{"id":4330,"date":"2014-08-23T20:35:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T01:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?page_id=4330"},"modified":"2026-03-31T21:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T02:48:09","slug":"lionsshare","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/thebooks\/lionsshare\/","title":{"rendered":"LION\u2019S SHARE"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"eddsection\">\n<div class=\"eddfloat_dl\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"eddcover_dl\">\n<figure class=\"b10mwx\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/b10mediaworx.com\/covers\/lionsshare\/lionsshare-200x300.jpg\"><figcaption class=\"b10mwx\">Tales of Dunham #8<br \/>\u00a92017 Moriah Jovan<br \/>177,000 words (484 pages)<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<article>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddtitle_dl\">Book 8 in the Dunham universe<\/p>\n<div class=\"linksbuyblock\" role=\"group\" aria-label=\"Buy Lion's Share\">\n<p class=\"linksedd\">Buy direct:<\/p>\n\t<form id=\"edd_purchase_19711\" class=\"edd_download_purchase_form edd_purchase_19711\" method=\"post\">\n\n\t\t\t<div class=\"edd_price_options edd_multi_mode\" >\n\t\t<ul>\n\t\t\t<li id=\"edd_price_option_19711_epub\"><label for=\"edd_price_option_19711_1\"><input type=\"checkbox\"  checked='checked' name=\"edd_options[price_id][]\" id=\"edd_price_option_19711_1\" class=\"edd_price_option_19711\" value=\"1\" data-price=\"5.99\"\/>&nbsp;<span class=\"edd_price_option_name\">EPUB<\/span><span class=\"edd_price_option_sep\">&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;<\/span><span class=\"edd_price_option_price\">&#36;5.99<\/span><\/label><\/li><li id=\"edd_price_option_19711_pdf\"><label for=\"edd_price_option_19711_2\"><input type=\"checkbox\"  name=\"edd_options[price_id][]\" id=\"edd_price_option_19711_2\" class=\"edd_price_option_19711\" value=\"2\" data-price=\"5.99\"\/>&nbsp;<span class=\"edd_price_option_name\">PDF<\/span><span class=\"edd_price_option_sep\">&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;<\/span><span class=\"edd_price_option_price\">&#36;5.99<\/span><\/label><\/li>\t\t<\/ul>\n\t<\/div><!--end .edd_price_options-->\n\t\n\t\t<div class=\"edd_purchase_submit_wrapper\">\n\t\t\t<button class=\"edd-add-to-cart button has-edd-button-background-color has-edd-button-text-color edd-submit\" data-nonce=\"a08180277e\" data-timestamp=\"1775724780\" data-token=\"1779585d740d1b777453a5a82010286ea63cd6da6f6c4a8a88706468ff335930\" data-action=\"edd_add_to_cart\" data-download-id=\"19711\"  data-variable-price=\"yes\" data-price-mode=multi data-price=\"0.00\" ><span class=\"edd-add-to-cart-label\">Add to Cart<\/span> <span class=\"edd-loading\" aria-label=\"Loading\"><\/span><\/button><input type=\"submit\" class=\"edd-add-to-cart edd-no-js button has-edd-button-background-color has-edd-button-text-color edd-submit\" name=\"edd_purchase_download\" value=\"Add to Cart\" data-action=\"edd_add_to_cart\" data-download-id=\"19711\"  data-variable-price=\"yes\" data-price-mode=multi \/><a href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/checkout\/\" class=\"edd_go_to_checkout button has-edd-button-background-color has-edd-button-text-color edd-submit\" style=\"display:none;\">Checkout<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"edd-cart-ajax-alert\" aria-live=\"assertive\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"edd-cart-added-alert\" style=\"display: none;\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<svg class=\"edd-icon edd-icon-check\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"28\" height=\"28\" viewBox=\"0 0 28 28\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<path d=\"M26.11 8.844c0 .39-.157.78-.44 1.062L12.234 23.344c-.28.28-.672.438-1.062.438s-.78-.156-1.06-.438l-7.782-7.78c-.28-.282-.438-.673-.438-1.063s.156-.78.438-1.06l2.125-2.126c.28-.28.672-.438 1.062-.438s.78.156 1.062.438l4.594 4.61L21.42 5.656c.282-.28.673-.438 1.063-.438s.78.155 1.062.437l2.125 2.125c.28.28.438.672.438 1.062z\"\/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAdded to cart\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div><!--end .edd_purchase_submit_wrapper-->\n\n\t\t<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"download_id\" value=\"19711\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"edd_action\" class=\"edd_action_input\" value=\"add_to_cart\">\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/form><!--end #edd_purchase_19711-->\n\t\n<p class=\"linksedd\">&nbsp;<br \/>\n\t\t<span class=\"small85\">Amazon<\/span> <a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B06W9M5JR4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kindle<\/a> \u2022 <a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0986127140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">paperback<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<span class=\"small85\">Barnes &#038; Noble<\/span> <a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/lions-share-moriah-jovan\/1149721578?ean=2940158930867\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nook<\/a> \u2022 <span class=\"small85\">paperback<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t<a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"http:\/\/books.apple.com\/us\/book\/id1207453927\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple iBooks<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/books\/details?id=O2tNDwAAQBAJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Play Books<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<a class=\"lionsshare\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kobo.com\/us\/en\/ebook\/lion-s-share-tales-of-dunham-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kobo eBooks<\/a>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">Blythe Marston was widowed at 28, nine years and four children after she and her high school sweetheart had married. She\u2019d had the perfect life: husband, marriage, kids, house, in-laws, parents, friends, health. Until the cops showed up and told her a drunk driver had taken it all away from her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">As the condolences drifted away and she started putting herself back together, only one man stayed with her to guide her to her independence: Phineas Marston, her father-in-law. Six years after her husband\u2019s death, she\u2019s still raising her kids, gotten an education and the most unlikely career, and learned how to be happy again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">But not alone. Never alone. There has never been anything between Blythe and Finn, no spark, no desire, no thought of anything. Her dead husband binds them and Finn grieved along with her. There has never been anything more than that between them\u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">\u2014except kid drama, school events, family dinners, conversations, opinions, arguments, celebrations, work time, chores, advice, and the dozens and dozens of cookies she bakes for him to take to his office on the holidays.<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">There\u2019s nothing else between them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"eddsum_dl\">Nothing at all.<\/p>\n<div class=\"navblock\">\n<p class=\"leftnavblock\"><a class=\"arrowsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/thebooks\/blackjack\/\">\u2190 Book 7<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"rightnavblock\"><a class=\"arrowbig\" href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/thebooks\/1520main\/\">Book 9  \u2192<\/a><br \/>Prohibition, Kansas City, Missouri<br \/>The Machine, the Mafia, the Mormons.<br \/>A gangster and a preacher\u2019s daughter.<br \/>A speakeasy, a bet, and a baby.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wingding\">\u203b<\/p>\n<div class=\"top100\">\n<p class=\"sectiontop\"><span class=\"catb\">IT JUST SLIPPED IN.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how it happened. I can\u2019t pinpoint a specific time or place or incident that started us on this path. I\u2019ve never seen him as an object of desire. If someone had told me I ever would, I\u2019d have recoiled in horror.<\/p>\n<p>What I do know was that after a very long and tiring day spent building a back deck, we sat on the couch to relax.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, we ended up in bed.<\/p>\n<p>It just slipped in.<\/p>\n<p>Twice.<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"top200\">\n<p class=\"excerptdate\">August 2016<br \/>\nKansas City, Missouri<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">1: BLYTHELY BLUNDERING<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">\u201cI\u2019M GOING TO build a deck.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I make this pronouncement at dinner one night over the noise of four kids, two parents, and a father-in-law. My parents and kids stop talking. So does my father-in-law.<\/p>\n<p>My parents begin protesting immediately, as I knew they would.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe, that\u2019s too much, even for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, please. You can\u2019t possibly tackle that project on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHoney, your focus is frugality. A deck is too extravagant for your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My mother and father go on and on about why this is a bad idea.<\/p>\n<p>My father-in-law heaves a longsuffering sigh.<\/p>\n<p>The kids are excited.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, \u201cback deck\u201d is some sort of magical gateway to \u201cswimming pool.\u201d I might have considered it if I intended to stay in this house, but I don\u2019t. We don\u2019t have the room anyway, but our next-door neighbor has a pool. I see how much of a money-and-time sink it is. The house across the street from us, which has been up for sale for three years, has a pool. It has bigger problems and it\u2019s overpriced, but the pool doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n<p>Here in the middle of half-gentrified Hyde Park, a pool is <em>not<\/em> a selling point.<\/p>\n<p>The kids understand this and have had enough DIY lectures to know what \u201ctoo much for the neighborhood\u201d and \u201coverimproved\u201d means, and what kind of neighborhood we live in, right off Armour Boulevard, where there are still boarded-up apartment buildings, drug dealers, and vandals.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t keep them from dreaming out loud.<\/p>\n<p>It takes a while, but finally the excited chatter, the \u201cI want\u201ds, the flood of ideas, and the protestations fade away when I continue to eat my\u2014admittedly delicious\u2014dinner. Of course it\u2019s delicious. I made it.<\/p>\n<p>I look down the table at Finn, my father-in-law, where he sits in his usual spot at the foot of the table. \u201cNo comment?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve almost got this house done,\u201d he says, a now-familiar edge to his voice. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you do your bedroom and finish the speakeasy and call it a day?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI meant about the deck.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s jaw grinds, but he answers calmly. \u201cWinnie\u2014\u201d My mother. \u201c\u2014is right. Free labor is a massive savings, but that doesn\u2019t make it a frugal project, even if you can get scrap wood. I\u2019m not sure how you can sell that expense to your audience. Jerry\u2014\u201d My dad. \u201c\u2014is also right.\u201d Now my dad preens. It\u2019s not often Finn praises him. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that one alone unless you\u2019re willing to rig up more complex pulley systems and even your audience would balk at that. That\u2019s why God invented BFFs who have strong husbands and lots of strong friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gwen, my sixteen-year-old, thinks that\u2019s hilarious, but she thinks her grandfather walks on water and would laugh if she thought he meant <em>Would you bring me a glass of water?<\/em> as a joke.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll double as a carport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyelids shutter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat. Car to kitchen without getting wet.\u201d That\u2019s a pretty good plan, especially for being off the cuff.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s glaring at me without glaring at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs to labor,\u201d I continue, \u201cI was planning it as a community project, something different. Like&nbsp;\u2026 a barn raising.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s eyebrow rises.<\/p>\n<p>My mother deflates with relief.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMm, well, not <em>community<\/em>, as in we ask the neighbors for help\u2014\u201d Hyde Park\u2019s big, and half of it\u2019s filled with childless professional couples who make a lot of money and fiddle in their yards on Sunday mornings. They dabble in DIY so they can brag about it at work, but don\u2019t have the skills or interest to jump into it, especially if it takes away from their other hobbies. Besides, they\u2019ll know why I\u2019m building a deck and they don\u2019t want to be exploited for the sake of my advertising revenue. I don\u2019t blame them for that. I wouldn\u2019t do it, either. \u201cUs. Family. Friends. <em>Our<\/em> community. The ones who get the bigger picture. Not <em>this<\/em> community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUh&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d says my thirteen-year-old son warily, \u201cdoes this mean we have to help?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I snort.<\/p>\n<p>My parents snort.<\/p>\n<p>Finn snorts.<\/p>\n<p>The children look scared. Maybe just annoyed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho do you have in mind?\u201d Finn asks, his tone now resigned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, your bestie,\u201d I say immediately, at which he nods wearily. Finn\u2019s bestie is a hobby stonemason who happens to own one of the most prestigious civil litigation firms in the Midwest. Finn, who has a construction background, is the owner of the other one.<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s friend did the major structural masonry around my house himself, but he taught me how to do the light structural and decorative work, which I did. He also does simple video tutorials for my blog. I wouldn\u2019t volunteer him for my project if I didn\u2019t know he enjoys it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, Scott.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gwen\u2019s boyfriend. \u201cDrumline!\u201d she trills. \u201cFootball!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll schedule it so it won\u2019t interrupt practice. I\u2019ll need you to keep Calvin out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMom,\u201d Calvin and Gwen whine at the same time, for different reasons. They aren\u2019t often on the same page.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t trust you,\u201d I tell eight-year-old Calvin matter-of-factly. \u201cYou say you\u2019ll stay out of things, but you never do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I will! I promise!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn snorts. We do a lot of that around here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrampa!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t look at me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can play Minecraft!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Good point. He doesn\u2019t want to come out of his room for food when he\u2019s playing with his friends. I nod, then look at Ryan. \u201cYour friends can help.\u201d He groans because his friends can be seduced by the possibility of using power tools. Fat chance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you going to try to get materials donated?\u201d Finn asks.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m affronted. \u201cOf course not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No, my DIY blog is aimed at young single urban and rural women, who are usually poor.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t make a secret of the fact that my late husband had provided for us so well I don\u2019t have to work another day in my life if I\u2019m careful. They also know I moved out of the mcmansion we bought new so long ago because it was riddled with problems new construction shouldn\u2019t have. Therefore, one can\u2019t assume that upscale suburban tract housing is any better than an older house.<\/p>\n<p>They don\u2019t seem to mind that I have a good-sized nest egg, as long as they know all my revenue comes from my own two hands, that I spend the money my blog makes to fund my projects, that my saw and drill pay my living expenses. It\u2019s why we don\u2019t have a maid. It\u2019s why we live in the house while I\u2019m renovating it. It\u2019s why we have thrift-store furniture.<\/p>\n<p>My audience doesn\u2019t seem to mind my ginormous Dodge Ram. Diesel. Manual. The biggest non-dually I could buy. They also don\u2019t seem to mind my plethora of power tools. I do far more construction than most of my audience ever will, but they do need to know I understand what they might have to do to accomplish the most insignificant things.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s why I do many things with hand tools, explaining that it will take longer and more effort to do a task, what the task entails and which tools can best accomplish it, however slowly.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s why sometimes I take the bus to Home Depot, buy the few things I can carry alone, haul them back to my house, and repeat that until I have everything I need for a project.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s why sometimes I do simple things like clean. Hot water, Dawn, baking soda, vinegar, bleach, ammonia, a scrubby pad, and a lot of elbow grease can go a long way toward turning something you thought you\u2019d have to fix immediately into something you can live with until you can get around to it. I talk about how to wash and dye crappy curtains you thought were a lost cause, heavy-duty tub scrubbing and cheap cleaning chemicals. I sew things by hand and do simple upholstery with tacks. I go to thrift stores and dollar stores, and talk about practical alternate uses for common things.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s why I installed a complex pulley system, to demonstrate that simple machines like pulleys and levers make it possible for one person to do the work of many people.<\/p>\n<p>It comforts them to know that they aren\u2019t doing it <em>wrong<\/em> when it takes a week to cut a sheet of plywood with a hand saw, that it\u2019s okay if it takes three days to get all the materials home from the store by bus, that it\u2019s okay if they can only afford vinegar and baking soda and a scrub brush to clean. It\u2019s just going to take a lot longer than they thought it would and it might be physically painful. That\u2019s okay, too.<\/p>\n<p>What they don\u2019t know\u2014and won\u2019t\u2014is that my children go to the most expensive private school in town. There are a lot of things I\u2019m willing to make my children suffer through for my personal fulfillment, depending on the definition of \u201csuffer,\u201d but being in the Kansas City School District is not one of them.<\/p>\n<p>I do feel bad that few in my audience can do anything to better their lives significantly, but that\u2019s what politics is for. Talking to people, agitating for change, is free.<\/p>\n<p>This is one reason why my announcement is such a big deal. I never do these things, things you see on the DIY channels. I salvage good, sturdy things and rework them so they look brand new and very expensive. I don\u2019t do upcycle chic. If it\u2019s trash, it\u2019s trash. I\u2019m not going to rework trash and call it chic when it\u2019s still trash with a coat of Krylon.<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally I have to kludge, which I don\u2019t mind because it\u2019s what my target audience has to do. So brand new decks\u2014even if they do double as carports\u2014aren\u2019t in keeping with my mission or the house.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a reason I want a deck, and I\u2019m going to get my deck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA deck with a carport and covering from car to kitchen,\u201d I conclude, \u201cwill add actual value to the house. The back porch is worse than useless, it pulls value from the house, and rehabbing it a third time isn\u2019t going to make it any better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn capitulates because that\u2019s inarguable, and my parents take their cue from him.<\/p>\n<p>Conversation resumes around me. Finn and my mother chat about what they always chat about: money and law. My father tries to put in a point or two here or there, but neither my mother nor father-in-law find them particularly helpful.<\/p>\n<p>My boys are squabbling over whose glass is whose. Kaia, eleven, is once again begging Gwen to let her move into her bedroom with the argument that I could make their rooms one (um, no), but what sixteen-year-old wants to share a bedroom with a little sister if she doesn\u2019t have to?<\/p>\n<p>I space out.<\/p>\n<p>Darren and I had spent the ten years of our marriage gradually moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a starter ranch in a nice neighborhood in Liberty up to a nearby mcmansion in a newer, standard upscale middle-class tract development. The mcmansion was beautiful, customized to us. We lived there for four years before he was T-boned by a drunk driver.<\/p>\n<p>Now I live in a wood-and-stone foursquare officially called a Kansas City Shirtwaist that I\u2019ve renovated mostly by myself, much of it with hand tools.<\/p>\n<p>My parents think I\u2019m nuts.<\/p>\n<p>My father-in-law loves that I\u2019m renovating a house. What he doesn\u2019t love is my insistence on living in it while I do it, which is one reason why he\u2019s pissy and getting pissier. My bedroom, the cellar, and the yard are the last big things I have to do and he wants us out of here. This isn\u2019t a simple flip, but he can\u2019t stand the house. He calls it the DIY Shithole.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t keep him from family dinner every night.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s never taken digs at me for anything I wanted to do\u2014until the last year or so. I know he keeps most of it to himself and we continue on as we have for the last six years. He doesn\u2019t hound me too much and makes sure the house is well secured and I can protect myself and the kids. The gun was intimidating, but I needed one. Fortunately, he insisted before I had to risk asking, which would have generated a whole lot of questions I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to answer.<\/p>\n<p>It has been a long, hard road from mcmansion to moneypit, but my blog is thriving.<\/p>\n<p>Blythely Blundering.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s my thing. I started out not knowing anything, not having to know anything because I lived in new construction. But during that first year of widowhood, late at night when I was missing Darren so badly I ached and I was jumping at every scratch of a squirrel on a tree outside, I\u2019d stay up all night binge-watching reruns of every DIY and hoarders show I could.<\/p>\n<p>This idea had taken root in an introductory entrepreneur tech class when I was assigned a paper.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Holmes I am not, but this is my job. What I do. I live in a house I\u2019ve taken from shithole to lovely, about half of it by myself, to empower young single women on a shoestring. I document and post all my failures in detail, my trial-and-error processes, my mulligans, my workarounds and kludges.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d picked a house with structural problems for a reason. I didn\u2019t do it so my audience could shore up foundations on their own. Most of them rent, so it\u2019s up to their landlords to do that. I did it because the house was dirt cheap and because I wanted to show them how to spot the problem areas and what likely needs to be done. Finn writes posts on how to force their landlords to make the repairs\u2014promptly and properly\u2014and how to follow up if they don\u2019t get them done right and how to not get evicted while doing it.<\/p>\n<p>My mom also writes for me, on money matters. Scrooge has nothing on her and she enjoys the massive amounts of approval she gets from struggling families, the victims of the new economy, financial planners, and people who\u2019d have sneered at her before they\u2019d fallen on hard times somewhere in 2008 and had never gained any ground. She was frugal before frugal was cool. Twice. Hipster Mom.<\/p>\n<p>My dad, a financial planner, writes articles for those who can or want to save a little bit each paycheck and grow their meager assets into not-quite-so-meager assets. He doesn\u2019t really write them. My mom writes them and lets him think he does.<\/p>\n<p>I have never known want or poverty. Neither had Darren. But all four of our parents had started out poor and they remembered. That\u2019s one reason my father-in-law knows so much about construction. He\u2019d had to do it all himself once upon a time when he was very young\u2014not yet graduated from high school\u2014and had just married the girl he\u2019d \u201cgotten in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was 1978, but they were still saying it that way.<\/p>\n<p>I will never be poor. I have too much and it\u2019s too well managed. But something about the women who flock to my blog makes me feel like I\u2019m just like them. My therapist says it\u2019s because I was widowed so young and I\u2019ve got few options for remarriage. I\u2019ve only been asked out on a few dates so I haven\u2019t had sex with anybody since Darren died. And anyway, I refuse to have sex with some guy when what I want is a lifetime relationship, and nobody wants a woman with four kids\u2014and one of them has some weird combination of ADHD and Asperger\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>No, I\u2019m not poor in money, she says, but I\u2019m poor in love. Companionship. Intellectual and sexual fulfillment. And I can\u2019t buy or fix it myself. So I moved into a house that displays my lack. She says it\u2019s like cutting, to force the pain in your body to match or overwhelm the pain in your soul.<\/p>\n<p>DIY Shithole was a physical manifestation of my suffering, to forge a bond with something that won\u2019t leave me.<\/p>\n<p>I choose to buy that explanation, but now it\u2019s a moot point.<\/p>\n<p>This is my career.<\/p>\n<p>And I like it.<\/p>\n<p>The kids clean up after dessert\u2014strawberry shortcake with homemade pound cake and sweet biscuits, fresh sugared strawberries and whipped cream\u2014and go about the business of preparing for the first day of school.<\/p>\n<p>My dad and mom go home. Finn reads Kaia the next section in <em>The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy <\/em>series before tucking her in, calmly tells Calvin what\u2019ll happen if either of us gets a phone call from school the next day, gives Ryan a little pep talk about his crappy summer of football practice, kisses Gwen good night, gets a second (third?) helping of strawberry shortcake, and settles in at the dining room table next to me with his laptop open.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod, this is good, Blythe,\u201d he mutters around a bite. \u201cThank you.\u201d Strawberry juice is trickling down his chin, then hits his snowy white dress shirt. He knows. He doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n<p>Finn and I do this every night, working in silence together, me on my blog or lists or bookkeeping, he on whatever trials he\u2019s got going or big deals he\u2019s wheeling. We work hard. His work is brain-intensive. Mine is labor-intensive. Between us, we can muster up one functioning human by midnight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re mad,\u201d I say, feigning disinterest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not mad,\u201d he says testily. \u201cI\u2019m annoyed that you\u2019re doing everything you can to not finish this house. The deck\u2019s a stalling tactic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It certainly is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTell me you\u2019re in love with this house and I\u2019ll get off your back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Finn knows this, which is why he said it, but this point is also moot. He\u2019d be even more pissy if he knew <em>why<\/em> I\u2019m stalling.