Page 69 of Reclaimed Dreams

Chapter21

1 year ago

When news of the fire reached Dom, he was in the kitchen. Jo was making his favorite stuffed pepperoncini peppers for Friday dinner. In an unsettling wave of déjà vu, he sat heavily on a chair while someone at the hospital told him Frankie had been brought in by paramedics to be observed for smoke inhalation. The vineyard was burning.

He must have gasped, because Jo was by his side in an instant, taking his phone from his trembling hand and turning on the speaker.

“Repeat everything you just said, please. What’s going on?” she demanded.

The caller hadn’t even gotten through her first sentence before Jo was tugging him out of his seat and pushing him toward the door. “Get in the car. I’m driving.”

Dom followed her blindly as she shut off the oven, grabbed her purse and keys, and sprinted out the front door.

He didn’t say anything on the tense drive to the hospital. The ride passed in a blur. He let Jo talk to the intake nurse in the ER to find out where his baby was. It was too much. Too soon. Not again. Not ever again, he’d vowed. And yet here they were.

Jo led him to a seat in the waiting area and sat down next to him, draping her arm around his shoulder and pulling him close. “It’s okay, Dom. She’s going to be okay.”

He just shook his head mutely, unable to put his fear into words. He didn’t want to jinx it.

“I’ll be the strong one today, Dom. You can lean on me. I’ve got you.”

And she did. She carried him, through seeing his baby in a hospital gown, ashen against the white sheets with tubes taped to her nose. Through hours of waiting until they were allowed to bring her home. Through all of the phone calls to emergency response and insurance companies and Jake and the crew. Jo held it together and got them through it.

In the shadow of her competence, Dom sat in silence with some unpleasant truths.

He’d underestimated her. He should have known better. In all their years together, through all of the tough times and challenges, Jo had never broken. Not once. Not even when Gabe had died. She’d gotten fragile, but she’d never snapped.

Had he used that fragility as an excuse to take charge? He had so desperately needed to feel in control of something, anything, in a world spinning off its axis. Had he cut her out so he didn’t have to listen to anyone else? It was an ugly realization that while he’d been telling himself he’d done all of this for her, part of the reason was much more selfish. He’d jeopardized everything so that he could feel powerful in a world that had cut him off at the knees.

Knowing that Frankie was safe and sound and that firefighters had managed to save most of the vineyard structures was a blessing, but Dom’s heart still sat heavy in his chest at the end of the day. He was more determined than ever to make it up to Jo.

24 years ago

“Yes, Mrs. Miller… Yes, I know that’s frustrating. As I explained…”

Dom held the phone away from his ear as Mrs. Miller told him exactly what she thought about the fact that his crew hadn’t been able to get her sod laid because it had been ninety-five degrees today. It would have died before it had a chance. But Mrs. Miller was apparently having people over tomorrow and now they’d have to stay inside.

“Yes, I’m sorry you feel that way. The weather should break by Monday, and we will lay the sod then. Construction has its ups and downs, but by the end of the project you will have a backyard you can be proud of. I promise.” He tried his best to soothe her, but he really wanted to ask her why the fuck she thought it was a good idea to host a garden party before the garden was finished!

No sooner had he hung up than the phone began to ring again.

4:59 on a Friday afternoon. He shouldn’t answer it. He should let it go to voicemail. He should pretend he’d already left and go to Gabe’s baseball game with his wife and their little ones. But being the owner of his own business meant responsibility came first, and he picked up the phone.

But instead of being a new project inquiry, it was his new foreman, Chad, calling from the spec house.

“What do you mean, Glenn walked off the job?”

“Uh, he said he had an appointment?” Chad explained, stumbling over his words.

Dom pinched his nose. Glenn had appointments at his local dive bar every payday. This was the last straw, for both Glenn and Chad. Glenn was good at drywall, but he wasn’t worth the inconsistency. And Chad, he’d been on the job a month and still hadn’t learned that he was the boss.

“Chad, did you remind him that he should have told us about this ‘appointment’ at the beginning of the shift and not the end?”

“Uh, no. I didn’t think to.”

That was the problem. Chad couldn’t think on his feet. He couldn’t adapt to a changing situation and read the subtext. He couldn’t handle more than one complex task at once. And Dom was trusting the fragile reputation of his company to this dude?

Dom couldn’t afford to keep him if he couldn’t get the job done. He wouldn’t have even chosen to hire Chad, but Tony had broken his elbow and was out of commission for a while, and Dom had needed immediate backup. The call had gone out among the Italian aunties, and Chad had been the least shitty choice. Which was still a shitty choice.

---