Page 5 of Healing Hearts
There’s time.
And for now, this, right here, is enough.
Chapter Three
Trent
At the hardware store, Amir seems overwhelmed by choice. The aisle is dominated with materials to make a marble run—slides, tubes, levers, and pretty much everything else you could imagine. A few months ago, we made one with cardboard from the recycling bin and some tape, and ever since then, Amir has been obsessed with building a “real” one like those he’s seen in online videos.
“We can build it any way you want,” I say. “Your mom said we can attach it to the wall in the garage or make it free standing. If we don’t like what we build, we can take it apart and try something else another day.”
“What’s the budget?” he asks for the second time. I’m not sure at five years old that he completely understands what a budget is or why it’s important, but he must have heard his mom tell me ten times before we left the house not to “blow the budget.” Emily would be the type to talk about budgets in all sorts of situations, so I’m sure the word is familiar, if not understandable.
“You can let me worry about the budget this time,” I say. “It’s my Christmas present to you. Just start picking things.” I gesture to the basket I’m holding in my hand. “We’ll figure out how to put everything together and what we want it to look like when we get you home.”
He nods, a little crease of concentration forming between his eyebrows as he strolls down the aisle, arms crossed. At the shoots and slides section, he stops.
“I think I’d like some of these?” He gazes up at me hopefully, and I tip my chin for him to pick some.
And after the first slide drops into my basket, Amir relaxes, picking up other building pieces, asking questions, clearly working out in his very intelligent brain what the marble masterpiece will look like in his head. Here’s hoping we can actually create it in real life. The thing I’ve been learning the last few months is that Amir’s imagination is much greater than his skill level or what’s realistic in terms of time, money, and ability. But I like his drive. The intense desire to do well, to be the best, is such a Sullivan trait.
Once Amir seems satisfied, and I’m content that Emily isn’t going to want to murder me for the size or scope of the thing, we head up to the register. Stacy, the owner of the hardware store, greets us both with a smile.
As she rings up our purchases, she says, “Did you hear Bruce Mullen is looking to sell and retire in the spring?”
“No,” I say.
Bruce has owned the most popular car mechanic shop in town for years. When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time there with my dad, under cars after hours. The two of them had been good friends, and Bruce has continued to be good to my mom in the years since. In my teenage years, he even offered to let me get under my mom’s car and help him fix problems, but I wasn’t ready then.
Sometimes I think memories of my dad are why I opted to try to get my automotive apprenticeship when I got out of jail. The scent of motor oil brings me a strange comfort, as though part of me can sink into the past, the time when I was close to my dad, without any conscious thought forming.
I also happen to be really good at fixing shit. Like an extra sense of how to diagnose a car, how to repair it, even before I hook up diagnostics or run tests. A client can describe what’s happening, and even if it’s not precise, I can get to the source of the problem. Just last week, my boss, Earl Runions, told me he’d never been so glad to have taken a chance on an ex-con.
I don’t love the “ex-con” moniker, but I can’t deny that it fits. The fact that it’s still something he thinks about and comments on, even seven years after my release, is enough to make me feel sick to my stomach.
My nineteen-year-old self really didn’t consider or understand all the consequences of the choices I was making.
“I’ve heard from a few people in town who’ve made the drive to Utica that you’re a pretty talented mechanic,” Stacy says.
Even though it’s true, heat creeps up my chest and into my neck. Being told I’m good, in almost any context, makes me squirm.
“Have you thought about coming back here? Opening your own shop?” She pauses as she rings in the last item, the total appearing on the screen.
I flash my card to pay, my mind creaking to life with the implication she hasn’t directly stated.
“Taking over for Bruce?” She prods when I don’t react.
Having my own shop always felt like something for someday. But I don’t know about coming back to Little Falls, about building a lifehere, necessarily. Last year’s benefit turned a few people’s opinions of me around, but I don’t know if it’s enough.
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I lie.
“Well, you should,” Stacy says. “Little Falls will be lost without Bruce. So many of the companies in town are chains now, you know? No personal touch. They’ll take you for all you’re worth.”
I’m sure there are people in Little Falls who’d believe the same of me—that I’d cheat them somehow, be dishonest in my dealings.
“Yeah,” I hedge. “I don’t know. I appreciate the suggestion.” I give her a little nod and pass one of the bags for the marble run to Amir.
As we walk to my truck, Amir’s little hand engulfed in mine, my brain is on fire with all the ways I could not just run but improve on Bruce’s current business. Stacy hit a spark, and it’s ignited a wildfire.