<\/p>\n<p>This house is my Bestie, but she\u2019s not my One True Love.<\/p>\n<p>My One True Love is a few blocks from here, a crumbling Greek revival masterpiece nobody\u2019s taken to completion. It\u2019s the worst house in a grand neighborhood of early twentieth-century mansions, and I\u2019m waiting for the current owner to give up on her.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m so in love with her I ache when I pass her on my morning walk. I talk to the guy who\u2019s working on her, get a good idea of her problems, try to assess his level of frustration, and never let him know who I am or what I do or what I want.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s put in a new foundation. That\u2019s all. It would be the third new foundation that house has had in twenty years.<\/p>\n<p>It sounds simple enough if you don\u2019t think about it too long and he obviously didn\u2019t think about it too long. Nobody knows what \u201cputting in a new foundation\u201d really means until they\u2019re down in the muck with a house hanging over their heads supported by crumbling stone and a couple-three steel beams.<\/p>\n<p>I know. I\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody knows what\u2019ll have to be done and how many things could go wrong\u2014and things <em>always<\/em> go wrong. Not even an engineer can predict what\u2019ll happen.<\/p>\n<p>But after you\u2019ve spent your entire budget on the first item on your list, well \u2026<\/p>\n<p>I offered to buy it from him once. He said no before I could make an offer.<\/p>\n<p>I offered to buy it from him again. He was going to ask me how much, but changed his mind and said no.<\/p>\n<p>I offered to buy it from him a third time. He didn\u2019t say anything for a long time. Then he asked me how much. I told him. He looked so insulted I decided not to ask again.<\/p>\n<p>That was six months ago.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s just about to break. His day job gets in the way, his regular life chips away at his time, his wife\u2019s getting impatient with his lack of progress, and I know he doesn\u2019t have any money left: He\u2019s the only one working on it.<\/p>\n<p>If it was ever a labor of love to him, it\u2019s not anymore.<\/p>\n<p>I could finish my bedroom and the cellar in three months, and the yard in six, accounting for winter, including writing a couple hundred blog posts, three dozen tutorials, and many well-edited videos of varying lengths. Finn knows how I work. If it takes me a year, he\u2019s going to be <em>really<\/em> pissed off.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, the deck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really don\u2019t understand why you care since the minute I finish this house, I\u2019m going to buy Shithole Two.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His mouth tightens. \u201cBut you don\u2019t have to <em>live<\/em> in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I scowl but turn to my laptop and dismiss him with a handwave. We go on about our business silently.<\/p>\n<p>At midnight, he shuts down his laptop, buttons up the house for the night, and lets himself out the front door with a casual \u201cCiao.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s still mad.<\/p>\n<p>Now the house is quiet and dark, and my empty bedroom is waiting for me.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been six years since the cops came to my door to tell me my husband, who had just left work to catch a quick lunch, had been killed. Instantly, they said. He didn\u2019t suffer.<\/p>\n<p>Nice to know.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d gone through my five stages of grief in about a year, though somewhere on the front edge of grief stage four, my father-in-law caught me in the middle of a <em>This Old House<\/em> binge and made me do some of the chores around the mcmansion that he\u2019d been doing. Fixit things. Nail that down. Put up that store-bought shelf. Repair the toilet paper holder that fell off the wall. No, not with a screwdriver, with a drill. Not like that, like this. Here, look.<\/p>\n<p>That sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p>Then he told me to go enroll in a couple of college classes. Depressed, I balked, but Finn can be tyrannical. So I went.<\/p>\n<p>That was the first day of the rest of my life.<\/p>\n<p>I had to take remedial English and math and I didn\u2019t even know what \u201cremedial\u201d meant. A pretty, pampered prom queen who\u2019s going to marry the budding software engineer son of the richest guy on the block the minute she graduates from high school doesn\u2019t need to worry about grades. So I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>After carrying a half load of remedial classes my first semester, it slowly dawned on me in the middle of my second, during English Comp 101, to be precise, that I was really, <em>really<\/em> stupid. I told Finn I was struggling, so he had one of his tech guys set my blog up and show me how to run it, and told me to write. He misunderstood what I was struggling with and told me it was an easy way for him to keep track of the repairs that needed done. I was stupid enough to fall for that. He wanted me to learn how to write and to keep a record of what I\u2019d accomplished in both literacy and construction.<\/p>\n<p>The first year into my associate\u2019s degree, I completely redecorated the mcmansion to get rid of those things that continued to cause me grief and stress, getting into deeper DIY as I went along, and blogging about it.<\/p>\n<p>And there was so much more to accomplish that it shocked even Finn.<\/p>\n<p>Brand new mcmansions have lots of problems under all that seamless drywall and soothing neutral tones and pristine crown moulding. It\u2019s shameful, is what it is. On the second anniversary of Darren\u2019s death, I was taking a sledgehammer to an interior wall riddled with mold\u2014a wall separating two of my kids\u2019 bedrooms. I was so angry about the mold, I didn\u2019t remember what day it was, much less grieve.<\/p>\n<p>I informed Finn I was selling the house when I found out the source of the mold was an insidiously leaky roof and the water had run down into all the walls.<\/p>\n<p>Finn said, \u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But then I would have no place to live and my blog would die. I had finished the last thing I could do on the mcmansion without tearing down every wall in the house and my blog audience (which was sizeable) started to drift away. Posts about hiring roofers aren\u2019t interesting. I went house hunting, but all the new construction was awful.<\/p>\n<p><em>Finn, if I\u2019m going to have to do all this anyway, I might as well get an old house and make a business out of it while I finish school.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Okay. You and the kids can move in with me while you\u2019re working on it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was looking for a house close to the Kansas City campus of the University of Missouri when I stumbled across this one. But I never had any intention of moving in with Finn. When I informed him of this, he just rolled his eyes and said, \u201cFine. Whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My grief now consists of rare moments of melancholy and gratitude for the years I had with Darren. I don\u2019t even think of what-might-have-beens because it can\u2019t be. I have a life. One I\u2019d built myself with no help from my parents and a lot from the man who surely must have grieved for his son while he was taking care of me.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how or even if Finn grieved, but he\u2019s a stoic. If he\u2019d broken down, it would have been in private.<\/p>\n<p>But occasionally at night, when the kids are asleep and Finn has gone for the night, the house is dark and quiet, I dread going to bed.<\/p>\n<p>Alone.<\/p>\n<p>Except for B.O.B. Battery-operated boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p>Which, I think for the millionth time as I drift to sleep after a quick, unspectacular orgasm, is only a sleeping pill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">2: ROBBER-BARON PARADISE<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Finn<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">A DECK.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m thinking about it while I\u2019m driving home. My <em>quiet<\/em> home. Where kids aren\u2019t yelling at each other and calling \u201cMom!\u201d every ninety seconds and \u201cGrampa!\u201d every fifteen minutes. They yell for me, not for Blythe\u2019s father, who doesn\u2019t seem to notice all the things the kids demand. Nobody ever yells for \u201cPop-pop\u201d because it doesn\u2019t occur to them.<\/p>\n<p>My home, where Jerry doesn\u2019t feel entitled to pick my brain by virtue of the fact that he\u2019s my in-law and he shows up for dinner every night. My home, where the foundation and walls are sound, the rooms are impeccably decorated and cleaned, and almost every square inch is a gentleman\u2019s retreat. Where it never carried the faintest whiffs of drugs, cat pee, sex, bathtub gin, stale cigarette smoke, and mold wafting from the cellar and thrift-store furniture.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up in a house like that.<\/p>\n<p>And by \u201cgrew up,\u201d I mean the only roof I could afford at eighteen with a pregnant seventeen-year-old girlfriend and a shotgun in my back. One fumbling in the back seat of a car with a girl to whom I whined, \u201cBut, baby, I love you!\u201d and I\u2019d completely fucked up my life.<\/p>\n<p>Or so I thought.<\/p>\n<p>I turn my vintage Alfa-Romeo Spider into the long driveway of my Ward Parkway estate, the wrought-iron gates closing behind me. My father-in-law still hasn\u2019t forgiven me for making good. He\u2019d wanted Miriam to languish in poverty as punishment for being \u201ceasy.\u201d That\u2019s what they called it then.<\/p>\n<p>She wasn\u2019t easy. I was a douchebag.<\/p>\n<p>I see my father-in-law regularly. He\u2019s a (very) junior attorney at my law firm. Mine. The one I built. He\u2019s a senile old bastard, but not senile enough to forget me and every move I ever made. Not senile enough to forget his anger with me generally, much less the fact that he had to come beg me for a job when he was downsized in 2008 and the only job he could get was as a Walmart greeter.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn\u2019t have hired him at all but my head paralegal begged me to. He has his uses, the biggest one being that he\u2019s got obscure case history packed so tightly in his mind my staff doesn\u2019t have to waste time looking for what I need. They just ask him.<\/p>\n<p>They call him Google. He hates it, but he answers to it. It makes me chuckle.<\/p>\n<p>A deck.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe\u2019s been working up to that for a while. I\u2019ve seen her lustful glances at pressure-treated six-by-sixes and two-by-twelves at Home Depot, her delicate sighs at the round disposable concrete forms, her longing caresses of wooden stair stringers.<\/p>\n<p>I also see all the men standing around watching her drool over this stuff like it\u2019s a Chippendale revue, wanting her to caress <em>their<\/em> wood. I don\u2019t know if she notices this, but if she does she probably doesn\u2019t care. She\u2019s pretty, I suppose, because my son would never have married a not-pretty woman. But what she is is happy. She always has been. I think that might be part of her attraction, but I\u2019m used to her so I only notice this when we go to the lumberyard and everyone else notices.<\/p>\n<p>The house is structurally sound now. The back yard is big enough to accommodate both her workshed-slash-practice room and the deck-carport. I will admit, that was a helluva save. She didn\u2019t have the carport in mind until I questioned her sanity. The deck alone would be too much for the neighborhood and she would\u2019ve never gotten a good return on it. But make it a carport and voil\u00e0 \u2026<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, it\u2019s a good idea but I wish she\u2019d just get the fucking house done. I don\u2019t like the neighborhood she lives in. I don\u2019t like that she lives like a pauper when she doesn\u2019t have to because there is no glory or honor in it; it doesn\u2019t make anybody else\u2019s life better to do it. I don\u2019t like that I have a mansion that houses me and my support staff of twelve, but she won\u2019t move in with me.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been harder and harder to keep my mouth shut as she comes up with excuse after excuse to delay. I have no idea why she doesn\u2019t want to get out of that house. She likes it because it\u2019s her work product, but she doesn\u2019t seem to be attached to it, the way people get, the way I\u2019m attached to my house and office downtown.<\/p>\n<p>She has a reason, though. It wouldn\u2019t be the first time she\u2019s kept her end game to herself, but I decided long ago to go with it because she makes good decisions most of the time. I advise her here and there. Even if she doesn\u2019t take my advice, it\u2019s usually a choice between good and better.<\/p>\n<p>She doesn\u2019t need me anymore. She hasn\u2019t needed me for anything past the first two years after Darren\u2019s death, when she stopped asking me what she should do, started telling me what she was going to do, and giving me orders to that effect.<\/p>\n<p><em>Finn, get me that builder\u2019s head on a platter.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sorry. Somebody else got it first. You might be able to dig a fingernail out of his remains.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Oh, poop.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hell, I don\u2019t need her either, but she\u2019s the mother of my son\u2019s children. I vowed I would never treat my grandchildren the way my father-in-law treated mine. Miriam took the kids to see him a couple times, but he hated them on sight. They knew it. They wanted nothing to do with him.<\/p>\n<p>My grandchildren\u2014all of them, not just Darren\u2019s kids\u2014give me something. Darren\u2019s kids give me an extra something because the youngest two don\u2019t remember their daddy and the oldest two are losing their memories as time goes on. I am the father figure in their lives because I\u2019m widowed and can spend time with them. Although I have a thriving law practice, my time in the trenches of the hundred-hour work week is long past and I have no marriage to make my priority.<\/p>\n<p>Even before Darren died, Blythe\u2019s parents were indifferent to the kids. They were cruising around the world, spending the money they\u2019d worked and scrimped so hard for. I didn\u2019t blame them for that at all, but I was pissed when they took off on another cruise two months after Darren died, then again at Christmas. Your twenty-eight-year-old daughter\u2019s husband dies, leaving her alone with four young children and you sail off to the Caribbean? Who does this?<\/p>\n<p>I expected better from Winnie, but quite frankly, if it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with money, Blythe\u2019s father is as useless as tits on a boar hog. Sometimes I can\u2019t figure out if he\u2019s oblivious or if he\u2019s selfish, but he manages to get in the way quite a bit. I can tell the kids to clean the kitchen and they will, even if they gripe and drag their feet. Jerry can look at the kitchen and not only <em>not<\/em> see it needs to be cleaned, but will use clean dishes to eat more <em>while<\/em> the kids are cleaning. They\u2019ve come to me more than once, angry and frustrated because he won\u2019t respect their polite requests to get out and stop making more work for them. They\u2019re just kids, right? They\u2019ve gone to their mother, but Jerry doesn\u2019t respect Blythe any more than he respects the kids, so it\u2019s left to me.<\/p>\n<p>The same way it was left to me to take care of Blythe and the kids after Darren died. If I didn\u2019t do it, who would?<\/p>\n<p>Jerry and Winnie Hemming have been having dinner with us every night for the last year and he still doesn\u2019t know the nightly routine. Or he doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n<p>I can barely bring myself to be civil, but for Blythe\u2019s and Winnie\u2019s sake I do.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t take any of my nine grandchildren for granted. When my colleagues bitch and moan about the state of their offspring and their offspring\u2019s offspring\u2014divorces, steps, mistresses, lovers, comings-out, jail, drugs, sex changes, fraud, theft\u2014I quietly preen. Sometimes I\u2019m not that quiet about it.<\/p>\n<p>For all my son died at thirty, <em>my<\/em> family is straight-up. No-nonsense. Dare I say, <em>perfect<\/em>. <em>Leave it to Beaver <\/em>incarnate. <em>Father Knows Best<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Miriam and I did very well. The only thing I <em>do<\/em> have to bitch and moan about is Blythe\u2019s insistence on living in that shithole while she\u2019s renovating it. My colleagues and employees who read her blog (because they like seeing me up to my eyeballs in drywall dust) think it\u2019s cute. Stupid, but cute. Grief therapy taken too far.<\/p>\n<p>Which is <em>exactly<\/em> what it is.<\/p>\n<p>But I was there when Blythe fell apart at the news of Darren\u2019s death, so I humor her. Still. It\u2019s a habit.<\/p>\n<p>I was stoic all through the first weeks and months after Darren\u2019s death, taking care of things, propping Blythe up, forcing a beloved, pampered wife and stay-at-home mom who barely managed to graduate from high school to make something of herself.<\/p>\n<p>Not because she needed to to survive. Darren was a good man, thoroughly in love with Blythe, and she him. He left her well provided for. So did his killer\u2019s insurance company after I got through with them.<\/p>\n<p>But then all the post-death business was finished. Blythe and the kids were stumbling into their new normal and I tried to get back to my old normal.<\/p>\n<p>I walk into my quiet, clean, orange-smelling house with a sigh of relief. I\u2019m still tasting strawberry shortcake and wishing I\u2019d had another helping.<\/p>\n<p>God, that woman can cook.<\/p>\n<p>I have a chef, but Blythe\u2019s spoiled me so much I want her food in my office freezer for snacks and dinner on the nights I\u2019m preparing for court.<\/p>\n<p>I grab the mail off the front table salver. A formal invitation from Knox and Justice Hilliard around Christmas for a political fundraiser. I check the date. The fundraiser is a week before Bryce and Giselle Kenard\u2019s ten-year renewal of vows.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Phineas W Marston &#038; Guest<\/p>\n<p>I have no <em>&#038; Guest<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll go to both, of course, the renewal of vows being the more prestigious one. <\/p>\n<p>That particular bride\u2019s family is collectively known as the Dunhams. Her grandfather was some kind of bigwig in Kansas City during Prohibition and it\u2019s simply easier for everyone to keep track of who\u2019s connected to whom by ending any introduction with \u201che\/she\u2019s a Dunham.\u201d Sometimes \u201ca Dunham\u201d isn\u2019t related by blood at all, but is bound to the family by history and loyalty. That family\u2019s antics are one long soap opera and a third of the country\u2019s moneyed can\u2019t wait for the next episode.<\/p>\n<p>The other invitation is a standard political fundraiser to start filling the war chest of incumbent Governor Eric Cipriani for his second term in office. Eric\u2019s a libertarian masquerading as an independent, but I don\u2019t really care about D\u2019s and R\u2019s, et al until a politician gets in my way or gets others out of my way. Eric gets others out of my way. He won the governorship on a fluke, but his staying there won\u2019t be a fluke if I have anything to say about it. I want him in the White House as badly as he wants to be there. Incidentally, both he and the first lady tumbled into the Dunham family when they were teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a second fundraising invitation, from Eric\u2019s challenger\u2019s camp. I laugh. \u201cI know Eric Cipriani,\u201d I mutter. \u201cEric Cipriani is a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Eric Cipriani.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look again. Oh. That invitation\u2019s for the previous residents of my house.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mr and Mrs J Fenimore Hilliard<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dunhams.<\/p>\n<p>Dead ones. Somebody in that camp didn\u2019t get the memo those two died tragically almost eight years ago.<\/p>\n<p>I still get mail for the Hilliards occasionally because I bought this house and the Alfa for a song from Knox Hilliard, the wife\u2019s son, about a year after they died. I\u2019d coveted both for as long as I could remember and Fen Hilliard wasn\u2019t entertaining offers from anyone. At the time, I couldn\u2019t have ponied up enough cash to buy it, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>But by the time Fen was killed and the missus killed herself, Knox and I had history, and we\u2019d made a gentleman\u2019s agreement: When he got control of the estate on his fortieth birthday, he\u2019d sell it to me lock, stock, and barrel. Not only did he sell it to me, he hated the place so much he practically shoved the keys in my hand for pennies on the dollar.<\/p>\n<p>That was six years ago, and I was persona non grata around town for a while because I got the jump on everybody else who wanted it.<\/p>\n<p>The universe has to have its little in-jokes, I suppose, and this joke still has legs at cocktail parties: I, Finn Marston, live in Fen Hilliard\u2019s house. Occasionally, if I\u2019m introduced by my nickname, I have to explain: Me, Phineas, alive. Him, Fenimore, dead. I hate that, but I\u2019ll be damned if I go by Phineas.<\/p>\n<p>I toss the invitation for the Hilliards in the trash and head up the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>So there I was five years ago, trying to settle back into my old routine after I\u2019d wrapped up all Darren\u2019s business, when I ran into a former employee, a rainmaking attorney who\u2019d left me high and dry when he bailed on me to start his own practice.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d never forgiven him for that. I hadn\u2019t known anything about his life until, a couple of years after he\u2019d left me, I saw in the papers his wife and four children had died in a house fire. He was in a coma with burns and smoke inhalation that should have killed him, and when, <em>if<\/em>, he came out of it, he was going to be charged with arson and five counts of homicide.<\/p>\n<p>As angry as I was, I knew he would never do that. I also knew he had no one to protect his interests. Yeah, I was pissed off at him and normally I\u2019d have felt a warm trickle of schadenfreude, but not that time. I wasn\u2019t going to let him languish in a hospital bed for God only knew how long while vultures picked over his assets. He left me in a fix, true, but to be fair, he\u2019d made me a lot of money before he did.<\/p>\n<p>With the appropriate subtle threats dropped in all the right ears to discourage would-be vultures, I started to take care of his life while he was comatose. I knew, once he healed, he\u2019d take his own revenge, but at that moment in time, he was utterly helpless, at the mercy of fate.<\/p>\n<p>And that was where I collided with Knox Hilliard, who was then a prosecutor up north with a dirty reputation. I wanted <em>nothing<\/em> to do with that corrupt bastard, and he wanted <em>nothing<\/em> to do with a guy who\u2019d fixed fights and rigged bets.<\/p>\n<p>So I was shocked when I found out that Knox and my guy had been best buds for years. They met as freshmen at UCLA, thrown together by the dorm lottery, became best pals, and went to law school together. That relationship disintegrated as bitterly as mine did, but that wasn\u2019t relevant. Neither was our mutual disdain.<\/p>\n<p>We <em>knew<\/em> this man.<\/p>\n<p>Unbeknownst to me, Knox had been working on taking care of him from the other end. We met in the middle, pooled our terror-inducing reputations without tipping our hands, handled the disposition of what remained of his dead family, and kept our guy out of trouble until he woke up and could take care of himself.<\/p>\n<p>Knox and I bonded that year. Nobody knows we\u2019re friends\u2014and that\u2019s the way we want to keep it.<\/p>\n<p>Our guy never knew. He still doesn\u2019t. He\u2019s completely mystified by who\u2019d kept him solvent, his estate from draining away under his medical care costs. He doesn\u2019t know who put the arson squad\u2019s feet to the fire so he wouldn\u2019t go to prison for five counts of murder. He also doesn\u2019t know Knox and I were the only visitors he had that year. No family. No friends. Here, a millionaire, with no one to look after him. He might as well have been a hobo.<\/p>\n<p>For years after that, I\u2019d see him at society parties. Ignored him because I was still angry. He <em>had<\/em> left me in one huge fucking bind. He ignored me, too, probably because he knew I was pissed. I was shocked when he got married again. So was everybody else in town. He was hideous from the fire and his scars hadn\u2019t improved much by then, but he\u2019s rich. I didn\u2019t think he\u2019d ever find a woman who wasn\u2019t feeling up his back pocket, but he did\u2014a Dunham, Hilliard\u2019s cousin and partner in crime. Lots of it. Or at least, those were the rumors.<\/p>\n<p>For all that, the day I ran into him at the courthouse, I was too grief-stricken and tired to be angry. Hell, I was too grief-stricken and tired to recognize the bastard.<\/p>\n<p>My son was dead.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing else matters when your beloveds die. It all seems so petty.<\/p>\n<p>I said hi without thinking. He was someone I knew, a face I recognized. Didn\u2019t matter who. He stopped cold, grasped my arm and swung me around, looked at me as if I were tripping on acid and said, \u201cFinn, you all right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I laughed. It was more of a croak. \u201cAh, just finishing up some business with my son.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was a nothing statement. It could mean anything. So something in the way I said it must have caught his ear. \u201cWhat\u2019s up with your son?\u201d he asked carefully.<\/p>\n<p>I told him as matter-of-factly as I could, and when his expression turned pained, I finally realized <em>who<\/em> I was talking to. It had been so many years by that time and I had my own pain to deal with, I\u2019d forgotten about him, much less that he\u2019d lost four children. Horrifically. I started to wonder if my pain would <em>ever<\/em> go away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou got a minute?\u201d he asked me.<\/p>\n<p>I shrugged. \u201cNothing going on at my place, no.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He called his wife, told her he\u2019d be late getting home, cocked his head toward the elevators, and said, \u201cC\u2019mon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Oh, hell, what else did I have to do?<\/p>\n<p>We ended up at Gates in Midtown, in a private little booth at the back. When we were settled in with food and drink, he said, \u201cTalk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I still wince when I remember that moment. Someone <em>cared<\/em>. More than that, someone who <em>knew<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I broke down. I swear to God I have never sobbed like that in my life, in a public place yet. Not even over Miriam\u2019s death. It took me until closing time and then beyond that. We sat in his truck. I continued pouring it all out. It\u2019s a haze now. I have no idea what I said.<\/p>\n<p>I never had friends past the moment I said \u201cI do.\u201d Didn\u2019t have time for friends. I had my mother, my seventeen-year-old wife, my newborn son, and a life to get sorted out because I\u2019d be goddamned if I stayed in that shithole and made my family stay in that shithole because I\u2019d coerced a girl into sex. Miriam deserved better, and I needed to shove her father\u2019s head farther up his asshole than it already was.<\/p>\n<p>So I sat crying in the car of an attorney I\u2019d hired straight out of law school and trained. One I\u2019d trusted, one who\u2019d betrayed me by leaving me, one I\u2019d carried a grudge against for years for leaving me.<\/p>\n<p>I had no pride. He understood, more than anyone else could, what it was like to lose a child. