Page 23 of New Year

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I also saw his text, so you didn’t sneak up on me.”

“I’m glad. I want to help you, not give you a heart attack.”

Chase sighed. “A heart attack might be a gentler way to go.”

“I didn’t mean to, um.” Nat scrambled to keep this together so he didn’t lose a job he hadn’t even done yet. “Zack didn’t tell me what’s going on. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t offend me. I’m grumpy because I spilled raspberry jam on my shirt while making a sandwich.”

Everyone dropped food on themselves once in a while. “Will it stain? Do you need me to rub a stain stick on it or something?”

“Already done. It’s not the stain, it’s how long it takes me to change my damned shirt.” Chase waved his hand at the wall. “My life in pictures. My life since I’ve been here in Reynolds, at any rate. It’s been a good life.”

“You know the Mahers?”

“Not well, but we met several times over the last few years, usually at chamber of commerce meetings. I was stunned when I heard about the explosion at Tim’s. I couldn’t imagine my entire business going up in flames like that.”

Nat shivered, unable to hide the physical reaction. “It was terrifying.”

“I’d heard two employees and a guest were injured. You have my sincerest…I’m not sure. Condolences feels absurd, given the situation.”

“I get what you mean. There really isn’t a proper greeting card yet for ‘sorry to hear you got blown up’.”

Chase chuckled. “No, there isn’t. I was glad to hear that they’re rebuilding, though. I wasn’t able to attend the fundraiser back in April, but I sent a donation. This business is difficult enough without random acts of God, so to speak, burning down our efforts.”

Nat swallowed hard, stomach rolling. Sometimes he wasn’t so sure the boiler at Tim’s had exploded by accident. Not from the hints Austin had dropped in the weeks following. During Nat’s difficult recovery, such as it was. Sometimes his left arm still ached from the old break. He always suffered guilt from his inability to attend the fundraiser he’d helped organize and execute. His excuse of having a migraine that day had fooled most.

He wasn’t sure it had fooled everyone, because for a while after, Angelo had kept trying to contact him. Nat had appreciated the caring texts. Austin? Not so much. “From what I heard, the fundraiser was a huge success,” Nat said. “I wasn’t able to attend, either.”

“Will you be returning to work when they reopen?”

Going back to Tim’s hadn’t even occurred to Nat, because re-entering his old life was not an option. He couldn’t go anywhere Austin could find him. “I doubt it. I loved the job and the people, but I need to go forward, not backward.”

“Completely understandable, especially at your age. Not that I know your age, but you’re definitely younger than I am, and therefore, you have miles of potential ahead of you.”

“Just don’t have the means to travel those roads right now.”

“You have the heart of a poet, Nathaniel. Or you’re just humoring me and my silly metaphors. I suppose I’ll figure you out, if you’re working for me works out.”

“So, what is today? An audition?”

“Basically, yes. Or if you prefer, a three-hour interview process.”

Nat’s face heated. “You don’t need to create a pity job for me, Mr. Sampson. I’m happy to drive you around today, but?—”

“Stop with the Mr. Sampson bit and just call me Chase, please. I’m not your professor, or even technically your boss. Yet. And I haven’t invented anything for you. You might save me the trouble of going over a stack of boring applications, full of colorful work experience such asassisted client with toileting needs.”

“What?” Nat had lost track of the conversation somehow. “What about toilets?”

Chase waved a hand in the air, and then waved it at the couch. Nat perched on the edge, curious and nervous about where this was going. “Have you ever heard of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis? ALS?”

“Is that Lou Gehrig’s Disease?”

“That’s the more common name for it, yes. It’s what I have, why I use a cane, and why I voluntarily gave up driving. It’s also why I asked Zack to move into the in-law suite, so someone is around. Someone I trust completely to help and not take advantage.”

Chase spoke like a man explaining all the ingredients in a complicated dish, rather than telling Nat he had an incurable, degenerative illness—probably one of the most personal things you could tell someone you’d known for an hour. Then his comment about applications spun back around. Toileting needs. “You need someone to help you out around the house, because you can’t do all the things you used to be able to do on your own.”

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