picking wildflowers with Garrett, and Jackson slowed to keep pace with Adam.

  “You’re looking good,” he said after a moment.

  “Doing fine,” Adam said.

  “Think the weather’s going to break anytime soon? October will be here in another couple weeks.”

  “Won’t be much longer.” He watched as Garrett presented his small bouquet to Bree. Blair stomped her foot. Garrett twisted his mouth to the side, then took back the bunch of flowers, split it in two and gave half to each twin.

  “He’s going to be a heartbreaker, Adam,” Ruby said. He hadn’t noticed the woman slowing her pace, but now here he was with two people who probably wanted the intimate details of his injuries. He should have stayed home.

  Blair lifted the bouquet to her nose, then sneezed all over it. Jackson hurried forward, wiped her nose with a handkerchief from his back pocket. The group turned the corner, and Slippery Rock Elementary spread out before them. The school took up most of the block, with the big gymnasium on the right side and the junior high classrooms making up the wing on the left. Playgrounds and a small nature area were in the courtyard behind the elementary classrooms, the gym and the junior high.

  On the block beyond was the high school, football fields and the natatorium where they taught swimming lessons in the summer, and where the high school and junior high swim teams practiced and competed. Between the high school and the football field was the State Championship Memorial. The town commissioned it, setting Adam’s, Aiden’s, Collin Tyler’s, James Calhoun’s and Levi Walters’s names in gray limestone, along with their jersey numbers the summer after their team won the state high school football championship. The five of them had been co-captains, and the only seniors on the team. Adam didn’t play at all, thanks to a car accident that sidelined him, but his name was still on the monument. The damn 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 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 sti
ll 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.