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I had a friend. A good one. A <em>real<\/em> one.<\/p>\n<p>He listened to me all night, then dropped me off at my house at eight o\u2019clock the next morning when I\u2019d finally run out of words. I don\u2019t know any woman who\u2019d accept <em>My former boss who hates me cried on my shoulder for eighteen hours<\/em> as the truth, but his wife did. He repaid every second and every penny I spent keeping the wolves at bay while he fought for his life in a burn unit that night.<\/p>\n<p>That was five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I take out my phone and text him.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">b wants 2 build deck<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Bryce Kenard answers almost immediately.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">lol<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Yeah. Ha. Ha. Ha.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">fuck u<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">3: PARIS OF THE PLAINS<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">MY PLAN TO build a deck doesn\u2019t go over well on the blog. The majority of the comments are along the lines of \u201cWhy should I care about this? You\u2019re the one with the money. Do something <em>I<\/em> can afford to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why should they care about this project?<\/p>\n<p>I sigh. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I have blog posts scheduled six months ahead of all the things they <em>can<\/em> do, so I\u2019m not sure why they\u2019d be upset about an extra post every week.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m in the cellar, otherwise known as the speakeasy because that was what it had been for most of Prohibition. There used to be an enameled cast-iron bathtub over in the corner. If anybody had ever <em>bathed<\/em> in it before I winched it up to the third-floor bathroom, I\u2019d be shocked.<\/p>\n<p>The hard-packed dirt still smelled like gin when I began pouring the concrete floor. I didn\u2019t do it with a truck pumping cement through a pipe in my coal chute, with me in waders wielding a concrete float. I did it piecemeal whenever I had an extra half hour, by hand, with five-gallon buckets of Quikrete in sections about the size one sixty-pound bag of cement can cover.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the way my audience would have to do it.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m putting the final coat of Kilz on the exposed stone walls. It\u2019s the fourth coat of the industrial oil-based stuff. It stinks. Oh my God, it stinks. I\u2019m about to die, even with the coal chute and all the cellar doors open and a mask over my face. I did power-wash the walls after the concrete cured, but there was still a hundred years\u2019 worth of tobacco gunk, alcohol, and blood covering them that I had to scrub by hand.<\/p>\n<p><em>For sale: Prohibition-era bullets. Used once.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to use a sandblaster, but I can\u2019t do that in here and besides, my audience wouldn\u2019t have access to that.<\/p>\n<p>So I Kilz.<\/p>\n<p>The stone foundation is solid. There are now steel beams holding the house up. The windows, which I restored and weatherproofed, are tight. The mechanicals are new. It\u2019s got new duct work with heat vents and good lighting. I put in a bona fide laundry room and full-sized bathroom, where Finn keeps some clothes and showers occasionally. There\u2019s a Futon I haven\u2019t decided what to do with yet, so it sits there in case we need an extra bed.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s quiet except for the squishing of the paint roller. The kids are at school. I don\u2019t play music when I work alone because I want silence. Not silence. My job isn\u2019t silent. I crave being away from my children\u2019s demands and the voices of others, crave the time I can stay in my head and think. This is one reason I love my job so much.<\/p>\n<p>But then my email dings and I pull my phone out of its pocket in my cargo shorts in case it\u2019s the school.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">Hi. Follow you\u2019re blog. Male 20. Dropped out of high school. Reading comments, but dont agree. I come to library to read you\u2019re blog. I watch all your vids. Saving to buy my own tools and have a chance to earn some money from nieghbor whos planning a deck next spring. Knew you were doing this and told him I could help. Plz build deck &#038; post real time. Need this job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Lurkers. I never know who really benefits from what I do. Men don\u2019t comment on my blog, or if they do, I don\u2019t know they\u2019re men.<\/p>\n<p>I forward this to Finn.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">construction starts 3 wks<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> ur a touch<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">what are you doing?<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> court zzzzz u?<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">speakeasy kilz<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> bdrm next wk?<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">ignoring you now<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>I can hear his sigh all the way from downtown Kansas City to the depths of the speakeasy in the middle of Hyde Park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">ON A SATURDAY morning in early September, I stand in my back yard with my father-in-law, my kids, my daughter\u2019s boyfriend, my son\u2019s two friends, Finn\u2019s bestie and his kid, my parents, and my film girl Posey.<\/p>\n<p>Posey\u2019s filming a truck backing down my driveway with a Dumpster headed for the back corner of my lot. It drops it with a thunk and pulls up and out of the driveway. Rumbling toward us now is the backhoe that\u2019ll demolish the back porch.<\/p>\n<p>The back porch is a late addition, likely in the \u201940s and more like a lean-to. That\u2019s about the time the door in my bedroom wall was put in and the now-rickety, blocked-off staircase clinging to the side of the house was built to accommodate a boarder.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve rehabbed the back porch twice now. I still hate it. It\u2019s unwieldy, it doesn\u2019t fit the house, and it doesn\u2019t even overhang the cellar door so the groceries don\u2019t get wet. I\u2019ve been dithering about doing it a third time, even though it\u2019d make good blog fodder.<\/p>\n<p>I intended for the deck to be a fill-in project while I wait for my One True Love, but with the destruction of the back porch I didn\u2019t know what to do with and the carport I didn\u2019t know I needed, it became a legitimate, if not necessary, project.<\/p>\n<p>Not even Finn argues that now.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been four years and I still haven\u2019t decided whether to tear down the side staircase and wall up the door to my room. With a new staircase and a little kitchenette where my office is now, it could still be a rental unit.<\/p>\n<p>Will build to suit.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce Kenard, Finn\u2019s friend, is the stonemason, so he\u2019ll be the foreman on the concrete phases of the project. Right now he\u2019s talking to the backhoe operator and pointing at the marks I made. I would have done the demolition by myself but I\u2019m not going to be able to do some of the concrete demolition myself, even with a jackhammer, so why not hire a backhoe to do all of it? It\u2019s not like my blog denizens aren\u2019t already upset with me.<\/p>\n<p><em>Backhoe cost: 40 grand. Kidding! $400 per day.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Four hundred dollars is some of these people\u2019s grocery budgets for two or three months.<\/p>\n<p>I catch Gwen ogling Bryce, who is skimpy with the clothes when he works outside: ratty Levi\u2019s shorts, socks and steel-toed boots, gloves, and nothing else except a wide braid tattoo around his massive right upper arm. I want to think she\u2019s gaping at the burn and skin graft scars all over his left half, but she\u2019s obviously thinking the same thing I am.<\/p>\n<p>The man\u2019s built like a Greek god and looks like he could push a man into the ground like a thumbtack. Seriously, I don\u2019t mind his dress code <em>at all<\/em> and the longer I look, the more attractive he gets. Scars? What scars? I pull my sunglasses over my eyes so I can stare all I want. Good <em>Lord<\/em>, he\u2019s hot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, for fuck\u2019s sake,\u201d Finn mutters, half irritated, half amused. \u201cPut your tongue in your mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I cast him a wicked glance. \u201cYum,\u201d I purr.<\/p>\n<p>Finn sighs.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce doesn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n<p>Gwen\u2019s drooling too and her boyfriend is glaring at her. No, the apple didn\u2019t fall far from that tree. I catch Scott\u2019s attention and wink. Then I walk over to Gwen and whisper, \u201cI\u2019d tap that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMom!\u201d she screams, jumping away from me and looking at me in horror. \u201cOh my God!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re <em>married!<\/em>\u201d she hisses. \u201cWhat about Daddy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a <em>widow<\/em>. I didn\u2019t die when Daddy did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat about Grampa? He\u2019s <em>right there!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what Grampa has to do with who I drool over. Nom nom nom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She claps her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes tight. \u201cI don\u2019t want to know this I don\u2019t want to know this idontwanttoknowthis <em>idontwanttoknowthis!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott grins and gives me a thumb\u2019s up.<\/p>\n<p>If Gwen so much as peeks at Bryce again, all Scott has to do is mention I have dibs when the wife dies.<\/p>\n<p>I join Finn again to watch as the backhoe goes to work. \u201cWhat was that about?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n<p>We put our heads together while I talk, but try not to be too obvious about it because Gwen\u2019s sensitive to teasing and we adults try to respect that.<\/p>\n<p>Try.<\/p>\n<p>She makes it too easy sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWould you?\u201d Finn asks with a slight chuckle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he weren\u2019t married and came on to me? Oh, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looks at me funny, his smile fading. \u201cReally?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I huff. \u201cFinn, cripes! Do you want me to pine away for Darren the rest of my life?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He blinks and looks away, his expression confused.<\/p>\n<p>That hurts a little and my humor fades. \u201cWell, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shakes his head. \u201cNo,\u201d he says absently, as if I should know. \u201cIt didn\u2019t occur to me.\u201d Then he looks at me again and says solemnly, \u201cI would never ask you to do that. You\u2019re too young to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Surprised by this, I blink and my mouth is open a little. \u201cUm&nbsp;\u2026 okay, thanks. Nice to know. But I don\u2019t have any plans or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We fall silent. It\u2019s an awkward silence, a disconcerting one because while we\u2019ve had loud arguments that led to angry silences, we haven\u2019t had an awkward silence since Darren died.<\/p>\n<p>To my relief, he finally ambles off, yelling at all five boys to help him start picking up debris where they can.<\/p>\n<p>I watch him as he goes.<\/p>\n<p>That was the most bizarre conversation Finn and I have ever had.<\/p>\n<p>But I shake it off and turn to greet neighbors as they drift into the back yard to watch my latest project unfold.<\/p>\n<p>My mother\u2019s in my kitchen making sandwiches for the crew and making sure Calvin <em>stays<\/em> on the Minecraft server while Kaia and Duncan, Bryce\u2019s kid, keep the fresh sweet tea, lemonade, pop, Gatorade, and water flowing.<\/p>\n<p>My dad sits in a lawn chair in the shade to \u201csupervise.\u201d He\u2019s got his Pepsi and a good view, so he\u2019s happy as a clam. I\u2019ve asked him to help Finn direct the cleanup, but he loses himself talking to this neighbor or that, hollering dumb old-man jokes every once in a while (\u201cWorkin\u2019 hard or hardly workin\u2019?! Yuk yuk yuk!\u201d), yelling for my mom to bring him another Pepsi.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a really good thing Finn\u2019s too preoccupied to have heard that. \u201cGo get it yourself, Dad,\u201d I say, trying to keep my voice light. He gives me an unamused side-eye then yells at Kaia to go get it. \u201cKaia\u2019s working, Dad,\u201d I say, my voice less light. If he can\u2019t contribute to the work, why can\u2019t he at least go get his own pop? \u201cYou\u2019re the only one here who\u2019s not doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He glares at me and charges up out his chair in a huff. Or tries. He trips over a clod of dirt and nearly plants his face in the grass. He\u2019s a lot taller than I am but for all he eats like a horse, he\u2019s skinny as a rail. I, however, have been doing heavy construction for the last few years, so I catch him easily with an arm across his chest. He rights himself, jerks out of my grasp, then stalks off with a glare.<\/p>\n<p>My neighbors watch this exchange warily and give me a look of wry commiseration. More neighbors wander down the driveway, beers in hands, and get a little closer to the machinery than is comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>More than once, Finn has to bellow at them to keep alcohol off the job site. \u201c<em>READ THE GODDAMNED SIGN!<\/em>\u201d he roars so loudly the entire neighborhood can hear. The neighbors with the beer drift away grumbling.<\/p>\n<p>It takes an hour to pull the back porch down without damaging anything, but there\u2019s nothing more any of us can do except wait for the backhoe to do the heavy cleanup. After that, it\u2019ll break up the crappy concrete pad that\u2019s already there, clean that up, then dig and grade the space for the new parking pad, driveway extension, and turnout. It takes a while, which we spend sitting on blankets and sheets, eating, laughing, and talking.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce and Finn are talking legal shop, catching each other up on whatever cases they\u2019ve got going on. Bryce is a medical malpractice attorney. Finn takes on big corporations. Sometimes they end up having a defendant in common.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t see Finn as an attorney of any type, although I\u2019ve been to his office and watched him in court. He\u2019ll bring home champagne to celebrate his wins, and he\u2019ll talk about his cases if he\u2019s had a particularly good day, but his delivery is low key. I <em>know<\/em> he\u2019s a bold and ruthless lawyer\u2014he wouldn\u2019t have built what he did if he weren\u2019t\u2014but that\u2019s not who he <em>is<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Finn is, first and foremost, a family man. He needs to have family around him like he needs air.<\/p>\n<p>When I was almost fifteen, Darren\u2019s family moved into my relatively affluent neighborhood, two doors down and across the street from us. Darren had a job at a little comic book and video game store, and did something with computers so I hardly ever saw him out of school. Jessica, Darren\u2019s sister, was into soccer, whereas I was into cheer and dance. Ken, his little brother, was too young to bother with. Finn was mostly around in the evenings and on weekends, working in the yard, packing up their SUV for Jessica\u2019s games or trips to the Lake of the Ozarks.<\/p>\n<p>Darren\u2019s mother would be out tending her roses and I\u2019d see Finn bring her a bottle of water or move her umbrella if she strayed out into the sun because she was prone to burning quickly. She would smile up at him and he\u2019d pet her hair. If she needed a hole dug, he\u2019d do it for her.<\/p>\n<p>I remember watching this from my bedroom window and vaguely wishing my father treated my mother that way, hoping to one day have a husband who treated me that way.<\/p>\n<p>And then I did and I didn\u2019t take it for granted.<\/p>\n<p>Now Finn lives alone in a grand estate that takes twelve people to keep up, but he doesn\u2019t spend much time there. He comes here straight after work, takes off his suit jacket and tie as quickly as possible, rolls up his sleeves, and pitches in with the kids to get dinner on the table. If he doesn\u2019t have a big case going, he comes over on the weekends and helps me with my bigger projects.<\/p>\n<p>But now, with Finn and Bryce looking like fly-by-night day laborers, watching a backhoe tear up concrete, eating ham sandwiches and swilling Gatorade, they\u2019re throwing around numbers like two billion. They\u2019re speaking casually of taking down this person or propping up that person, and how and why. There are names I recognize from the news, mostly politicians and businessmen, occasionally celebrities, spoken of as if they\u2019re dire enemies or good friends.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I realize belatedly. They <em>are<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s surreal.<\/p>\n<p>This man beside me right now is not the Finn I know. We live in a Midwestern city where nothing really important happens and is far away from the centers of power. He comes home almost every night for family dinner and bedtime rituals. He writes posts for my blog. He chats with my mother and when she\u2019s feeling insecure about her role on Blundering, reassures her that what she has to say is valuable. He\u2019s civil to my dad, even though he\u2019s never liked him. He doesn\u2019t brag, doesn\u2019t consider himself better than we are, doesn\u2019t drop these names he and Bryce are discussing between themselves.<\/p>\n<p>My dad drops names to impress Finn. It doesn\u2019t. Now my dad\u2019s moved into my periphery and I glance over at him. He\u2019s scooting his camp chair closer to Finn and Bryce to listen. I can\u2019t tell what he\u2019s thinking by his expression, but I really don\u2019t know him very well.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an odd admission to make. I\u2019m thirty-four. He was always around until I got married, and then the last year or so. How can I not know my dad?<\/p>\n<p>Then Finn asks if Bryce\u2019s wife is ready to go to work for him. Bryce laughs and replies that\u2019ll never happen.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve seen Bryce\u2019s wife around school, because Duncan goes there, but she doesn\u2019t do PTA, doesn\u2019t hang out with anybody, doesn\u2019t talk to anybody. She doesn\u2019t even get out of her car in the pickup lane, and she sits there with her head down, reading. I see the Kenards at the school activities when their kid\u2019s participating, but even then she\u2019s aloof and Bryce does the schmoozing. Some of my pals know her. They think she\u2019s a stone-cold bitch. Every time the subject comes up, I mention that she lends me her husband for my projects.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of weird rumors about her, but I don\u2019t put much stock in those, so I know very little about her. One thing I didn\u2019t know was that she\u2019s a lawyer. That\u2019s shocking enough, but to find out Finn wants to hire her is, well, humbling, if not mortifying. Finn only hires lawyers who\u2019ve either beat him in court or ones he thinks might be able to. He\u2019s especially partial to \u201cstone-cold bitches.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I could never do that. I\u2019m not smart enough to get through law school. Getting a liberal arts degree with a B average was difficult enough, and I was embarrassed all the way through at what I didn\u2019t know. I was thirty years old and listening to my study groups packed with twenty-year-olds talking gravely about \u201cgerta\u201d and \u201cproof rock\u201d and \u201cneetchee\u201d and \u201cyouth in Asia,\u201d never knowing what Asian kids had to do with anything, unable to figure it out from context, and not daring to ask how to spell those to look them up later. Trying to fake my way through iambic pentameter was torture.<\/p>\n<p>Finn had to explain so very many things, including \u201cGoethe,\u201d \u201cPrufrock,\u201d \u201cNietzsche,\u201d and \u201ceuthanasia,\u201d but he never laughed at me, never once made me feel stupid while he was doing it. There was nothing about my schooling he didn\u2019t take seriously.<\/p>\n<p><em>Twenty-year-olds sit and discuss these things as if they know what they\u2019re talking about. They don\u2019t. It\u2019s an educational pissing contest based on what their professors told them, a way to make themselves feel smart and educated and special.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>How do you know?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I sat through all that bullshit, too. I was the same age they were, but I was working, I had a family already, and I had a rock-solid goal that didn\u2019t include lofty poetry and social justice. Take what you need from your classes and study groups and move on. The rest will come as your knowledge expands and you start getting curious.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I.T. was my academic refuge because, while it was difficult, it didn\u2019t require me to read things I didn\u2019t understand, then try to pull out themes and symbols and metaphors from life experience I didn\u2019t have. I was almost giddy when I realized I had a little knack for computers, because I finally understood what my husband had done to support and protect us all those years. I felt closer to him, closer to his work, to his thought processes. It was a level of intimacy I could never have with him unless I went to college.<\/p>\n<p>He wanted me to.<\/p>\n<p>I flat refused.<\/p>\n<p>He believed I was smart enough.<\/p>\n<p>I thought he was just saying that to make me feel better and told him I didn\u2019t want to hear another word.<\/p>\n<p>I regret that so much now.<\/p>\n<p>But when I finally did get there, I took a lot of math and drafting because it was relevant to my job. I took some accounting and graphics classes I knew would come in handy. I also took classes that interested me whether or not they had anything to do with anything at all. Now I scan the offerings at any number of colleges around town and continuing education classes and learn more interesting things.<\/p>\n<p>My gorgeously framed diploma hangs in a prominent spot in my living room. It was hard-won, and one of very few real accomplishments I have to my name.<\/p>\n<p>I have very rarely envied anyone. I wasn\u2019t aware enough of my own lack or others\u2019 superiority to be envious. My parents had money. I was pretty. I married an awesome guy. I have good kids. Few of the moms I hang out with have degrees or if they do, they don\u2019t use them at all. Because I\u2019m self-employed, I\u2019m the master of my own fate. Because I\u2019m a widow and not a divorc\u00e9e, I\u2019m not accountable to anyone.<\/p>\n<p>I have lived my life being the object of envy.<\/p>\n<p>So listening to Finn extol the intellectual and legal prowess of Bryce\u2019s wife is a slap in the face. I haven\u2019t felt like such a loser since English 101.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI finally got her to think about opening up her bookstore again,\u201d Bryce says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh yeah? I thought you weren\u2019t going to push.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He clucks. \u201cWhen mama ain\u2019t happy, ain\u2019t nobody happy. She was coming home in a bad mood and going to work the same way. Dunc thought he\u2019d done something to make her mad at him, so that\u2019s when we had a little come-to-Jesus meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe didn\u2019t balk?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pauses. \u201cShe made a show of protesting, but she didn\u2019t waste too much time turning the reins over to her prot\u00e9g\u00e9e. That said, she\u2019ll never open up again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you just said\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll I wanted was for her to quit her job because she hated it and would rather work on her journals. The bookstore was bait. She\u2019ll dither around, look for retail space, draw up some plans, but it\u2019ll never happen. Being married to a retail store is one thing. Being married to a man <em>and<\/em> a retail store is an entirely different thing. But for now she\u2019s happy again. Dunc\u2019s happy. I\u2019m happy. So&nbsp;\u2026 mission accomplished. I don\u2019t know what she was trying to prove to whom, but the hell of it is, neither does she.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomebody else seems to have something to prove,\u201d Finn says dryly, sliding a glance at me. \u201cI wish I knew what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStop pushing,\u201d I say lightly, wanting only to get <em>away<\/em> from this conversation and the insecurity hitting me. But why, I wonder, would a lawyer who can impress Finn want to open a bookstore? \u201cWhat kind of bookstore?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRomance,\u201d Bryce answers without a hint of a sneer. <\/p>\n<p>Oh. Huh. I owe a couple of decent grades to romance novels. I couldn\u2019t have gotten through my history classes without those really old bodice rippers, showing me where I was on the timeline in my textbooks, giving me points of reference, bringing to life the dry textbook history. It was another struggling student\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverything from inspirational and religious to erotica. She needs her happy endings and Prince Charmings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wait, wut? The woman married to <em>this<\/em> guy\u2014a \u201cstone-cold bitch\u201d\u2014needs romance novels? Srsly? And he\u2019s <em>okay<\/em> with that? I don\u2019t know <em>any<\/em> woman with her head in the clouds like that, much less a <em>lawyer<\/em>. A lawyer Finn wants to hire.<\/p>\n<p>I have to know, so I try to keep the envy and insecurity out of my voice. \u201cWhy would she do that if she\u2019s good at being a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe hates law,\u201d Bryce replies with alacrity. \u201cIt was something to kill time and make money because she didn\u2019t know what else to do and she didn\u2019t have a penny to her name and she didn\u2019t want to float around from dead-end job to dead-end job just to survive. She told herself she liked it and she even believed that for a while, but it beat her down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d Finn corrects, \u201cshe beat <em>me<\/em> straight out of law school and the fire in her belly went out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She <em>beat<\/em> Finn?!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe never <em>had<\/em> the fire in her belly,\u201d Bryce corrects back, \u201cand I knew she\u2019d do that. It just so happened that she was pissed at me when she gave her closing. She gets amazingly eloquent when she\u2019s pissed off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn starts. \u201cUm&#160;\u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe might have gone another round, but all she really needed was to know she could do it. It\u2019s like everything else she\u2019s done since we\u2019ve been married, stuff she liked to begin with but started to resent as soon as she succeeded at it. Nothing she\u2019s done has made her happy over the long haul.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer first bookstore burned down,\u201d Finn explains to me. \u201cShe\u2019s still grieving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look at my house again. No, this bold red beauty isn\u2019t my One True Love, but she <em>is<\/em> my Bestie. I would certainly grieve if she burned down after I\u2019ve built my life with her.<\/p>\n<p>I love what I do, and I can\u2019t imagine spending that much time going into an entire profession I didn\u2019t really want in the first place. I fell into my job while I was going to school to make me semi-functional for the real world and ended up loving it.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, I don\u2019t have to work at all. I have no idea what it\u2019s like to struggle to survive, much less when a dream\u2019s been stolen and there is nothing left to look forward to. At one time, Bryce\u2019s wife was the same as the people in my audience. There are a whole lot of very well-educated dirt-poor people who follow my blog so I wouldn\u2019t have envied her education because I would have seen it as worthless if she couldn\u2019t make a living with it. <\/p>\n<p>Now I do envy it because the playing field has been leveled. I\u2019m the only woman in my social circle who works at all, much less has her own business. If I didn\u2019t, I\u2019d be expected to be on the society and volunteer and charity fundraising and alumnus circuits like the rest of them. I can barely manage my PTA duties, which, I will admit, are quite a lot.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t shut up. \u201cShouldn\u2019t she be&nbsp;\u2026 I don\u2019t know. In the Junior League or something?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe built our charity from the ground up,\u201d Bryce tells me.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the Kenard Burn Victim Foundation. My PTA pals don\u2019t bother raising funds for that one because they don\u2019t like Giselle. They excuse themselves by saying it\u2019s already very well funded, which is true. It bothers me they don\u2019t even <em>try<\/em> to pretend it\u2019s not about Giselle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen she ran it because she thought I wanted her to, but I never said that. Too many people needed too much from her and she was completely drained. Reading and talking about books charges her up, makes her happy, but that\u2019s what book clubs are for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I sigh. No wonder she doesn\u2019t bother with our little PTA. Our rinky-dink fundraisers can\u2019t hope to compete. And she\u2019d rather read romance novels anyway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, it\u2019s too late for the bookstore now because she has me and Dunc, but she has her life\u2019s work staring her in the face. I want her to dig into that because it makes her happy, so I gave her an excuse to quit the job she hated. She\u2019ll be able to spend more time on herself and work the bookstore nostalgia out of her system at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t go home again,\u201d Finn says.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce snorts. \u201cSays the guy who\u2019s nostalgic for what he never had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wince because it\u2019s true, but Finn just laughs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, what <em>is<\/em> her life\u2019s work?\u201d I ask, totally invested in this train wreck like a looky-loo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiselle\u2019s several-greats-grandparents,\u201d Finn tells me, \u201cwere pirates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Make it stop. Please God make it stop.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer grandmother,\u201d Bryce says, \u201cwas a prolific journalist. Fen Hilliard spent some time in Holland when he was young, found one of her journals in a rare book shop, and an obsession was born. He spent his life searching the world for them all and left them to Giselle in his will. As rare books, they\u2019re worth millions. As a piece of history, they\u2019re priceless. Giselle\u2019s transcribing the ones written in English and coordinating getting the others transcribed. There are a lot of them. It\u2019ll take her the rest of her life to do that and get them preserved. We had a bit of a problem finding someone who could translate eighteenth-century Arabic written in eighteenth-century penmanship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I can hear the pride in Bryce\u2019s voice when he talks about her. He <em>wants<\/em> to talk about her, show her off, as if getting bored and moving from one major thing to another is itself something to be proud of. To me, it\u2019s a waste, being good at a thing and not doing it. People in my audience would kill to be pretty good at any one of those things, and to just walk away \u2026<\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s\u2014 Well, it\u2019s shameful, is what it is.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not the only reason I\u2019m miserable. I wish <em>I<\/em> had an adoring husband who wanted to brag on me. I <em>did<\/em>, once upon a time, <em>if<\/em> I\u2019d had anything to brag about, but breastfeeding and keeping an immaculate house are hardly brag-worthy. No amount of approving comments on my blog or YouTube channel or Instagram accounts can make up for that especially when there\u2019s one vicious comment for every three approving ones.<\/p>\n<p>And now here I am watching my porch get demolished by a Bobcat <em>I<\/em> should be operating. Why didn\u2019t I do this myself? Bragging rights.<\/p>\n<p>If I had anyone to brag on me.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m about to cry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStill don\u2019t know if we got \u2019em all,\u201d Bryce continues absently after a swig of Gatorade. \u201cThere are some missing dates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, I\u2019ll look in my attic,\u201d Finn says.<\/p>\n<p>My heart immediately begins ramming my ribcage, my intellect or lack of it suddenly not my biggest problem. \u201cWhy would they be there?\u201d I ask lightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI find a lot of weird things up in his attic,\u201d Finn tells me. \u201cFen Hilliard was a prolific journalist, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou read \u2019em?\u201d Bryce asked.<\/p>\n<p>Finn nods. \u201cA peek into a marginally schizophrenic mind. He was a tortured soul, poor bastard. Thing is, half of everybody in town suspected he wasn\u2019t quite right in the head, but he presented as sane. He was a brilliant businessman and manager. He had lots of philanthropic projects. He was just a little <em>off<\/em>, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe wasn\u2019t always like that,\u201d Bryce says. \u201cHe started getting worse toward the end. Not thinking things through. His chess game went to pot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs Knox like that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bryce hesitates. \u201cHe\u2019s had psychotic breaks, yeah. But they were trauma-induced. He hasn\u2019t had one since Fen shot him and he\u2019s not on medication, so&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea what this conversation is about, nor do I care. Now the only thing I care about is that Finn goes up into his attic, apparently quite frequently, and rummages around. My boxes aren\u2019t marked, but I know exactly where I put them and what each item is in them. God, I hope he doesn\u2019t start opening my boxes.<\/p>\n<p>Yet they\u2019re safest where they are. I\u2019m going to have to think about whether to roll the dice with Finn\u2019s explorations or get a storage unit. Hell, I have a storage unit for scrap lumber, so I could\u2014<\/p>\n<p>The problem is suddenly asking Finn if I can fetch them. He knows me too well. He\u2019ll know I have an ulterior motive because I don\u2019t have anywhere to put them in my house and I don\u2019t care to have my stuff in a place where, if I forget to pay a bill (God forbid), my most precious material possession would be at someone else\u2019s mercy.<\/p>\n<p>If he thinks I have an ulterior motive, it wouldn\u2019t be above him to open them to find out what\u2019s in them. On the other hand, he might anyway because he doesn\u2019t know they\u2019re mine.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, the conversation dwindles to nothing as the backhoe starts picking up slabs of concrete and dumping them. My Bestie is now bare from the top of the first floor to the top of the eight-foot stone foundation, from corner to the center of the house, and with the thrill of seeing her history, thoughts of <em>my<\/em> history fade. There\u2019s rotting hundred-year-old wood hiding behind that back porch addition, which I expected, because that\u2019s what the rest of the house had. I\u2019ll re-sheathe, put up the housewrap and flashing before the ledger boards get attached.<\/p>\n<p>Once the deck floor is laid, I\u2019ll put French doors smack in the middle of the house, then weave in the red fiber cement siding to match the rest of the house.<\/p>\n<p>Finn casts me a glance and I raise my eyebrow at him. He didn\u2019t have to be told what else this deck entails. He knew before I showed him my plans.<\/p>\n<p>He sighs.<\/p>\n<p>The backhoe\u2019s finished for the moment and the dump truck with the gravel backs down into my driveway with high-pitched reverse beeps. The younger males gather around to watch this giant truck dump tons of gravel on my lawn. They\u2019re entranced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat looks like a lot more than you need,\u201d Finn says dubiously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you questioning my calculations?\u201d I ask archly, turning a scathing glance on him because I\u2019m still feeling insecure and stupid.<\/p>\n<p>He drops his face in his palm and massages his temple. \u201cNo,\u201d he says wearily.<\/p>\n<p>He knows I\u2019m angry, but not why. He\u2019ll ask me later, and I\u2019ll tell him, and he\u2019ll say\u2014 Well, I don\u2019t know what he\u2019ll say.<\/p>\n<p>The backhoe clears the area for the pad and driveway extension-slash-turnout, digs trenches in which we\u2019ll pour the footings then back fill, then deposits the gravel. He\u2019s done.<\/p>\n<p>We put in the concrete forms for the footings and start leveling the gravel. Old heavy metal is pounding and we stop talking while we work to the rhythm of Ozzy Osbourne, AC\/DC, and Iron Maiden. I\u2019m not paying attention to anything until Finn says,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKnock off. We\u2019re done for the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m shocked, but then I look at the sun, then at my helpers.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, they\u2019re done and, I realize, so am I.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re eating the pizza I ordered when Ryan\u2019s friends\u2019 parents, worried when they didn\u2019t come home (and angry because not one of them answered their phones or texts), trickle down into the back yard. They\u2019re clearly shocked that their kids are exactly where they said they\u2019d be. They look at their sons in amazement when Finn and I tell them what they\u2019ve done today. Quickly. Without complaint.<\/p>\n<p>I can empathize.<\/p>\n<p>Tragically, Bryce\u2019s wife also shows up. I really don\u2019t need to have her in my space.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never seen her this close up. I know she\u2019s quite a bit older than I am, but she doesn\u2019t look it. She\u2019s pretty, with pale blonde hair streaked an impossible auburn that falls smoothly to the middle of her back. She\u2019s in great shape, somehow making a simple white tank, olive cargos, and white Birks look haute couture.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I\u2019m projecting.<\/p>\n<p>Duncan sees her and runs to her with a squealed, \u201cMommy!\u201d She grins, cries, \u201cThere\u2019s my baby!\u201d and swings him up in her arms. Bryce approaches her and bends to kiss her. Lewdly.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t need to see that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, Finn!\u201d she calls with a smile and a wave.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey back. When are you going to come work for me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s still on that?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever! I like kicking your ass too much to work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He laughs. \u201cI let you win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhatever helps you sleep at night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was trying to forget that and I turn away, my eyes stinging, only to find Finn watching me speculatively. There are a lot of things I don\u2019t need right now and that look is one of them.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s nine by the time everyone leaves. Gwen\u2019s boyfriend drags himself off with an incoherent grunt. My parents drive away with a jaunty wave. Gwen, Ryan, and Kaia go take showers and drop into bed. Only Calvin is still awake but he\u2019s playing Minecraft, which he could do all night.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m hot, sticky, tired, and sore, but it\u2019s the good kind. The kind where you aren\u2019t so bad off you can\u2019t take a hot shower before you fall into bed.<\/p>\n<p>Finn and I sit on my couch after we\u2019ve showered. We\u2019re yawning, our feet are up on the coffee table, and each of us has a beer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTalk to me,\u201d Finn says gruffly.<\/p>\n<p>I pour it out. Why not? There are very few things this man doesn\u2019t know about me and those are all connected to what he doesn\u2019t know about Darren (and never will). Then I\u2019m done and by the time I\u2019m done, my voice has risen and I&nbsp;\u2026 I don\u2019t recognize myself.<\/p>\n<p>He sits quietly throughout, listening to me as he\u2019s always done. In the silence, I blurt out a few more things, things I\u2019ve already said but am compelled to say a different way.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, in one of my longer silences between outbursts, he takes a breath and says, \u201cBlythe, there are a lot of things I respect about Giselle Kenard, but the collection of letters behind her name is definitely not one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat collection? J and D?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd PhD.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My nose starts to sting and I look away to cry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEighteenth-centchry Brtsh litrachah,\u201d he says in a lofty faux British accent.<\/p>\n<p>But I hear something in his voice, something subtle, something he occasionally directs at my children. I turn my head back to listen but I keep my eyes on the floor. It\u2019s not dark enough to hide my tears.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you remember,\u201d he muses, \u201cwhen you were taking all those unrelated classes just because they intrigued you? I told you not to become a perpetual student.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d I say low.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no use for that. Yes, she\u2019s brilliant. Yes, she beat me in court once. But you heard that conversation. She\u2019s spent most of the last fifteen years floating around in an existential haze.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He <em>really<\/em> doesn\u2019t respect that. \u201cShe had a bookstore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFifteen years ago,\u201d he says dryly. \u201cNow, there was a period of about five years or so her family needed her to pull them through a crisis, which she couldn\u2019t have done if she\u2019d still had her bookstore. So I can\u2019t really hold that against her. But instead of accepting that that phase of her life is over, instead of grieving and moving on, she does stuff to keep herself from having her memories tainted. She\u2019s protecting something that doesn\u2019t need to be protected if she\u2019d just move on. Why? Because she\u2019s <em>afraid<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou, on the other hand,\u201d he goes on, oblivious to the fact that my spirit\u2019s lightening up a little. I think I\u2019ve identified his tone. \u201cAre fearless. You have clarity, goals, purpose, and happiness. You have the fire in your belly, and there is <em>nothing<\/em> that can put it out. You would <em>never<\/em> walk away from Blundering if this house burnt down. Yes, I hate that you live in your job site, but living in it is an act of courage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn\u2019t go that far, but he is speaking from experience. He was nineteen when he\u2019d begun rehabbing the house he\u2019d taken from his father, all the while living in it with his eighteen-year-old wife, his newborn son, and his mother. He\u2019d done it alone, and it took him seven years. His goal was to have it done by the time he graduated from law school.<\/p>\n<p>Finn has never missed a goal or deadline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou got through school in a reasonable amount of time.\u201d He\u2019d kept talking while I was spacing out. \u201cAnd you had a good time doing it. Everything you\u2019ve done, everything you\u2019ve achieved since Darren died, you\u2019ve found joy in. You grieve. You move on. You don\u2019t even have to look for happiness. It finds you, and you make everyone around you happy. That is a rare quality, and I respect you for it. There is <em>nothing<\/em> about you I don\u2019t respect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>God, I\u2019m going to cry again.<\/p>\n<p>Finn isn\u2019t demonstrative nor does he express his feelings much. He chugs along, mostly relaxed and amused, occasionally frustrated or discouraged, rarely angry, often charged up with excitement at a challenge or a win. He can express these things easily when necessary; it just doesn\u2019t occur to him to do it.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know what to say to all these things he tells me about me, matter-of-factly, as if he doesn\u2019t intend to flatter me or express approval. It just is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re disappointed in her?\u201d I ask carefully because I need confirmation of what I\u2019m hearing in his voice.<\/p>\n<p>He looks down and fiddles with the label of his beer. \u201cNo,\u201d he says. My stomach sinks. \u201cI\u2019m fucking <em>pissed as hell<\/em> at her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My mouth drops open.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWasting her talent as a litigator on <em>romance novels<\/em>,\u201d he sneers, \u201cand <em>fairy tales<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Oh.<\/em> \u201cBut&nbsp;\u2026 if that\u2019s her joy&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He waves a hand and sits up a little. \u201cI know, I know. I just contradicted myself. She\u2019s had a hard life and she deserves to be happy, the same way you do. But you can\u2019t make a living reading novels and you can\u2019t chain yourself to a retail business if the only thing you want to do is read all day. She\u2019ll resent it and then her memories will crash and burn. She has two competing goals and she\u2019s afraid of both.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d respect her more if she just said, \u2018Fuck it, I\u2019m going to read all day,\u2019 but I know her and she\u2019d start resenting that, too. She has <em>one<\/em> passion, but she feels guilty about it because she sees it as an indulgence. But so what if it is? People get paid a lot of money to do what she\u2019s doing with those journals, and just because she\u2019s <em>not<\/em> getting paid doesn\u2019t make it less valuable. But getting paid for it would take the magic away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, I feel like I have something in common with her. My house is my job and I\u2019m fortunate to be able to make a living wage with a job I love. But I wouldn\u2019t want to be paid for my calligraphy; it\u2019s a tiny indulgence I treat myself with.<\/p>\n<p>I totally get that. I\u2019m even empathetic. If I put all her other things in that context, I can mostly understand it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrust me, you have nothing to be envious of. You aren\u2019t in <em>any<\/em> way inferior to her. So stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I know that\u2019s his final word on the subject, but I don\u2019t have any more words either, and he clicks on the TV and scrolls through until he gets to a commercial I think is funny. He pauses so I can watch it, but when it\u2019s over and he starts flipping channels again, I say, \u201cWait. Go back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It takes me a minute. \u201cOh, <em>Dracula<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhich one?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrancis Ford Coppola. Have you seen it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNaw,\u201d he grunts. He sits back and turns the side table light off.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s starting at the part where Keanu Reeves is riding in the black coach that\u2019s heading around the cliffs toward Dracula\u2019s castle, and somehow we get caught up in it.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re silent, not touching, beers forgotten as we watch. I\u2019d seen this movie but it\u2019s now over twenty years old and I don\u2019t remember anything about it except Gary Oldman\u2019s Romanian accent and gray silk top hat.<\/p>\n<p>I certainly don\u2019t remember it being so&nbsp;\u2026 <em>erotic<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>If I\u2019d been alone, I\u2019d have enjoyed it, enjoyed being aroused, because I am, almost unbearably.<\/p>\n<p>But now, sitting beside my father-in-law, I\u2019ve gone from being embarrassed at my relative lack of education to embarrassed about being aroused\u2014 <em>My father-in-law!<\/em> Good Lord. I fake a yawn and mutter, \u201cHate to kick you out, but I can\u2019t keep my eyes open anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah,\u201d he says, standing, pointing the remote and clicking it off. \u201cI\u2019m bored. See you tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThanks for the pep talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnytime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He locks up the house and lets himself out.<\/p>\n<p>When I\u2019m sure he\u2019s gone, I pick up the movie where the hot stuff starts happening. I moan when Mina does, almost come when she does, and generally make an ass of myself\u2014and I\u2019m the only witness to it.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday morning I wake up on the couch with my hand between my legs.<\/p>\n<p>This is my life. Getting off to twenty-five-year-old soft-core porn masquerading as cinema art.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh and slap my hand over my face in resigned mortification, embarrassed for myself enough to cluck in disdain. If I had pearls on, I\u2019d clutch them.<\/p>\n<p>I sure as hell hope Finn didn\u2019t suspect I was hot and bothered, especially after I\u2019d admitted I wouldn\u2019t kick his bestie out of bed and I\u2019m envious of the wife. But if Finn did notice or suspect, I hope he\u2019s too much of a gentleman to say anything.<\/p>\n<p>God, I hope Finn didn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">4: BRIDES OF DRACULA<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Finn<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA needs to die.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t had sex in two years. That was during my last attempt at a relationship, before I found out Angie <em>didn\u2019t<\/em> live in St. Louis, <em>wasn\u2019t<\/em> relocating to Kansas City, and <em>was<\/em> married. She let that last one slip while I was mid-thrust. I dumped her ass out of bed. Literally. <em>Then<\/em> she told me her husband was the managing partner of a firm that represents a company I sue on a regular basis. Like that would make it okay!<\/p>\n<p>I was so pissed off I stalked across my bedroom, grabbed my money clip, and stuffed a couple hundred bucks in her hand. She threw it back in my face, then slapped me. I slapped her back and made her call her own cab while I stood over her.<\/p>\n<p>Look, I never make a mistake twice, and the fact that Miriam always resented me for taking her innocence, her youth, her <em>life<\/em>, is always with me. I deserved it.<\/p>\n<p>So I don\u2019t fuck around with married women. Angie knew that, but she lied to me because she was going to get what she wanted. I tell every woman I\u2019m interested in right up front that I don\u2019t do married women and I\u2019m not coy about it. I can deal with most of the baggage a woman brings to the table because I\u2019ve got enough of my own.<\/p>\n<p>But there are some things I refuse to put up with. Lying, cheating. Addiction. Idiocy. I can pick out the last two fairly quickly, but sometimes I\u2019m not as discerning as I should be with the first two.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, I stop trying to discern anything about the time I\u2019m so horny I\u2019d bang a hole in a tree just to get some relief.<\/p>\n<p>Miriam and I may not have had the happy-happy-joy-joy marriage our kids do, and our sex life was&nbsp;\u2026 dutiful. Sparse. Relatively speaking. But we were content even under the shadow of our history and later in our marriage, when the kids were older and off doing their thing, we did manage to have spectacular sex a couple of times. It shocked us both.<\/p>\n<p>She stuck with me in spite of what I\u2019d done. She made a home for me. She was kind to my mother. She gave me three awesome kids and instilled in them good values. She warmly welcomed our children-in-law into our family and made their landings as smooth as possible. No, we weren\u2019t in love. We did grow to love each other, but that was a gift of time. It was a quiet love and we were content with each other. It was more than I deserved.<\/p>\n<p>I truly grieved when she died and I missed her. I missed her quiet presence in the house, filling it with warmth and light and cozy little touches.<\/p>\n<p>I never cheated on her. I was tempted. Boy, was I tempted. But I never so much as let on to <em>anyone<\/em> that I was thinking about it.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not how it\u2019s done in my social circles.<\/p>\n<p>But Miriam taught our kids to be straight arrows and she put the fear of God into our sons if they <em>ever<\/em> took advantage of a girl, pressed one into sex, did anything to a girl that was anything shy of perfect respect, even if the girl didn\u2019t deserve it. She taught my daughter to distrust every word out of a teenage male\u2019s mouth. Adult males, too.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t mind the jab, if it was one, but I was never sure. I taught my daughter everything I knew about what a man would say to get in her pants and how to kill that conversation. I knew a lot about that. I also taught her how to kill a few other things if he didn\u2019t back off, and held up my dad as a prime example of what <em>not<\/em> to get involved with. As for my sons, I was a little uncomfortable (okay, a lot) with Miriam demanding they be as <em>virtuous<\/em> as any Catholic schoolgirl, but who was I to argue?<\/p>\n<p>Keeping your zipper closed and your dick under control is one of those little life lessons many men <em>never<\/em> learn.<\/p>\n<p>People thought we were religious, but we weren\u2019t. Never had a church, never felt the need for one. I like to think I matured into a fairly moral man without having the fear of eternal damnation beaten into me, but my old man beat into me what I <em>didn\u2019t<\/em> want to be.<\/p>\n<p>So Darren married Blythe the second she turned eighteen. I pitied him for his sexual ignorance, hers too, but to my mind, it was better than being eighteen with a pregnant girlfriend and no life skills. I also objected to his choice of wife, but there was no way in hell I was going to say a word about it. Whatever I thought of Blythe back then, Darren must have seen something in her nobody else did. He produced four great kids with her, certainly more than I expected she or the kids would be.<\/p>\n<p>Jessica was equally wise in her choice of husband and now they have two little ones. Although Seth, an artist, hasn\u2019t been able to get any traction in the fine art circle, he makes quite a bit of money as a freelance graphic designer while doing everything a stay-at-home parent does. That\u2019s not good enough for him. He wants to be in a high-end gallery. A <em>name<\/em>. I want that for him, too, but not because he\u2019s my daughter\u2019s husband. He\u2019s <em>that<\/em> good and I respect his ambition. I\u2019ve bought a few pieces from him and put them in my office building, but I can\u2019t be his only fine-art client because at some point, gallery owners will dismiss him as my dilettante son-in-law and nothing I say about the quality of his work will be considered valid.<\/p>\n<p>Jessie\u2019s not cut out for staying at home with the kids, doing housework, having some part-time gig, or all three. She got a master\u2019s degree in a field she loves and she\u2019s the main breadwinner for the family, which includes their health insurance. Miriam would have been horrified at their role reversal, but I can\u2019t find fault with an efficient and effective division of labor. The problem is that she and Seth collectively make so much money, their tax bite is crippling. Their ramshackle house is paid for so they can\u2019t claim the deduction, but it\u2019s such a moneypit they can\u2019t afford to fix it properly or sell it and buy something better. Jessica has declined Blythe\u2019s offers to repair and update it and I have no idea why, because Blythe will turn it into a blog project and make money on it. She\u2019s not offering out of the kindness of her heart. To her, it would be a fair trade, but to Jessica it\u2019s charity. Between Jessica and Seth\u2019s piece-of-shit house, their collective student loans, and their car payments, they\u2019re living paycheck to paycheck like the rest of the country.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve also offered to help her out, and though she declines (because she\u2019s always had to prove something to me), I insist on paying her kids\u2019 tuition and expenses to go to the same school my other grandkids attend because I refuse to let them be in the Kansas City School District. Jessica protests occasionally to assuage her pride, but I pretend to be an autocrat and she pretends to be forced into it.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s my youngest, Ken. I chuckle. Good guy. Three children there. Ken\u2019s an accountant. Quiet. Unassuming. Funny as hell to those who can catch his dry humor and obscure references. He\u2019s the CFO of a tiny company and his wife\u2019s a harried CEO of a small startup here on the silicon prairie spawned by Google Fiber. Her firm is digging itself out of the red at lightning speed, but Ken\u2019s job provides the family\u2019s health insurance and pays the bills. Yes, Christie\u2019s brilliant but she\u2019s a complete airhead. Trying to have a conversation with her about something she\u2019s not interested in is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. Ken\u2019s adept at nailing Jell-O to a tree.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s my boy.<\/p>\n<p>But when Christie\u2019s interested in something, when she\u2019s on\u2014she\u2019s <em>on<\/em>. She\u2019s so <em>on<\/em> that, while Ken\u2019s my accountant, I made her the executor of my estate. That\u2019s how much faith I have in her devotion to and partnership with my son and their collective ability to bully lawyers into doing what they want. My colleagues think I\u2019m nuts, putting my daughter-in-law in charge of my estate, but I\u2019m not a complete idiot. Christie may be in charge of my estate, but Bryce is in charge of Christie.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Miriam and I did well. <em>Very<\/em> well. Especially considering how we started out.<\/p>\n<p>Soon after Miriam died, it occurred to me I was free. Free to find a woman I could fall in love with, and whom I could fuck until my dick broke. Sex, good sex, lots of it. Yes, I did want to fall in love, something I didn\u2019t have with Miriam, but at the time, I just craved a woman\u2019s touch, her naked body next to mine, her hands in my hair and her nails in my back.<\/p>\n<p>So I practically overdosed on beautiful young soulless law school grads bursting with rapacious greed. I was finally sated enough to think about what I really wanted for the long haul, which didn\u2019t include the women I\u2019d been fucking.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t go out and randomly pick up women at cocktail parties. I set my boundaries, recited them to myself a few times until they were set in stone, and then picked up women my own age at cocktail parties with laser precision.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been widowed eight years. I got burned a couple of times, thinking I was in love, but she wasn\u2019t in love with me. So was I really in love or was I in love with love? I don\u2019t know. I decided that since my goal was marriage, I needed to hold off on the sex until I\u2019d spent a little time with any given woman. By the time we did have sex, we were both on DEFCON 5 and exploded.<\/p>\n<p>I had three relationships that could have been permanent had I been willing to abandon Blythe and the kids. Or at least, not spend as much time with them.<\/p>\n<p>There is no way in hell I\u2019ll abandon my son\u2019s wife and children for a woman who\u2019d demand something like that, no matter how good the conversation and sex are. And they did demand it.<\/p>\n<p>Bye bye, Eva, Jeanne, and Nora.<\/p>\n<p>Angie was budding relationship number four.<\/p>\n<p>I stopped trying after that.<\/p>\n<p>Now here I am in my quiet house, alone, lying in bed watching <em>Dracula<\/em>, starting from where Blythe and I left off. I\u2019m fifty-six years old and I\u2019m jacking off to Coppola\u2019s mess of a film. I had to get away from Blythe because I was embarrassed as hell, having a hard-on at bad soft porn right next to my daughter-in-law. She\u2019d think I was a pervy old man and never let me near the kids again.<\/p>\n<p>Which also means I wouldn\u2019t be eating dinner there every night anymore.<\/p>\n<p>I come all over my hand. How does a guy come all over his hand without noticing he\u2019s about to? I\u2019m halfway through a shit movie, not quite at the part where Gary Oldman gets Winona Ryder off, and I come without noticing.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m thinking about Blythe, for God\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">5: COOKIE PRESS<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<div class=\"top60\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> ur getting hammered<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">Hello Captain Obvious<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> lol<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">I FINALLY GET around to reading the comments on my first deck blog post and purse my lips. I read more. Sigh. Srsly, these people are vicious.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d Finn asks absently where he sits next to me at the dining room table typing steadily on his laptop. My parents have gone home and the kids are in bed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEntitled brats,\u201d I mutter, unhappy. \u201cI get <em>one<\/em> email from a guy who begs me to do the deck because he needs me to, but out of almost five hundred comments, a good half of them are busting my chops for posting a project they don\u2019t need and couldn\u2019t afford even if they did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMmm hmm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the only sympathy I\u2019m going to get out of him. He never said <em>I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good idea<\/em> but he never does. He objects to my priorities and where they overlap his, which is to get us out of this house. But he went along with it anyway. He goes along with whatever I want to do with little commentary, but sometimes I wish he\u2019d break out the magic words.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSay it,\u201d I growl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTold you so,\u201d he says vaguely and continues to type.<\/p>\n<p>I accelerated the project in spite of my agenda and its timeline because I felt sorry for someone. It\u2019s the same reason Finn makes the children do the dishes: I can\u2019t be trusted not to fall for the \u201cI\u2019m tired\u201ds and \u201cI have to go to the bathroom\u201ds and \u201cI plucked my eyebrows and I hurt too much\u201ds.<\/p>\n<p>Gwen tried that one once.<\/p>\n<p>Finn roared with laughter and, in tears because he couldn\u2019t stop laughing, made her do the kitchen by herself.<\/p>\n<p>I push the laptop away and drop my head on my arms. I\u2019m about to cry and it\u2019s been a while since I did that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll blow over,\u201d he grunts. \u201cKilz and concrete cover a myriad of sins, even a tiny career miscalculation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I want to laugh. It\u2019s funny. But I\u2019m so discouraged.<\/p>\n<p>Then I gasp and sit up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sound of the cogs starting to turn,\u201d he intones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes this mean I can sleep in Saturday?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNope. The deck goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I open up Photoshop and start working on my graphic. Then I make another subdirectory in my domain and install WordPress. The rest of the work\u2014transferring the deck project to a side blog\u2014will have to wait until my admin days when I edit photos, queue more blog posts, schedule giveaways, and catch up on paperwork, receipts, bills, and invoices.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think,\u201d I murmur absently, \u201cI\u2019m going to train Posey to do some of my other blog stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood idea. Sharp kid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUh huh. Halloween\u2019s coming up. You need cookies?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease,\u201d he breathes as if I had just saved his life. \u201cA couple of platters?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you, Blythe. I appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What \u201ca couple of platters\u201d means is enough cookies to feed a skyscraper full of people. I love baking cookies and mine are the best in town. It\u2019s a fair trade. You build a deck for me, I bake cookies for you.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not really why I offer.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s because he\u2019s so sincerely grateful. It\u2019s amazing what people will do if you let them know how much you appreciate them and their efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, he\u2019s the owner of the firm, the head dog, the only big name on the door: Marston PC, with a bunch of little names underneath his. You can barely read them they\u2019re so tiny. But he\u2019s also a decent boss, particularly for a law firm. He does random nice things for his employees and surprising them with my cookies is one of them.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing he does for me is random, from the moment he\u2019d taken over the business of burying my husband.<\/p>\n<p>Dozens of faceless, nameless people swam by me at Darren\u2019s visitation, saying things I\u2019d never remember in sad tones, not knowing I\u2019d never remember them. My mother buzzed around my bedroom telling me what to do, what to wear because I couldn\u2019t stop staring at the wall. Food piled up on the kitchen counters, so she told my father to direct traffic in and out of my house. Solicitous men in black suits asked me questions I couldn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n<p>Finn took care of them for me while my mother herded and comforted the children after she dressed me. Grief wasn\u2019t my only problem and it wasn\u2019t strong enough to crowd out the stress and fear Darren and I had been living with for four years, stress and fear I then had to carry alone.<\/p>\n<p>But people have lives and they drift away after the initial mourning is over. Even my parents did, to go back to their lives of cruising and going down to the Lake of the Ozarks a few times every summer.<\/p>\n<p>Finn never left me. When nothing strange happened to me or my kids, my fear gradually went away.<\/p>\n<p>So baking a couple-three hundred dozen cookies for three or four office parties a year is the least I can do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour mom and dad gonna be here for Christmas?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think they\u2019re going down to Branson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course they are,\u201d Finn mutters. \u201cI\u2019m shutting my office down the last two weeks of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody? With pay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAw, that\u2019s sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo why don\u2019t you and the kids come over when school\u2019s out and stay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m torn. I\u2019d love two weeks at Finn\u2019s house. It\u2019s almost like a vacation. On the other hand, I put a lot of effort into decorating for Christmas and to spend Christmas somewhere else seems anticlimactic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI dunno. We have our traditions. New jammies and Christmas movies on Christmas Eve. Why don\u2019t you come over here and then we can go to your house for Christmas dinner? I mean, I know the Futon sucks, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no way in <em>hell<\/em> I\u2019m going to spend Christmas Eve and morning here. <em>Especially<\/em> if I have to sleep on that fucking Futon. Blythe\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I groan. \u201cFinn, don\u2019t start. There is nothing wrong with this house except for my bedroom, which nobody sees.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He ignores me, dropping his hands on the table and looking at me with those intense blue eyes that had me completely cowed until Darren died, after which I was too numb to notice and had bigger things to fear than my pissy father-in-law. \u201cMove in with me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I open my mouth but he raises his voice to talk right over me, as he does.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince I\u2019m not allowing any of this shit furniture in my house, your audience would never know you\u2019re <em>not<\/em> living here while you\u2019re working on it. It\u2019s a fucking pigsty and I don\u2019t know how you can stand to live this way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m furious for, oh, so many reasons and the adrenaline surges. \u201cFirst, it\u2019s not a pigsty, fucking or otherwise,\u201d I say low in my throat. \u201cBut it\u2019s nice to know what you <em>really<\/em> think about my work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cArrrghh!\u201d His frustration\u2019s been bubbling up faster and more often lately, but so has mine and I hurt deep in my chest. \u201cThat\u2019s not what I meant!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I\u2019m not going to lie to my audience,\u201d I continue to growl. \u201cThank you for the offer. <em>Again.<\/em> And thank you for tolerating my eccentricity\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2014but if I want to live somewhere else, I\u2019ll buy my own house and <em>maybe<\/em> I\u2019ll send you a change of address card. And you can take Christmas and shove it up your butt.\u201d I clap my laptop shut and storm across the living room, then storm up two flights of stairs and into my bedroom. I slam the door a little harder than I meant to, but this is the last straw.<\/p>\n<p>All the blog comments and then Finn jumping down my throat over the same thing, just from a different end\u2014 I can\u2019t. Can<em>not<\/em>. I lean back against my door and look up at the ceiling. I start to cry and then I bend over to tuck my face in my hands.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t expect the soft tap on my door. I didn\u2019t hear the stairs creak.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t answer. But since my butt\u2019s against the door, it doesn\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t like it here, don\u2019t come over,\u201d I snarl, expecting some quip about only coming by for the food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI come over because I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My heart stops. Then restarts immediately. God, how stupid can I be, thinking he meant\u2014 Of course he loves me. I\u2019m his son\u2019s wife. His grandchildren are here and he adores them. We\u2019re family. If he didn\u2019t love us, he wouldn\u2019t have stuck with me all these years.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just&nbsp;\u2026 The last time a man said that to me was the day Darren walked out the door to go to work and never came home again.<\/p>\n<p>Finn sighs and then I hear the squeaky stair treads. I\u2019d fix all those squeaks and creaks, but I like knowing which child is where.<\/p>\n<p>After a while I hear the click of locks, the front door opening and closing, and the roar of his expensive engine.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> hows ur day<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">I\u2019m cleaning my fucking pigsty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> I apologized. What do you want?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">NO ONE NOTICES the tension at dinner the next night. Gwen\u2019s texting. Ryan\u2019s reading some jock\u2019s biography. Calvin\u2019s twirling&nbsp;\u2026 something&nbsp;\u2026 in the air and watching it as if mesmerized, humming something about raining tacos. Kaia\u2019s telling my mom all about her day. My dad\u2019s chowing down as usual and trying to get Finn\u2019s attention, but Finn\u2019s spaced out and toying with his food. I\u2019m toying with the idea of telling him to take his cookies and shove \u2019em up there with Christmas, and maybe adding his deck-building skills for good measure.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t dare bring up the fact that I\u2019m getting hate email over the deck. I\u2019m trying to do something <em>good<\/em> here and make a living at the same time. Why can\u2019t they just go with the flow? Or stop reading? Not only that, but today\u2019s post had been on how to deal with stubborn under-sink cabinet stains. It involved peel-and-stick vinyl tile. Cheap, easy, good-looking. I made a groaner of a joke about prostitutes, which now has my defenders from the deck project berating me for making an off-color joke on a family blog.<\/p>\n<p>My admin day\u2019s tomorrow, though, and I am going to get the deck project broken off onto its own blog before I go to bed tomorrow night.<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s mad at me for not accepting his apology and he will be for a few days, but I\u2019m <em>really<\/em> mad. My house <em>was<\/em> a pigsty. It <em>had<\/em> to be. That was the entire <em>point<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not now, except for my bedroom and the yard, and I resent him for continuing to see this house the way it looked when we first moved in.<\/p>\n<p>Finn and I argue occasionally. Once or twice this past year the arguments have been so bad we didn\u2019t speak to each other for a few days. Not in person, anyway. Texting is habit.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">pick ryan up from school plz<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> fine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Even when the only thing we have to say is <span class=\"texting\">busy<\/span> or <span class=\"texting\">whatever<\/span> or <span class=\"texting\">fine<\/span>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">FINN:<\/span> going home after work<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">whatevs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>There are never apologies. He thinks he\u2019s right. I think I\u2019m right. Neither one of us is budging. There is only truce and after a few days of being mad at each other, the anger fades away.<\/p>\n<p>Except&nbsp;\u2026 he apologized last night. And again in text. In normal English, not text shorthand. Why?<\/p>\n<p><em>I come over because I love you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, I love him, too, but our arguments are getting more frequent. They\u2019re always about the same things. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening because we\u2019ve never been this contentious. God help me if I let it slip why I\u2019m delaying getting the house done. He\u2019ll go ballistic when I tell him my next project involves a crumbling mansion whose owner is suffocating under its weight but won\u2019t cut his losses.<\/p>\n<p>I talked to the poor guy yesterday. He\u2019s trying to rebuild the chimney by himself and he doesn\u2019t have a clue.<\/p>\n<p><em>You\u2019ll have to come up with more than that. I spent a quarter of that on the foundation alone.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s one thing I wanted to know.<\/p>\n<p><em>Okay, well, if you change your mind, let me know.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I could have sworn he was about to give me a higher number to start the negotiations, but he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>He will eventually.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look up at Finn. He looks tired. His face is slightly tanned, a bit craggy. His eyes are still as intensely blue. His hair is blond\u2014dyed, but his original color. It\u2019s for court because I\u2019d told him he was definitely no silver fox. If I noticed and hated it enough to say something, juries definitely wouldn\u2019t like it. His jury consultant confirmed it. So he keeps his hair dyed and nobody really knows or cares how old he is because he looks&nbsp;\u2026 timeless.<\/p>\n<p>But right now, when he looks at me that way, his mouth turned down, his eyes tired, he looks every year of his fifty-six. <em>I\u2019m sorry<\/em>, he mouths.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh, roll my eyes, nod slightly, and look down at my plate. This is where the truce starts.<\/p>\n<p>He offers.<\/p>\n<p>I accept.<\/p>\n<p>Until the next blowup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">6: POP OF COLOR<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Finn<\/p>\n<div class=\"top60\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\"><span class=\"calb\">BLYTHE:<\/span> be late getting home from school<\/p>\n<p class=\"emailblog\">kk<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">I\u2019M NOT SURE why Blythe and I have been at each other\u2019s throats so much lately, but I don\u2019t like it. There\u2019s something just the slightest bit wrong, but I can\u2019t put my finger on it.<\/p>\n<p>I let myself into DIY Shithole after work the next evening and I\u2019m still thinking about how badly I blundered two nights before. It\u2019s quiet. Blythe has gone to pick up the kids, but she\u2019ll be a while because she likes to chat with the other moms in her neverending quest to find a BFF.<\/p>\n<p>She really craves some female companionship, a confidante, and a playmate to give back to her what she gives her school chums. She\u2019ll never get one out of her milieu, though. They take whatever she\u2019s willing to give without a thought that she needs something in return. Those women don\u2019t commune, even with women they call BFFs.<\/p>\n<p>I have Bryce. She has no one and she never has, not even when she was in high school.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we get what we want but not what we need. I\u2019d help her if I could, but I\u2019m as clueless as she is.<\/p>\n<p>I hang my suit jacket up in the hall closet and stow my laptop bag there with it, yank my tie off, roll up my sleeves. It\u2019s what I always do when I walk in the door.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026&nbsp;it\u2019s nice to know what you really think about my work&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s to think about? She\u2019s a professional. It damn well better be good work.<\/p>\n<p>I turn around to walk through the living room to the dining room and stop cold. I don\u2019t remember it like this, which, I must concede, is precisely her point.<\/p>\n<p>The perfectly smooth walls are a rich, dark purple about seven-eighths the way up the ten-foot walls until the light maple stained moulding interrupts. Above the moulding it\u2019s white, and the smooth white ceiling is dotted with perfectly positioned can lights. There\u2019s an abstract modernist chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, the dangly bits of which are made of mother of pearl. The moulding is all gleaming light maple, as is the floor, accented by a solid red rug. The mantel, too, is maple and above it hangs a reproduction Picasso on a stretched canvas that hides the flat screen TV. The drapes are a deep red with thin white linen underneath.<\/p>\n<p>The sofa facing the fireplace and flanking chairs are midcentury modern in patchwork purple and red microfiber. The coffee table is Danish modern. The walls are tastefully littered with family snapshots and children\u2019s art framed in white. Her college diploma, elaborately matted and framed, hangs in a spot she can see from her place at the head of the dining room table.<\/p>\n<p>This scheme continues into the dining room, separated by one-foot-deep quarter-wall curio cabinets capped with maple. The walls in the dining room are red, the drapes purple. The table is also Danish modern. The buffet snuggled perfectly into the rectangular bay window is light maple, custom made.<\/p>\n<p>Red and purple.<\/p>\n<p>On the wall behind her chair hangs a gigantic piece of art: a poem, four stanzas long, done in exquisite gold calligraphy and elaborate red-and-purple metallic illumination on white parchment shot with gold. The poem is matted in white and framed in an elegant gold moulding. When she hung it, I said something about it costing a bundle, to which she haughtily replied that she\u2019d done it herself, with a frame she\u2019d thrifted and rehabbed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"lioncalligraphy\">When I am an old woman I shall wear purple<br \/>\nWith a red hat which doesn\u2019t go, and doesn\u2019t suit me.<\/p>\n<p>Red and purple.<\/p>\n<p>She fell in love with that poem the first time she read it, a rogue hack poem her then-professor used as an example of what not to do. I thought she meant she did the mats and frame herself, but no. She\u2019d taken calligraphy classes for the express purpose of creating this&nbsp;\u2026 art.<\/p>\n<p>I was passingly impressed then.<\/p>\n<p>Now I look at it, <em>see<\/em> it, think about all those moments I\u2019ve seen her doodling letters, just individual letters, not even wondering why she does that. I sit here almost every night and look at her calligraphy but I never <em>see<\/em> it.<\/p>\n<p>I look to my right and remember how she and I took all this down to studs, the lath-and-plaster walls gone, the floor painstakingly stripped of vinyl tile and linoleum and sanded of years of paint and wax and shellac, the ceiling taken down.<\/p>\n<p>She and I pulled the moulding off. She and I put the wiring and ductwork in. She and I put up the sheetrock. She and I sanded the floors. She and I repaired and weatherproofed the windows. She stripped and stained the moulding, milled the new moulding to match, patched and stained and sealed the floors, re-tiled the hearth, built a mantel and surround, and tuckpointed the chimney.<\/p>\n<p>And then she hung her art on her craftsmanship.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s gorgeous. All of it.<\/p>\n<p>I sniff.<\/p>\n<p>Lime.<\/p>\n<p>When did this happen?<\/p>\n<p>I walk down the maple-floored entry hall, on a purple runner, past the stairs, into the kitchen on a floor tiled in black-and-white hex.<\/p>\n<p>The countertops are glossy black polished concrete, which she and I built from scratch. The thrifted cabinets I helped her install after she\u2019d refinished them are white with black hardware. The appliances are stainless and the farmer\u2019s sink is white enamel, under an unadorned diamond-mullioned window. The soffits and ceiling are red. There are the same can lights in the ceiling as there are everywhere else, but over the narrow island there are three big space-age pendant lights, white, with graduated concentric circle shades. I think she called it a Saturn lamp. She searched high and low for those and found some on Etsy, in bad condition. Now they\u2019re not. The door that used to go to the back porch is boarded up because Calvin wouldn\u2019t hesitate to open it and jump.<\/p>\n<p>The kitchen is spotless but for a huge ugly red-orange Crock-Pot on the counter with delicious smells coming out of it.<\/p>\n<p>God, that woman can cook.<\/p>\n<p>I turn slowly, taking all this in, and walk back into the hallway, then up the maple stairs to the first landing, where there\u2019s another diamond-mullioned window over a picturesque reading nook. Up the next half flight to the second floor where the kids live there are four smallish bedrooms and a bathroom. Kaia\u2019s room is immaculate, from crown moulding to baseboards. The other three rooms are a mess, but not because Blythe hasn\u2019t made them beautiful. This house was built in 1905, and the closet space was almost nonexistent. She built closets a professional organizer would envy. She built Murphy beds that, when put away, turn into long desks. She thrifted and refinished every other piece of furniture the kids have. She sewed the drapes for their rooms and declared it the most difficult project in the whole place.<\/p>\n<p>She restored the cast iron radiators, but they\u2019re only for decoration because previous owners had rendered them inoperable when they put in central heat and air. Blythe railed about that for a couple of months when she was told it didn\u2019t matter how much money she could spend, they would <em>never<\/em> become operable. The bathroom is as modern as her kitchen, except for the speakeasy gin tub, which she re-enameled then retrofitted to be used as a shower.<\/p>\n<p>I continue up to the third floor. Half of it\u2019s done: the common space over Gwen\u2019s bedroom is Blythe\u2019s office, which has a balcony overlooking the back yard. The long desks consist of salvaged doors on file cabinets with beveled-glass tops. \u201cLazy chic,\u201d she calls it. There are large rolls of plans scattered here and there, and papers are stacked everywhere. It\u2019s not a wreck, but it\u2019s a controlled mess.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s dithering on building a kitchenette here to make this a rental unit. It\u2019s right over the kitchen sink, which is right over the laundry room. It\u2019d be easy enough to run the plumbing up here. I\u2019d shut my yap about her bedroom for a while if she did that, because that would make this house an investment if she rents it out, or would halve again its sale price.<\/p>\n<p>Her bathroom is identical to the one below, but it has two doors: one from the hall and one that connects to her room through a closet.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s where things get rough.<\/p>\n<p>The closet is dark, with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The carpet is dog-shit brown\u2014or would be if it weren\u2019t so threadbare the horsehair padding didn\u2019t show through. I go into her bedroom proper and see&nbsp;\u2026 what this house looked like when she started. Crumbling plaster exposing the lath. Old faded and friable wallpaper on the plaster that\u2019s still attached to the lath. The door to an outside landing and staircase, just next to the chimney, is boarded over. There\u2019s a bay window overlooking the street, and her double bed is off in the darkest corner in the room. It\u2019s neatly made, but the bedspread is worn dingy white chenille and there are bits of plaster from the ceiling on it. I look up. It\u2019s worse than the walls and there are two bare bulbs hanging from it. She has a shit dresser and a chair that needs to be junked.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh and head downstairs. It\u2019s too damned depressing, her room. She\u2019s done with the speakeasy and Calvin\u2019s taken over the space for his toys and projects, which she encouraged. She spent more time on her laundry room than she\u2019s spent on her bedroom. She argued that she spends more time in the laundry room than in her bedroom, which is probably true.<\/p>\n<p>I go back to the living room, sit in one of the chairs and look around me, taking in details, remembering. She rehabbed every piece in the house. Everything\u2019s from the thrift store, but you wouldn\u2019t know it because her goal was to make it look as if she\u2019d bought it new from a high-end store. She was given the red and purple fabric for the couch because it was in bits and pieces. She sewed them all together until they were in huge sheets and then used them to reupholster the sofa, chairs, and ottoman. The Danish modern coffee tables and end tables are made from scrap wood she scavenged from around town and planed into curves by hand. So are the dining room table and sideboard.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026&nbsp;fucking pigsty&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I am thoroughly ashamed of myself.<\/p>\n<p>I come here almost every night. I eat here and work here. I read interesting books to Kaia and tuck her in bed. I play catch in the back yard with Ryan and Minecraft with Calvin. I help Gwen with her homework. I write posts for the blog. I\u2019ve been doing this for four years.<\/p>\n<p>I helped Blythe do some of this work. I was her forklift and extra pair of hands.<\/p>\n<p>How can I not remember? How have I not noticed, not seen?<\/p>\n<p>I know exactly what she\u2019s done and how she did it, but I never paid attention to the final result not because she\u2019s a pro, I realize, but because I resent this house so much.<\/p>\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p>I get up, go outside, and walk around. The large covered front porch stonework is solid and clean with a fresh coat of whitewash. The concrete floor is painted decoratively to mimic a rug. The ceiling is white beadboard with a ceiling fan and a porch swing hanging from it. Three sides of the first floor, the foundation, and the chimney are done in stone, as Shirtwaists usually are, but all the stone on this one is whitewashed. The bright red siding above the first floor is fresh and the white trim is gleaming. The black-shingled roof is new.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe did all that by herself. Yes, I helped when she asked, but she didn\u2019t ask much.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing that\u2019s amiss is the rickety staircase that goes to the third floor. It\u2019s blocked off. If she decides to make the third floor a rental she\u2019ll have to rehab it. Otherwise, I want her to get rid of it and wall in the door to her bedroom. But that\u2019s part of the bedroom project and she seems not to care if it ever gets done.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t care what she says or how clean it is, her bedroom <em>is<\/em> a fucking pigsty.<\/p>\n<p>I amble on down to the driveway to the mess of a back yard. The bottom right corner of the house where the back porch was attached is now bare and almost black from mold and wood rot, so I hadn\u2019t noticed how much bigger and lighter the house looks without it. She wanted a red house, which isn\u2019t a good way to make a house visually bigger. But without the lean-to, it\u2019s bigger than it looked when it was a beige that looked filthy even after a thorough cleaning.<\/p>\n<p>The deck is going to be huge. I imagine it and am impressed with how much more space it will add, especially when she installs the lateral cable railing and paints it white, installs the French door, and patches the siding. It\u2019ll be an outdoor living room.<\/p>\n<p>Huh. I imagine some more and realize she was right all along. <em>Something<\/em> had to be done with the back porch other than rehabbing it a third time, so why <em>not<\/em> build a huge deck that doubles as a carport? Why <em>not<\/em> make it a grand outdoor living space?<\/p>\n<p>No wonder she\u2019s getting\u2014and staying\u2014mad at me. I give her shit about the house as if it all looks like her bedroom. I give her shit about the deck she really did need to replace a back porch that leached value from the house. I give her shit about moving out of a house she almost single-handedly resurrected. I give her shit because I\u2019ve wanted her and the kids to move in with me since she sold the mcmansion and she refuses to.<\/p>\n<p>I hear her diesel engine coming around the corner. I get out of the way so she can pull into the driveway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrampa!\u201d the kids shout as they all tumble out of the truck as if they didn\u2019t see me last night, and the night before last, and the night before that. Kaia throws herself at me. Gwen practically does. Ryan punches my arm as he goes by and Calvin\u2019s decided he\u2019s a puppy, running and yipping and barking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYo, Cal!\u201d I call. \u201cGo take your medicine.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>He chirps, \u201cI\u2019m a potato!\u201d and dutifully darts into the house.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s his latest,\u201d she says with a smile as she slides out of the truck. She\u2019s dressed as she usually is, more or less. \u201cSo be prepared to hear that for the next six months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I laugh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are you doing out here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThinking you\u2019re right about the deck,\u201d I say easily.<\/p>\n<p>She looks surprised. Then happy. \u201cWhy\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I shrug. \u201cBack porch was a piece of shit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her nose wrinkles when her smile widens.<\/p>\n<p>I smile back. \u201cI\u2019m not proud. When I\u2019m wrong, I say so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know.\u201d She turns to grab her toolbag out of the bed. \u201cHad to go help one of the moms,\u201d she explains when I raise my eyebrow in question.<\/p>\n<p>She does that a lot, fixes stuff for the moms in the pickup lane at school, which is one of the things getting in the way of Blythe acquiring a BFF. I\u2019m not sure why they need <em>her<\/em> to do it, though, because anybody who can afford to send their kids to that school can afford a contractor. So I ask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey don\u2019t have to wait,\u201d she answers simply and lets me take her tools. \u201cTighten a bolt or put a washer in a faucet. Stuff like that. And they trust me to do it right the first time.\u201d We walk into the house and again I smell lime underneath that delicious dinner. Nothing remains of the smells that assaulted me four years ago, the ones I\u2019ve been carrying around in my nose all this time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, guys!\u201d she yells as she starts up the staircase. \u201cGet on with dinner!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The kids set the table while I grab the sourdough and start slicing it, whip up a salad, and parcel out beer, pop, and milk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, hey!\u201d Jerry booms from the entry hall. \u201cWhat\u2019s for dinner?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s supposed to knock. Blythe\u2019s told him several times he\u2019s not permitted to just walk in the house. I may have a key and access to the security system and practically live here myself, but it\u2019s not my house, either, so I don\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, Pop-pop,\u201d somebody says absently. \u201cHi, Nana.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello!\u201d Winnie calls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey there, Finn,\u201d Jerry says as he strolls down the hall toward the kitchen. \u201cWhatcha doin\u2019 in here, cooking? That\u2019s Blythe\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I have lots of things to say to that, none of them nice. I settle for \u201cHard to screw up a salad,\u201d and get the butter out of the refrigerator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLord, Finn, the next thing you know, she\u2019ll have you washing her panties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I ignore that because the only other appropriate response is a right hook.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDad,\u201d Blythe says from the stairwell, \u201cthis is a two-butt kitchen. Go sit down at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I glance at Jerry to see how he takes Blythe\u2019s order. Not well. If Blythe notices it when she breezes into the kitchen, she gives no indication of it.<\/p>\n<p>I give him the side-eye and he collects himself. \u201cDon\u2019t have to tell me twice!\u201d he says, faking jocularity.<\/p>\n<p>I say nothing as I toss the bread into a basket, but Blythe sidles up to me. \u201cDid he ring the doorbell or knock?\u201d she asks low.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She sighs and begins dishing up whatever\u2019s in the Crock-Pot, yelling for Ryan to come get it and put it on the table, and says nothing more about it.<\/p>\n<p>The evening goes as it usually does. Jerry and Winnie leave right after dinner, the kids do dishes, then settle in at the dining room table to do their homework while Blythe and I work right along with them, and then it\u2019s bedtime. Blythe and I work for a few more hours. I leave around midnight, set the alarm, lock the door, and head out to my quiet, perfect house.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">7: SINGLE WHITE FEMALE<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">EVERYONE FROM last Saturday shows up this Saturday. Ryan\u2019s friends and Scott are seduced by the money and, I suspect, hours of being treated like men instead of silly little boys or randy teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce\u2019s wife and son show up with him. Duncan wants to watch the concrete get poured and Bryce wants him there, but he doesn\u2019t want him to get in the way, so Giselle decided to accommodate both of them. I greet her with a smile and a warm but totally fake \u201cNice to meet you finally!\u201d because regardless what Finn says, I\u2019m still intimidated by any woman who beat him in court.<\/p>\n<p>She returns the greeting quietly and with a reserved smile. She\u2019s keeping her distance from me, although not Finn. She\u2019s even more reserved with everyone else, and I watch for a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Then I get it. I\u2019ve seen that smile before, heard that tone, read that body language. From Kaia. Meeting new people. If she\u2019s meeting someone new who has a shared passion or if she has something to say, she\u2019s as outgoing and chatty as I am. If she doesn\u2019t, she keeps her mouth shut, not smiling, just wanting people she doesn\u2019t know out of her space. Giselle\u2019s not a stone-cold bitch. She\u2019s <em>shy<\/em>, and the only person here she can talk and laugh and joke with is Finn because she already knows him.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve watched and felt Kaia\u2019s discomfort, and I can see and feel Giselle\u2019s now, too, because it\u2019s practically flooding me. No, I have no reason to be envious. I can\u2019t imagine not being able to talk to people, so much as to say hi, without a reason to do so. Now I wonder if Kaia will grow up being seen as a \u201cstone-cold bitch,\u201d an outcast and the subject of vicious gossip. Maybe I\u2019m not as nice as I thought, because I listen to the gossip and do nothing about it.<\/p>\n<p>My parents are there, Mom to feed and water us, and Dad to guzzle Pepsi and hang with the neighbors. He declines Gwen\u2019s invitation to go to the movies with her, Calvin, and Kaia. I watch her expression go from a tidge hurt to irritated before she turns away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGwen, why isn\u2019t Pop-pop coming?\u201d Calvin asks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes it matter?\u201d she snaps and storms up the driveway. Kaia turns, but not before I see a sly smile on her face.<\/p>\n<p>Finn and I exchange unamused glances.<\/p>\n<p>Posey sets up her cameras while Finn, Bryce, and I recheck the footing holes, plumb and level, adjust the concrete forms, and readjust. The real work begins the minute we all start dragging the rebar from the pile by the fence and laying it on the gravel, and we have a lot of gravel to cover. Bryce allows Duncan to help, tells us how to lay it, and shows us how to tie it. Finn and I, Ryan, his two friends, Scott, and Bryce teaching Duncan, finish just in time for the concrete truck to show up and back down the driveway. Bryce calls the shots for the whole pour, starting with the deck footings, in which we set the bolts.<\/p>\n<p>The day passes in a blur of gravel and cement, floats and trowels and brooms, levels and strings, with the neighborhood, Giselle and Duncan, and my dad looking on. My dad offers suggestion after suggestion that we ignore until he throws a fit, at which point, Bryce turns, leans on his float\u2019s handle, looks at my dad, and says calmly, \u201cOne more word, and I will bury you in this slab.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My dad fluffs up like a banty rooster. The neighbors move away a little as if Bryce is about to squash him like a bug. Finn and I exchange another look, but this time we have to look away from each other or else we\u2019ll burst out laughing. My dad marches up the other side of the house, yells for my mom, and leaves.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <em>finally<\/em>, we\u2019re finished. We clean up. All six males sprawl out over the lawn underneath a sprinkler. Duncan\u2019s standing behind Giselle, draped over her shoulders to watch, but his eyelids keep drifting closed. Posey\u2019s gone home. I text Ryan\u2019s friends\u2019 parents to tell them they\u2019ve got very worn-out sons who need to be wheeled into the shower on a dolly. I then flop on the ground by Finn. Gwen calls out from the top of the driveway, and Finn yells at her not to let Calvin near the wet concrete.<\/p>\n<p>She yells at Scott about some party they\u2019ve both been invited to.<\/p>\n<p>He pretends not to hear.<\/p>\n<p>The nice thing, I decide, about recruiting Gwen\u2019s boyfriend to help\u2014tall, strapping quarterback that he is\u2014is that since high school football games are on Fridays, he\u2019s too tired to do anything afterward. And if he\u2019s over here helping on Saturdays because he wants the money, he\u2019s too tired to take Gwen out to their school friends\u2019 parties.<\/p>\n<p>She yells louder and he gathers up the strength to yell back, \u201cI\u2019m going home!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This, of course, makes Gwen mad. She screeches at him, herds her siblings into the house, and proceeds to let out an ear-piercing scream. Because it\u2019s cool enough to have the windows open, we can hear her every footstep, her door slam, and another scream.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGawd,\u201d he mutters.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m looking up at the darkening sky, then look at Finn, who\u2019s looking at me. \u201cTen,\u201d we say in unison.<\/p>\n<p>Scott starts. \u201cWut?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn says, \u201cShe won\u2019t be back out until ten o\u2019clock tomorrow morning. You can tell how long she\u2019s going to sulk by the volume.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bryce laughs, groans, and with Giselle\u2019s help, gets slowly to his feet. So does Scott. Ryan\u2019s friends\u2019 parents show up and exclaim over the progress we\u2019ve made. Finn and I get up, shake everybody\u2019s hands, say thank you, and call \u201cSee you next week?\u201d as the fathers have to practically drag their ragged sons to the street. The Kenards and Scott plod off toward their cars, leaving me and Finn alone in the back yard.<\/p>\n<p>Finn isn\u2019t physically demonstrative. But sometimes, after an argument or after having family drama or both in this case, he\u2019ll put his arm around me, pull me close, and press my head to his shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>He does that now, standing with me in my back yard, looking at the concrete. It\u2019s beautiful. By comparison, the driveway looks like crap. I\u2019m going to have to do it, too. I study the house from primitive stone foundation, up two floors to the third-floor widow\u2019s walk set into the gabled roof. Finn hates this house, this house that <em>was<\/em> once a wreck but isn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh heavily, relaxing into his body, wrapping my arm around his waist. He\u2019s solid. Warm. My best friend. We fight, yes, but I can\u2019t imagine my life without him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a vision for this house, Finn,\u201d I say quietly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know,\u201d he says, his baritone vibrating in his chest, against my shoulder. \u201cI trust your vision. You know that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, you don\u2019t. If you did, you wouldn\u2019t act like she looks the same as she did four years ago. I\u2019m not fishing for compliments. I\u2019m not asking you to spend fifteen hundred words publicly praising my skill and taste. I\u2019m asking you to <em>look<\/em> at her and <em>see<\/em> what I\u2019ve done instead of trying to get from the front door to the dining room as fast as possible so you don\u2019t have to be tainted by the sight of my thrift-store furniture. The <em>least<\/em> you could do is stop calling her Shithole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He sighs. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he says low. \u201cI&nbsp;\u2026 you\u2019ve done a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t patronize me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t say anything for a couple of moments, but his arm tightens around me and he kisses the top of my head. \u201cPlan to have Christmas over at my house. All of us. Jess and Ken and theirs, too. You and the kids come over their last day of school and I\u2019ll let you go the day before they have to go back to school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I laugh wearily. \u201cYou make it sound like you\u2019re going to take us hostage, not throw us in the pool and shower presents on us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe you need to be taken hostage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I pull away from him, confused. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shrugs. \u201cYou need to start dating. Find somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d I say, still bewildered.<\/p>\n<p>He slides me a glance. \u201cSo you were joking about getting it on with Bryce? I think not. \u2018Many a true word is spoken in jest.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I snort. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you the same thing I told Gwen. I\u2019m not blind. Just because I look and wonder doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ll touch, much less buy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHrmph. Blythe, really. I told you I didn\u2019t expect you to stay single and I\u2019ve been thinking about it all week. Maybe it\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I sigh. \u201cIt won\u2019t be time until I\u2019m willing to put up with the hassle of dating. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m out of practice. It\u2019s that I\u2019ve never done any. I sat with Darren at lunch his first day in my school to help him fit in, and three years later we were married. Furthermore, no man in his right mind wants to get into a long-term relationship with a woman who\u2019s got four kids.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He opens his mouth to say something. Closes it. Opens it again. \u201cI can\u2019t argue that,\u201d he mutters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a guy, though,\u201d I admit reluctantly, \u201cin the pickup lane at school. Winter Ticas\u2019s dad. Dustin. I\u2019d go out with him if he asked.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn tenses a little. \u201cOh. Why don\u2019t you ask him out?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve thought about it, but\u2014 \u201cI just can\u2019t do it. I\u2019m not that brave.\u201d Not brave enough to approach somebody who doesn\u2019t know I exist. \u201cHave you been thinking about finding someone?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He sighs. \u201cI tried,\u201d he mutters, and my heart trips up a little. \u201cNothing ever worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I say nothing for a few seconds, trying to digest that, Finn dating, having a relationship with a woman, how much I\u2019ll miss him when he moves on.<\/p>\n<p>He will eventually and I need to prepare myself. It\u2019s not natural, a man his age with his vitality, staying single as if he\u2019s still mourning his wife. Some woman\u2019ll come along who\u2019s just perfect for him, they\u2019ll fall in love, and Finn will leave because there won\u2019t be any room in his new life for me.<\/p>\n<p>Us, I mean. The kids and me.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t feel so good and I close my eyes. \u201cFinn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re pathetic, aren\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYup.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"tb30\">\n<div class=\"lr12\">\n<p class=\"emailblog\">Thx for the post. I know ppl are hating on you bad, but Im gratful. I showed the vid to the guy. He didn\u2019t know you could rent Bobcats and stuff. He thought we were going to have to jack it by hand. Anyway thx Ill be the only one following the deck blog, but maybe ppl will get off you\u2019re back now its not on the main page.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>No, the regulars are not getting off my back and lurkers are coming out of lurkdom to bitch, but the deck blog\u2019s numbers are astronomically high for an unwanted brand-new blog with three posts. The landing page rates are unexpectedly high and on average, people who stay on the blog stay as long as it takes a normal person to read one post and watch one video. I take a screenshot and email it to Finn and my mom with a razzberry emoji.<\/p>\n<p>Neither of them responds.<\/p>\n<p>At dinner when I poke my mom, she very pointedly ignores me.<\/p>\n<p>I look at Finn expectantly. He rolls his eyes. \u201cI told you you were right,\u201d he drawls with wry amusement. \u201cWould you like me to kiss your feet too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grin because now I have been thoroughly vindicated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight?\u201d my dad asks Finn, shocked. \u201cAbout what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn slides him a glance. \u201cThe deck. It increases the resale value of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt won\u2019t make its cost back!\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTake it up with Blythe,\u201d Finn says smoothly, gesturing toward me. \u201cI\u2019m sure she\u2019s already had an appraiser out and figured her profit margin to the nearest dime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHrmph,\u201d my dad says, but doesn\u2019t ask me anything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow was your day?\u201d I ask Finn sweetly, my mood lightening even more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood,\u201d he says with a firm nod. He starts to talk and the table quiets. Finn with work stories is always interesting, even to the kids. I\u2019d taken them to see their grandfather in the courtroom and to his office building to show them that when he said he was working and wouldn\u2019t be around for a while, he <em>really meant it<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I scowl in thought. Or did he? If he\u2019d been dating, not all of those nights he left his chair empty he would\u2019ve been spent working.<\/p>\n<p>Meh. I don\u2019t blame him.<\/p>\n<p>But why would he lie to me about it? It\u2019s not as if he was cheating on me or anything. You can\u2019t cheat on your daughter-in-law just because you spend almost every non-working hour with her.<\/p>\n<p><em>Hey, Blythe, I\u2019ve got a date tonight. Cover for me with the kids?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Oh, awesome. What\u2019s she like?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>She\u2019s a lawyer&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>That went without saying.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Brilliant. Gorgeous. Well-travelled.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>How was your date?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Incredible. I took her here and there and we did this and that and we talked about Nietszche and Goethe and Prufrock and euthanasia.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Oh yeah?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Best sex I\u2019ve ever had.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>TMI.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My chest hurts because I could never talk about those things with anyone. So besides having four kids, stretch marks, a miter saw and a vast collection of sports bras, I\u2019m not the least bit interesting and I still don\u2019t understand what\u2019s special about Prufrock.<\/p>\n<p>My mom asks Finn few questions and he\u2019s happy to answer them, to laugh and joke around with her. He\u2019s always been happy to talk to my mom; they were pals the first time they met.<\/p>\n<p>My gregarious mother, being a kind busybody and natural problem-solver, had rolled out the welcome wagon as soon as the Marstons\u2019 moving trucks rolled away.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d known by their furniture and Miriam\u2019s clothes that this neighborhood was a huge step up for them from their previous circumstances, and that the wife would be lost, intimidated, and frightened. She would have no idea what would be expected of her as the wife of a successful attorney or as the mother of children who would be going to an affluent school or as an addition to the neighborhood clique.<\/p>\n<p>My mom knew this because she\u2019d already been through it.<\/p>\n<p>During their first shopping trip, Miriam refused to buy anything for herself because they\u2019d been poor so long. She was unable to conceive of the kind of money Finn was making by that time, and she was horrified by the prices\u2014and it was a consignment store! It took a little bit of work on my mom\u2019s part, but she finally managed to dress Miriam appropriately.<\/p>\n<p>My mom had eased Miriam\u2019s way from where she started: middle-class teenage girl who got herself in trouble, to a shanty in Harlem married to a boy she barely knew while being pregnant with his child and trying to live with his mother, to a small ranch house in a still-questionable part of town and another child, to an upscale tract subdivision with closely-set three-thousand-square-foot mcmansions where every driveway had a boat or an RV and every other back yard had a swimming pool.<\/p>\n<p>The Marstons had all three.<\/p>\n<p>Finn would have moved up to a bona fide estate after a few years, but Miriam put her foot down. She was in that neighborhood to stay.<\/p>\n<p>So now Finn and my mom are reminiscing a little bit and laughing.<\/p>\n<p>My dad, who\u2019s still mad about Finn letting Bryce talk to him that way, and pouting because Finn generally pays more attention to my mother than to him, listens as Finn\u2019s work story gathers steam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;told him he better never talk to my paralegal like that ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen what\u2019d he do?\u201d Ryan asks.<\/p>\n<p>Finn shrugs. \u201cForgot. Did it again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019d you do then, Grampa?\u201d Calvin asks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFired him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gwen gasps. \u201cRight <em>then?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She doesn\u2019t know what to do, what to think. She thinks Finn hung the moon and the stars, but her teenage sense of justice is outraged.<\/p>\n<p>Finn doesn\u2019t challenge her. He simply asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind, Gwen?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2014 I don\u2019t think that was fair,\u201d she mutters hesitantly, as if Finn will disapprove and send her into a crashing depression.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not?\u201d His tone\u2019s gentle. It gets that way when he\u2019s teaching and this is a teaching moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s new. New people make mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was told his mistake. He did it again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, but&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou yell at us all the time for making the same mistakes over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He chuckles, but then sobers a little. \u201cGwen, your father taught me something a long time ago that I have practiced ever since and it has never failed me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I blink and sit up a little straighter. So do the kids. They want to hear stories about their dad. I want to know what Darren could have possibly taught Finn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen your dad,\u201d he begins with the tone of a natural storyteller, \u201cwas a teenager, he worked at a used-games store. Dungeons and Dragons. Video game cartridges and consoles. Stuff like that.\u201d My kids have no reference for any of it. \u201cComic books. Sci-fi and fantasy and adventure novels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And in the back, behind a discreet curtain that matched the wall color, was the <em>adult<\/em> fantasy section. I snort. Finn shoots a grin at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnyway,\u201d he continues, \u201che managed the place in the evenings and on weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which was why we didn\u2019t date much. We were attached at the lips at school until I was a sophomore when he graduated and went to college. He planned big birthday parties for me, sent me flowers for no reason, and occasionally popped into school to bring me lunch. He escorted me to both my proms and both homecomings and&nbsp;\u2026 slept with me almost every night from the moment I turned sixteen.<\/p>\n<p>Then we got married.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had an employee who was awful. Wouldn\u2019t straighten the books or vacuum the carpet. Wouldn\u2019t stop harassing customers who bought things he didn\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I bite my lip to keep from laughing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut <em>he<\/em> should have been fired,\u201d Gwen declares.<\/p>\n<p>Finn nods with alacrity. \u201cOh yes. I would\u2019ve. I advised your dad to do that, too. He wouldn\u2019t. He said, \u2018I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the right thing to do, Dad.\u2019 I said, \u2018What do you think the right thing to do is?\u2019 He said, \u2018I don\u2019t know yet, but I\u2019ll figure it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m really interested now. I\u2019ve never heard this story.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid he?\u201d my dad asks, surprising me. \u201cFigure it out, I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn glances at him. \u201cEventually. He was pulling his hair out by the time he did, though. By that time, the <em>only<\/em> reason he didn\u2019t fire him was because the guy would work graveyards and he was dependable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My mom and dad both say, \u201cAh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn has to take a side trip to explain to the kids why a dependable graveyard employee can get away with so much. \u201cBut one day, he overheard the guy on the phone. He was upset. Almost crying, I guess. Darren was curious and asked him what was up. I don\u2019t remember what he told your dad. The important part was that your dad figured out he had some problems and one of them was that he just wasn\u2019t very likable. Nobody liked him, including your dad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, if he acts like a jerk,\u201d Gwen huffs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe he just didn\u2019t know how to act in public and needed someone to teach him.\u201d He slides a glance at Calvin. Gwen and Ryan nod in comprehension. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t very attractive. Looked and dressed weird, but not on purpose to make a statement. He didn\u2019t bathe or wash his hair. It was like he didn\u2019t know better. He <em>looked<\/em> unlikable. He stunk. Your dad decided to be nice to him no matter what. He had to look for the good things about him so it wasn\u2019t as hard to treat him well and teach him how to act in the world. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe told him to bathe every day and wash his hair. He took him shopping for a \u2018uniform.\u2019\u201d Finn makes air quotes. \u201cTook him for a haircut. Treated him with a little bit of kindness and thought. Came to his defense when customers complained about him. Let him know he had his back and what do you know, he turned into a good employee. So, Gwen, when I tell a brand-new lawyer to stop being an ass to my paralegals, I expect him to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen why don\u2019t you be nice to him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree reasons: First, by the time he gets to me, he should be well socialized enough not to give me shit. He\u2019s not some socially awkward graveyard clerk with B.O. Second, he should know not to piss off his support staff because they can make or break you. Third, I value my support staff more than I value an arrogant kid straight out of law school who should know better. I was letting my support staff know I have their backs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She still doesn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s try it this way,\u201d Finn says, looking at Gwen. \u201cIf your mom started dating\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My eyes bug out and I gasp. So does everyone else.<\/p>\n<p>Finn holds his hand up but doesn\u2019t take his attention from Gwen. \u201cNo, hear me out. Say your mom brings a guy home and he\u2019s really nice. Awesome. Treats her well and gives her roses and takes her nice places. He makes her happy. Furthermore, he treats you guys like you\u2019re the most important people in the world. You\u2019d be okay with that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No, she wouldn\u2019t, but Gwen can\u2019t really say that and Finn goes on without requiring her to answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut then what if he shows up one day and your mom\u2019s not home and he starts being a jerk to you? And you tell your mom, and she believes you, so she tells him to stop being a jerk to you. He apologizes and things go on for a while and he\u2019s nice to you, even in private. But then he gets comfortable again and\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe does it again,\u201d Calvin says, now angry at this imaginary boyfriend I don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf she kept going out with him, then you\u2019d feel like you weren\u2019t important to her, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s done with the object lesson. Gwen says nothing, but her eyes are glittering with tears and her mouth is trembling. She looks away and swipes at her cheek. Finn reaches out and takes her chin gently in his palm. \u201cGwen, I\u2019m not trying to embarrass you. My point is that there are times you nurture someone and times you cut \u2019em loose. Your dad taught me to think about when to do what. I don\u2019t always get it right, but when I don\u2019t know what I should do, I ask myself, \u2018What would Darren do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrampa!\u201d Calvin pipes up. \u201cWhat are you going to do to that jerk who\u2019s dating Mama?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn flashes me a smirk and I grind my teeth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not dating anyone, Cal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He ignores me. \u201cCan you fire him from being Mama\u2019s boyfriend?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn\u2019s grin gets wider and he\u2019s looking at me, the crow\u2019s feet and lines around his mouth carving into his skin. I glare at him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess that would depend on how happy he makes her,\u201d he drawls smugly.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m dying. Not from the conversation, per se, but it churns up things within me: nauseating dread at going out, meeting men, dating; exhaustion from even the thought of having to integrate someone into the household; cringing mortification at having sex with someone I don\u2019t know, even if he is imaginary.<\/p>\n<p>Considering I\u2019d just been bitching to myself about my lack of appeal, my nausea at the thought of a real relationship shocks me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHrmph. The payoff isn\u2019t big enough for the hassle,\u201d I grumble.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMom,\u201d comes another voice. Ryan, who\u2019s easygoing and usually game for anything. I look at him and he\u2019s returning that look intently, unamused, looking so much like me it\u2019s unnerving. \u201cI don\u2019t want a new dad,\u201d he says slowly and with precision, issuing a warning, if not a threat.<\/p>\n<p>The adults sober.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re not going to get one,\u201d I say matter-of-factly. \u201cI have no interest in getting married again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All four children deflate with relief. My mom is chuckling at their cute territorialism. Finn\u2019s watching me intently, his smile gone, as if to ask me if I really mean that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinn,\u201d my dad says, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest, disturbing this communication between me and my father-in-law. \u201cI knew you\u2019d raised a good pack of kids and you know I thought the world of Darren, but I\u2019m really impressed you\u2019d admit your son taught you something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn shrugs. \u201cI\u2019m not proud,\u201d he says simply. \u201cI\u2019ll take truth wherever I get it, and in this case, I was interested in how he\u2019d handle it. I watched, thinking he\u2019d come to me and say \u2018You were right, Dad.\u2019 Instead he came to me and said, \u2018I figured it out.\u2019 I was really proud of him, proud he could teach me something so profound when he was so young.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look away while my dad carries on about Finn\u2019s fortitude in admitting it, and the children beg Finn for more daddy stories. Tears sting my eyes, but I don\u2019t know why. This is a melancholy moment, not a grief one, and yet I grieve. Why? Because I\u2019d never heard this story before? Because it\u2019s moments like these I miss having a man who loves me and wants me?<\/p>\n<p>When I turn back to my family, Finn\u2019s looking at me again, his expression now asking me why I\u2019m upset. He knows me too well not to know what I\u2019m feeling.<\/p>\n<p>I shrug helplessly.<\/p>\n<p>The conversation rolls on around me. One would think we\u2019d all eventually run out of things to talk about, but it doesn\u2019t seem like it. Words pour out, all worn, arranged differently from day to day, usually saying the same things. Occasionally, like tonight\u2019s story, there\u2019s something brand new. Maybe we talk so much to discover those new things.<\/p>\n<p>I knew everything there was to know about Darren Marston.<\/p>\n<p>Half an hour ago.<\/p>\n<p>Darren used to tell me about his dad, how awesome he was, but I didn\u2019t see it. Mr. Marston intimidated me, but then, when I was seventeen, intimidation turned into terror.<\/p>\n<p>We were at a football game. I was cheering. Jessica Marston was with her friends somewhere in the stands. Ken Marston was a second-string wide receiver. Darren was at work. My mom and dad, and Mr. and Mrs. Marston were in the bleachers behind the cheer squad.<\/p>\n<p>Just before halftime, we cheerleaders heard a scuffle behind us and turned to see Mr. Marston dragging the school bully\u2019s father down the bleachers. Once the man was on the ground, Mr. Marston punched him a couple of times in the face and ribs, then left him lying on the ground, unconscious, to return to the bleachers and sit quietly beside Mrs. Marston, rub her back, and pull her close.<\/p>\n<p>She was crying, and turned into him for comfort. Mr. Marston dug for a handkerchief and wiped away her tears while an ambulance came to take the bully away.<\/p>\n<p>It took me a good two years into my marriage not to cringe away from Finn because of that incident, though Miriam put herself between us to ease my fright and his impatience. It was difficult for me to imagine him any other way, but he raised Darren, who was practically a saint and worshipped the ground Finn walked on. Jessica and Ken were feisty, funny, got good grades, didn\u2019t screw around, and did their own things regardless what anyone else at school was doing.<\/p>\n<p>I understood, somehow, that people like Darren and Jessica and Ken didn\u2019t happen in a vacuum. But I could never shake the look of snarling animal rage on Mr. Marston\u2019s face when he put a man in the hospital in front of hundreds of witnesses with no consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Then Darren died and when I came out of my fog, I didn\u2019t fear Mr. Marston anymore.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d I burst out, stilling everyone. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn looks at me, even more confused now. \u201cDon\u2019t believe what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe he taught you that. You taught him. Darren treated his employee the way you treated Darren. The way you treat Jessica and Ken. And all their friends.\u201d I gesture around the table. \u201cThe way you treat all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finn blinks and looks down vaguely, as if thinking about that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, that\u2019s what I was saying!\u201d my dad protests. \u201cIn a roundabout way, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou do everything roundabout, Pop-pop,\u201d Calvin says matter-of-factly, which makes everyone laugh except Finn.<\/p>\n<p>And me.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m still watching him. He raises his head finally and looks at me. For a long time. I look back.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, he mouths, <em>Thank you<\/em>, though his lips barely move.<\/p>\n<p>I smile at him, notice for only about the thousandth time how ruggedly handsome he is and wonder how long it\u2019ll be before he falls in love with someone and leaves me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">8: THE REVEAL<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Finn<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">I DON\u2019T KNOW why, but that conversation has me rattled. It was my fault, bringing an imaginary boyfriend into it, which just devolved from there. Why isn\u2019t she dating? She should be dating. That asshole she wants to ask her out should get off his duff&nbsp;\u2026 She should work up a little courage to ask <em>him<\/em> out&nbsp;\u2026 Yeah, I know she\u2019s lonely for a female friend, but it never occurred to me until I saw her watching my best friend like she wanted to take him to bed right then that she might be <em>lonely<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m in the shower.<\/p>\n<p>I stop scrubbing my hair.<\/p>\n<p>I can still see that gleam in her eye, the lusty little glances she tossed at him.<\/p>\n<p>I scrub harder.<\/p>\n<p>She doesn\u2019t act lonely.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s happy most of the time unless her blog comments go south as they did with the deck, or she offers her expertise to Missouri Bridge to Shelter, a housing charity, and gets yet another rejection.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dear Mrs. Marston, Thank you for your interest. We\u2019re fully staffed and serviced at this time, but if you would like to sponsor&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Translation: <em>You\u2019re a rich stay-at-home mom with a dilettante mommy blog and a savior complex to kill time because you\u2019re not qualified to do anything but wipe runny noses and change diapers. You don\u2019t impress us. Send cash.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oh, I could grease those wheels a bit. Easily. I know everybody on every board of every charity in Missouri and Kansas. But she would hate me for it and I won\u2019t go behind her back.<\/p>\n<p>I respect her too much to do that, even if I\u2019m tempted.<\/p>\n<p>She moved into DIY Shithole\u2014shit, <em>Bestie<\/em>\u2014to \u201cbe authentic,\u201d she says. Or as authentic as she can manage. If one day she got a call asking her for help or responding to one of her offers, she\u2019d be over the moon. If she then found out she\u2019d gotten it because I\u2019d dropped a few words in the right ears\u2014<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d never speak to me again.<\/p>\n<p>It would be a betrayal of everything she\u2019s accomplished since Darren died.<\/p>\n<p>There <em>is<\/em> one nonprofit in town that desperately needs her help, which she can never find out about.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an illegal under-the-table inner-city racket one of Giselle\u2019s cousins runs. Very few people know about it, people who will fund it in cash, in person, without acknowledging the charity, reporting it, or writing off the cash. The Dunham family does. I know there are a few of movers and shakers elsewhere in the country who do, but those folks are bound to the Dunhams by history, loyalty, and friendship. Just like I am.<\/p>\n<p>The charity doesn\u2019t even have a name and you have to know where to go to find a giant tatted-and-pierced ginger because nobody\u2019s going to tell you where Felix LaMontagne is.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s been looking for someone to help transform shipping containers into fully-equipped tiny houses for the homeless. Blythe would <em>love<\/em> doing that, but she\u2019d blog it in an effort to be helpful and \u201craise awareness,\u201d which would land him in federal prison for tax evasion.<\/p>\n<p>Again.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, he came home from some third-world backwater preaching for his church and promptly set up shop as a Mormon St. Francis of Assisi over on Independence Avenue. His philosophical and ideological choice not to set up as a 503(c), keep books, or file tax returns was deliberate. He knew what could happen.<\/p>\n<p>It did.<\/p>\n<p>And, par for his family\u2019s course, they hailed him as a political prisoner and feted the guy for his civil disobedience. Only the Dunhams would consider a stint in federal prison for tax evasion a worthwhile achievement. They were only marginally less approving of Wesley Snipes, and that\u2019s only because he\u2019s not a Dunham.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bryce, the church refused to excommunicate LaMontagne despite numerous calls to do so, but it also refuses to acknowledge his existence. That\u2019s no big deal. All the churches he works with over there do, to stay out of the IRS\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure if Blythe\u2019s insistence on being \u201cauthentic\u201d is cute or just eye-rolling. She doesn\u2019t know \u201cauthentic\u201d and it would kill her spirit if she saw it up close and personal. Felix demands his sponsors deliver in person so they can <em>see<\/em> it, <em>see<\/em> what he\u2019s trying to do. He recruits people who can teach and mentor folks who have potential, but need training and encouragement. It\u2019s the days I\u2019m down on Independence Avenue to drop a wad in Felix\u2019s safe I feel like my childhood and adolescence was damn near like Beaver Cleaver\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>I wish Blythe would stop trying to \u201cbe authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I gave her a hammer and a drill and showed her how to use them because I was fucking sick and tired of having to make penny-ante repairs around her shit-construction mcmansion. I didn\u2019t expect she\u2019d take to it the way she did.<\/p>\n<p>I made her take remedial English and math at the junior college because I was fucking sick and tired of reading her nonsensical notes and watching her try\u2014and fail\u2014to read a tape measure and add fractions. Now\u2014well, hell. She uses AutoCAD like a pro and can figure angles in her head faster than most people can multiply by two. I didn\u2019t expect she\u2019d take to college, either.<\/p>\n<p>Those were the only two things I did for her, and I did them so I wouldn\u2019t knock her head off for being so fucking stupid. Yes, I taught her how to build, but only because she asked me to show her some more things. Then more. I didn\u2019t think about it much and I didn\u2019t take her seriously until I heard <em>I want to build my own house. By myself.<\/em> That was when I realized that if she kept going the way she was, she might be able to.<\/p>\n<p>The rest\u2014her bachelor\u2019s degree, her precise math, her technical writing skills, her business management\u2014she did all that herself.<\/p>\n<p>Now I <em>know<\/em> she\u2019ll build her own house.<\/p>\n<p>Yet \u2026<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026&nbsp;no man in his right mind wants to get into a long-term relationship with a woman who\u2019s got four kids.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s right. Furthermore, even if she didn\u2019t have children, I don\u2019t know many men who\u2019d find what Blythe does to be admirable. Impressive, yes. Admirable, no. That\u2019s what contractors are for, especially when one has the kind of money she does. No matter how good she gets, she\u2019s always going to be seen as eccentric to people who send her invitations to society parties in spite of the fact that she never goes because she doesn\u2019t have an <em>&#038; Guest<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe\u2019s eccentric, no doubt about that. But she\u2019s no dilettante. She\u2019s far better at construction than I, her teacher. She\u2019s better than my contractor boxing coach, who taught me. She\u2019s better than any contractor I have ever been forced to hire because she won\u2019t fix my shit.<\/p>\n<p><em>Geez, Finn, like you don\u2019t know how to shove a light switch in a wall.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t mind helping her with her house. I still have a thing for power tools.<\/p>\n<p>But there is no way I\u2019m ever again going to work on a house I actually live in or plan to live in. And building one from the ground up? I\u2019ll be fucking <em>goddamned to hell<\/em> if I ever do that.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe Hemming Marston, that silly, stupid girl my son married, turned herself into a craftsman, draftsman, interior designer, and professional contractor when I wasn\u2019t paying attention. I wasn\u2019t lying three weeks ago when I told her there was nothing about her I didn\u2019t respect, but I thought she knew that. Two weeks ago, I stood there looking at the work she\u2019s done, <em>seeing<\/em> it, and it began to dawn on me that what she\u2019s done is beyond amazing and she\u2019s\u2014<\/p>\n<p>She is fucking <em>spectacular<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>She gets shit from her blog followers; she gets shit from the charities; she gets shit from her mom and dad; she gets shit from the kids because they\u2019re jealous of their friends\u2019 houses; and she gets shit from me because she won\u2019t move in with me.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder she decided to go forward with the deck because one random guy reached out to her with faith and gratitude. No wonder she takes time to fix her PTA pals\u2019 houses. No wonder she got insecure the first time she tripped over a woman I admire.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe is running on her own faith in herself and her vision with no one supporting her emotionally.<\/p>\n<p>Not even me.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026&nbsp;fucking pigsty&nbsp;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>God, I\u2019m an asshole.<\/p>\n<p>So I can\u2019t think of anyone I\u2019d be comfortable setting her up with because what guy is going to want to date a stay-at-home mom with four kids (one of whom has a basket of tics and looks at the world in bewildering but interesting ways) and a pet Sawzall, no matter how pretty she is?<\/p>\n<p>I stop scrubbing again and try to remember what Blythe looks like, the way a <em>man<\/em> notices a <em>woman<\/em> instead of a father-in-law looking at his daughter-in-law, whom he\u2019s been looking at for twenty years and still can\u2019t place in his mind. It takes me a while.<\/p>\n<p>About five-seven, in good shape for a mom of four and looking too young to have a sixteen-year-old. She has pale skin, curly dark hair past her shoulders that she wears in a bouncy ponytail most of the time, and happy brown eyes. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s all I got. I\u2019d probably notice more if I saw her in anything other than boyfriend shorts or cargos, tee shirts, and steel-toed boots.<\/p>\n<p>Come to think of it, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen her dressed up since Darren died. The kids have school programs and I go to every one of them, but I\u2019ve never noticed how she dresses for those things. Does she even <em>own<\/em> a dress? Or do I just not remember?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s entirely possible.<\/p>\n<p>She accused me of not seeing what she\u2019s done to her house because I won\u2019t look at it. She\u2019s right. <em>Was<\/em> right. I looked. I couldn\u2019t help it; it smacked me in the face. I was so stunned, it was all I could do to praise her the little bit I did. She thought I was patronizing her. I didn\u2019t bother to correct her. I\u2019ve done it before.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, I\u2019m torn about her dating.<\/p>\n<p>She does so well on her own. She has vision, purpose, and absolute clarity as to her goals. Shit, when she was eighteen, she didn\u2019t know how to spell the word \u2018goal.\u2019 She had to get married just so she wouldn\u2019t starve to death.<\/p>\n<p>Now she\u2019s thirty-four and doesn\u2019t <em>need<\/em> a man and certainly not the way she needed one when she was eighteen. A man would get in her way, slow her down. She doesn\u2019t <em>need<\/em> anybody.<\/p>\n<p>Not even me.<\/p>\n<p>God, that\u2019s depressing.<\/p>\n<p>She wasn\u2019t joking about being willing to \u201ctap that,\u201d when she was eye-stripping Bryce, and the wistful tone of her voice when she told me about Dustin Ticas let me know she wants something. But I also didn\u2019t miss how green around the gills she went when I made it a little more real than a vague hope. I haven\u2019t seen that terrified look on her face since I marched her into the community college enrollment office.<\/p>\n<p>I shouldn\u2019t have said that, especially not in public, putting her on the spot like that.<\/p>\n<p><em>The payoff isn\u2019t big enough for the hassle.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Frightened or not, her observation\u2019s valid. I can\u2019t disagree, and I don\u2019t have four kids living at home who have to approve, one of whom has now officially put his foot down and told her flat out he\u2019s going to make life hell for any man who trespasses his mom.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t say I blame him.<\/p>\n<p>She brings a guy home and then suddenly I\u2019m persona non grata. No woman in her right mind would choose her dead husband\u2019s father over a relationship with someone who\u2019ll love her and take care of her the way I take care of her.<\/p>\n<p>And ways I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I\u2019m the kids\u2019 grandfather, but I don\u2019t treat them the same way I treat my other five. Blythe\u2019s kids have grown up with me being around all the time, and they\u2019re not going to like having me slotted back to true grandfather status, taking them on outings a few times a year and seeing them on holidays.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d also have to host this jackass at my table on Thanksgiving, and I can\u2019t imagine having him sitting there being all snuggly with her.<\/p>\n<p>I snarl at the faucet. That\u2019s disgusting and I don\u2019t want to see it.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh and turn off the shower.<\/p>\n<p>Even if I could think of somebody I\u2019d be okay setting her up with, I wouldn\u2019t. If she doesn\u2019t want to find a man, who am I to try to force one on her?<\/p>\n<p>And I sure as hell am not playing matchmaker for a guy who can\u2019t see the awesome woman right in front of him every afternoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">9: TUMBLR<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">\u201cFINN!\u201d I HOLLER down at him to get his attention. He looks up where I\u2019m perched high on a ladder threading a rope through a pulley I\u2019ve permanently attached to the house. I can set the deck posts myself with my system. It just takes three times as long.<\/p>\n<p>I toss him the end of a rope. He dutifully catches it, starts lashing the first post, and that starts our workday. I wait. Watch. He and Bryce discuss the best way to tie it. They\u2019re finally done, and Finn looks up at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grab the rope with a gloved hand and step off the ladder, pulling the post up as I drop.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m no Cirque du Soleil performer, but I feel like it when I\u2019m playing on my pulleys. I have lots of practice at this, but one thing I can\u2019t do is make my counterbalance go higher if I\u2019m not as heavy or if it\u2019s at a bad angle.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s at a bad angle.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan and Scott have to come pull on the rope while Bryce and Finn maneuver it in position over the anchors and drive in the temporary nails so I can come down. We repeat this process with the next one, and a third.<\/p>\n<p>Putting up the posts is the easy part. Getting it all plumb, square, and level is the hard part\u2014especially when on this morning\u2019s walk, after my little chat with the owner of <em>my<\/em> house, the one he hasn\u2019t sold me yet, I decided I want a pergola.<\/p>\n<p>Finn glared at me for that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWisteria, Finn!\u201d I cried. \u201cWisteria!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, for fuck sake,\u201d he muttered and turned away with a sigh.<\/p>\n<p>I really <em>do<\/em> want the deck. I also want wisteria. And I\u2019m used to getting what I want. Finn\u2019s still pissy because it\u2019s not consistent with my mission statement of authenticity, yet I won\u2019t move into his house and treat Bestie here as a job site.<\/p>\n<p>But the deck blog\u2019s getting lots of traffic and we\u2019re filming everything now.<\/p>\n<p>My video kid quit her job to do this, even though I told her it would be a temporary gig.<\/p>\n<p>It won\u2019t be. She and I both know that, because I need help with other things, social media being at the top of the list. Eventually, I\u2019ll move her into doing the books.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019m also a little distracted today. The more I look at Bryce, the more I realize how much I miss the warmth of a strong male body next to mine, having one between my legs. I don\u2019t want <em>Bryce<\/em>. He only caught my eye because he\u2019s a symbol of the need I\u2019ve been ignoring for the last year or so.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I know I long for sex with a man. It\u2019s that I want a man I know well and love, and I don\u2019t have one of those.<\/p>\n<p>Having a no-strings-attached affair has occurred to me before, but I get that sick feeling of dread in the pit of my belly again. How am I supposed to find a husband if the thought of a one-night stand makes me ill?<\/p>\n<p>And even if I went looking, who\u2019d have me?<\/p>\n<p>I talk to the single mothers at my kids\u2019 school. We talk while we wait for dismissal or the end of extracurricular activities or after-school events over cookies and coffee. We talk when I go fix something for them. We talk at PTA meetings and fundraisers.<\/p>\n<p>There are two kinds of single men they complain about.<\/p>\n<p>The totally uninterested. <em>They\u2019re all into porn now. It\u2019s easy, quick, and cheap. No work involved. No girl cooties, no kids, no responsibilities. If you didn\u2019t know better, you\u2019d think they were completely asexual. Porn isn\u2019t difficult. They\u2019re disconnected from real life and they don\u2019t see real women as sexual objects because we\u2019re not perfect. You think you don\u2019t want to be objectified until you find out you\u2019re competing with digital blowup dolls. They\u2019re not even interested in booty calls.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The pickup artists. <em>They <\/em>only<em> objectify you. They give you the privilege of going out with them, they\u2019ll take you out to dinner, wine you and dine you, then expect you to put out immediately because they found your looks to be worthy of them and they spent money on you. Be careful if you don\u2019t go along with the program because they\u2019re the types to assault you if you turn them down while you\u2019re picking out produce in the middle of Wednesday. They\u2019ll say you were asking for it because your lipstick was too red. If they find you good enough to marry, they\u2019ll want their suppers on the table when they get home from work. I could find better if I went to a BDSM club looking for a dom.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t really understand that last part and I didn\u2019t want to look stupid, so I didn\u2019t ask. Google let me know I don\u2019t want a dom.<\/p>\n<p>Then they bitch about their ex-husbands. <em>My husband left me. I don\u2019t know which he wanted more: getting out of the responsibility or having sex with his assistant, who\u2019s fifteen years younger than me and doesn\u2019t have stretch marks. He\u2019s trying to recapture his youth. Yeah, I was a bitch, but he was a bastard. I was willing to go to counseling, to work through things. He wasn\u2019t. And now he\u2019s cheating on the woman he left me for because she\u2019s starting to make demands about permanence, and I\u2019m at the doctor for an STD.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She told me that a few months back. I still grimace at the \u201cSTD\u201d part. Dustin\u2019s an ex-husband, but I don\u2019t know the ex-wife so I don\u2019t know the story there. What if he\u2019s just as bad?<\/p>\n<p>Two days ago, while my pals and I were standing there in the pickup lane at school waiting for our kids to pour out of the doors, they turned on me: <em>Blythe, you\u2019re lucky you\u2019re a widow.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I recoiled, horrified.<\/p>\n<p><em>Your husband died. To hear you tell it, he was a saint. Yeah. You\u2019re lucky and I don\u2019t even care how bad it sounds to say you lucked out while he was alive and you lucked out when he died. He didn\u2019t <\/em>choose<em> to leave you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re <em>really<\/em> angry.<\/p>\n<p>And because they\u2019re so angry, I\u2019m not sure how much to believe.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, school and Home Depot are pretty much the extent of my social circle. Not that it has to be, but society has its share of douchebags, too.<\/p>\n<p>If the pretty and outgoing women in my circle are that frustrated, that angry, if they\u2019re having that much trouble finding decent guys, who am I to think I\u2019m going to find anybody especially when I don\u2019t go out? Heck, I pick the kids up in my giant pickup in my work clothes.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve talked to the single dads there in the pickup lane. They complain about their ex-wives and the women who don\u2019t like nice guys because they all want bad boys. Women, so I\u2019m told, fall for those pickup artists every time.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all a big mess and it overwhelms me. Merely listening to this twists my mind and heart into knots. I can\u2019t imagine enduring it. But my sympathy for the single dads started vanishing when I noticed how they treat me when we talk.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re careful to stand away from me. <em>If<\/em> they look at me, they don\u2019t look in my eyes. They don\u2019t look at my boobs, either, because I\u2019m wearing a tight sports bra. They look at my clothes, my truck, whatever I have in the bed of my truck, and they do it with a slight curl of the lip.<\/p>\n<p>None of them would be caught dead driving what I drive, shopping where I shop, working with their hands, doing what I do. It\u2019s not that they <em>can\u2019t<\/em>. It\u2019s because it\u2019s beneath them. And because I\u2019ve got money and I\u2019m a woman, it\u2019s downright shameful.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m slumming in my boyfriend jeans or cargo pants and work boots, my hair lousy with sawdust, my tee shirts or tanks soaked with sweat and stained with paint, drywall mud, and sometimes blood. The fact that I get invited to parties none of them do because I am above them socially is salt in the wound.<\/p>\n<p><em>Geez, Blythe, what are you trying to prove, anyway?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was the prettiest girl in high school. I know because I was voted that. I was homecoming queen <em>and<\/em> prom queen. Two years in a row. It\u2019s not my vanity speaking; it\u2019s what others valued about me. I\u2019m still hot. When I make an effort.<\/p>\n<p>I make an effort for school events, concerts, recitals, and ball games.<\/p>\n<p><em>Now <\/em>that\u2019s<em> what I\u2019m talking about, Blythe. You clean up nice. Very, <\/em>very<em> nice.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And then the guy sees me the following Monday afternoon and he\u2019s reminded I\u2019m slumming because I don\u2019t feel a need to make an effort to pick up my kids at school. Getting those responses is a test.<\/p>\n<p>There is not one single dad at my kids\u2019 school who\u2019s going to look at me with anything but slight disgust, even though they know what I look like cleaned up, even though they know I\u2019m far from destitute, even though they know I\u2019m in social circles they want to be in.<\/p>\n<p>I have sympathy for the moms. Maybe they were bitches. Maybe they did drive their husbands to cheat or whatever. There are three sides to every story, but it\u2019s irrelevant to me. They accept me. They admire me, even. They know what I\u2019m doing even if they don\u2019t understand why I would want to. Their envy is the envy of exasperation, frustration, and maybe aspiration because not only am I a widow, I\u2019m self-sufficient. I don\u2019t have to depend on <em>anybody<\/em> to do <em>anything<\/em> for me.<\/p>\n<p>But the dads&nbsp;\u2026 When they don\u2019t even want to touch a pretty, educated, well-off widow because she\u2019s doing a blue-collar job <em>in spite<\/em> of the fact she can bump them up the career ladder and social scale, they don\u2019t deserve any sympathy. Every time they start in on why women don\u2019t like nice guys, that feminists ruined everything, I say, \u201cMaybe their idea of nice and yours aren\u2019t the same.\u201d They\u2019d be mad if they got it. They don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>If <em>one<\/em> single dad in the pickup lane talked to me as more than a sounding board, smiled genuinely, didn\u2019t look at me in disgust, and asked me out, I\u2019d go. He\u2019d already know I have four kids and an air compressor, so I would have to assume he might want a relationship. It wouldn\u2019t even have to be Winter\u2019s dad. None of them <em>sees<\/em> me any more than Finn does.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, I can\u2019t think of one guy at Home Depot\u2014and I know them all by sight and name (and department) (and work schedule)\u2014who\u2019d ask me out, either. I might go just to have a good time with somebody who won\u2019t look at me like I\u2019m a freak.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod, Blythe, do you have to be so fucking obvious?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turn to see Finn almost on top of me with a sledgehammer braced against his neck, his gloved hand around its handle. He\u2019s not amused now. In fact, he\u2019s downright pissed off.<\/p>\n<p>I scowl. \u201cWhat do you care who I look at and how? It\u2019s not like you haven\u2019t had your share of women since Miriam died. Don\u2019t look at me like that. Do you expect me to believe you\u2019ve been celibate for the last eight years? Do you expect me to believe you were <em>working<\/em> all those nights you missed dinner? Which you didn\u2019t even have to lie to me about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now he\u2019s <em>really<\/em> pissed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet me tell you something.\u201d I then proceed to dump on him all these things I hear my kids\u2019 friends\u2019 parents say about the opposite sex and their ex-husbands. I proceed to enlighten him about the way the single dads look at me and what they say to me.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s listening, a stony expression on his face. I can\u2019t tell what he\u2019s thinking and it makes me mad. I can <em>always<\/em> tell what he\u2019s thinking because he lets me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo screw you. You go banging the pretty young things who\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t do pretty young things,\u201d he grits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t care <em>who<\/em> you do!\u201d I hiss, even though I suddenly realize I\u2019m madder about his <em>working<\/em> than I thought. \u201cBut don\u2019t jump down my throat for taking in the scenery. I have a right to my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s <em>married<\/em>,\u201d he snarls back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a grown man. He can mind his own business. I don\u2019t know what bee got in your bonnet, because three weeks ago you said you wouldn\u2019t stand in my way. <em>Last<\/em> week you\u2019re practically pushing me out the door to go man hunting. <em>This<\/em> week you\u2019re on me because I\u2019m doing what any healthy woman with eyeballs in her head would do because the man\u2019s built like a Greek god.\u201d His jaw grinds. \u201cDo you think I\u2019m cheating on Darren, just like the kids would think? Just for <em>looking?<\/em> I\u2019m <em>not<\/em> interested. I\u2019m <em>looking<\/em> and being depressed about my chances and thinking how nice it would be to love a man again, to sleep with him, to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stop and look up and away because I\u2019m going to cry and I\u2019m <em>not<\/em> going to tell my father-in-law I need to get laid in the worst way, that I\u2019m growing to hate B.O.B. with a passion. The Dracula Incident showed me that clearly. I feel the moisture on my cheek and wipe it away with the back of my suede work glove.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this point,\u201d I grind out, \u201c<em>Sweeney Todd<\/em> is a romance, two men fighting over a woman, singing about how pretty they are. I\u2019d end up in a pie, yeah, but at least I\u2019d get <em>eaten!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I blush furiously. That didn\u2019t sound bad in my head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I ignore him. I stand there with my back to all the people who\u2019re working, talking, laughing. Hopefully the Black Sabbath is covering our heated argument.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat if I did bring someone home?\u201d I ask. \u201cAre you going to leave me? Are you going to chase him out? Are you going to stoke the kids\u2019 jealousy, subtly sic them on him? You\u2019re good at that. Are you going to find ways to keep me from having\u2014 Did you mean what you said about not standing in my way or were you trying to get out of an awkward conversation? But it doesn\u2019t matter, does it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you really think I\u2019d do that?\u201d he asks, quiet, tense. \u201cDrive off a boyfriend? Keep you from being happy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I <em>didn\u2019t<\/em> until right this very minute.\u201d He\u2019s still without expression. \u201cI wish <em>I<\/em> could be satisfied with porn,\u201d I mutter, my chest so tight I almost can\u2019t breathe. \u201cYou can get real live women.\u201d I take a step back and sweep my hand up and down, head to toe and back. \u201cYou\u2019re handsome\u2014 Look at you, James Bond! \u2014wealthy, intelligent, and you don\u2019t mind getting dirty. But <em>I<\/em>\u2014\u201d I gulp. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I could get even if I <em>did<\/em> meet someone who\u2019s not having an affair with his right hand or his assistant or his wife or his vanity or his money or his sense of entitlement and self-importance. I have four kids and a profession that disgusts or intimidates men and my father-in-law is my BFF. I\u2019m <em>such<\/em> a catch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want me gone?\u201d he asks tightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo!\u201d I screech, then lower my voice again. I\u2019m about to tear my hair out. \u201cI want you to <em>get off my back<\/em> for drooling all over your hot bestie. It is <em>none of your business!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With a glare, he steps around me and stalks off.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m so angry I can\u2019t see through my tears, and I need alone time.<\/p>\n<p>So I go the other way, up the driveway, ignoring the rickety staircase to my third-floor bedroom and head out for a walk around the block. I don\u2019t care that I\u2019m leaving my help to fend for themselves instead of working right alongside them. I don\u2019t care that I\u2019m leaving it to Finn because I don\u2019t want to look at him.<\/p>\n<p>Another argument.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s three\u2014four?\u2014in two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a record, even for us.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>this<\/em> is a brand-new issue, and I\u2019m angry that he can do what he wants because he has opportunities I don\u2019t. And I\u2019m angry and jealous that he takes those opportunities because I don\u2019t have any to take.<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">10: GROUND FAULT CIRCUIT INTERRUPTER<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Finn<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with me?<\/p>\n<p>I knew my reaction was over the top even before I opened my mouth. So <em>what<\/em> if she\u2019s drooling all over my \u201chot bestie\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>The minute I saw her staring at Bryce with <em>that look<\/em> on her face, my gut pretzeled. I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n<p>Built like a Greek god? Dafuq?<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n<p>Went to take a walk around the block. Or something. Maybe she went to her room, that shitty bedroom she hasn\u2019t so much as touched in the four years she\u2019s been here. Everything else is getting close to done, almost time for her to find DIY Shithole Two, but instead of rehabbing her room, she builds a fucking deck. With a pergola.<\/p>\n<p>She won\u2019t leave DIY Shit\u2014fuck me, <em>Bestie<\/em>. She won\u2019t rehab her room. She won\u2019t <em>try<\/em> to find somebody, but the bit about how the single dads treat her when they deign to talk to her shocks and distresses me. Her boyfriend shorts, work boots, and gloves are her uniform, her identity. She\u2019s proud of them, what they represent, what she built herself.<\/p>\n<p>Why <em>wouldn\u2019t<\/em> a man be attracted to her?<\/p>\n<p>I know for a fact two nice guys at Home Depot want to ask her out, but they\u2019re\u2014 Well, okay, yeah. They <em>are<\/em> intimidated by her. They read her blog, know what she does. When I go alone, they ask me how she\u2019s doing, what she\u2019s doing next, and&nbsp;\u2026 when she\u2019s going to be by again. And she\u2019s completely oblivious, waltzing in and out dressed like a beloved rag doll. A very happy one.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s not happy right now.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s restless.<\/p>\n<p>I want to fix that for her, but I can\u2019t and now that she\u2019s dropped these bombs on me\u2014 <em>When<\/em> did men start preferring porn over real-live women?<\/p>\n<p>More to the point, <em>why?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Who<\/em> are these pickup artists and how fucked-up and insecure does a man have to be to try out that bullshit?<\/p>\n<p>I head over to Bryce and relay this. He doesn\u2019t look surprised. \u201cPorn\u2019s a problem,\u201d he says low. \u201cGaming, too. Giselle\u2019s single friends are just as upset.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look at him skeptically. \u201cGiselle talks to people?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInternet.\u201d He shrugs. \u201cPorn\u2019s easy. Cheap. The men don\u2019t have any interest in real women. Too many flaws. Their faces, bodies. Husbands fall into it, too. Wife just had a kid, she\u2019s tired, he\u2019d be an ass for asking, he gets online to get off, and after a while, having sex becomes a chore. With gaming, they just want to stay in their vicarious adventures. Not only don\u2019t they want real women, they don\u2019t want real adventure, either. The way I see it, a large number of men, especially the young ones, have opted out of the evolutionary cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m utterly and completely shocked. \u201cTrophies for everybody?\u201d I ask, stunned. \u201cEverybody\u2019s a winner, nobody\u2019s a loser? No drive to compete, to win? Is that it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCouple of things. Rejection\u2019s not the only thing they risk now. Arrests for harassment. Lawsuits. Rape, because nobody\u2014not even the girls\u2014knows what that really is anymore, legally speaking. The slightest thing a woman they don\u2019t know can accuse them of. It\u2019s a valid fear. So the guys opt out because they see the field as white but they can\u2019t harvest. Honestly, I\u2019m not sure which one is the chicken and which one\u2019s the egg. But think about it, Finn. We\u2019re older. We didn\u2019t grow up in a climate where every woman could potentially get you arrested and slapped onto the sex offender registry. We also didn\u2019t grow up being able to sit on our asses and play video games all day. We had to work, had to play sports, go camping, fix stuff. Church. Scouts. And in my case, piano lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m still so stunned I can barely form a sentence. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine that. I don\u2019t have one male colleague who won\u2019t go after somebody he wants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe get off on the <em>process<\/em>. The hunt. Now, we work our asses off to go into court with a case that might bomb and we lose millions, and sometimes we spend <em>years<\/em> on one case. We\u2019re on the hunt for the payoff, and when we win, it\u2019s incredible. That rush, the high.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCatharsis, because at least it\u2019s over. Then we go hunting again. Think about getting the high of winning every single day, all day, in front of a computer monitor instead of once a year or five or ten. Not even the billion-dollar suits can top that. So, yeah, dating and sex is life-ruining hostile out there, I\u2019m not going to sugar-coat it, but these little shits won\u2019t even go to the trouble to jump out of a plane or rappel a skyscraper to get their testosterone on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFuck me. We\u2019re doing it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He barks a laugh. \u201cI chased Giselle for a year and a half before we got together, and I was pissed the whole time. But I look back and realize I was getting off on the chase itself. I woke up jacking off to her. I thought about her all day. I went to bed jacking off to her. And the payoff was\u2014 I can\u2019t describe it. And then real life set in and, yeah, I love her and the sex is always going to be good and I have nothing to complain about because this is what I want with her, but the hunt\u2019s over. There\u2019s no more \u2018falling in love\u2019 going on, no more mystery, and that\u2019s where the high is. These guys don\u2019t want the chase to get the sex, much less the reality of having a relationship. On the other hand, I don\u2019t want to put up with the drama, either.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I think about that for a moment. \u201cI\u2019ve never really been in love. I started off with the relationship straight out of the gate. I thought I was in love a couple of times after Miriam died, but my heart didn\u2019t break when whoever I was seeing walked away. And I never did do drama. Had enough of that with my old man. I don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe difference between being with a woman you aren\u2019t in love with and falling in love with a woman you want to be with is like&nbsp;\u2026 bleach and baklava.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Damn. Now I\u2019m feeling deprived. \u201cWell, what about the pickup artists?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDifferent kind of lazy. The hunt is there, but it\u2019s a quick one. I was hunting a wolf who let me catch her when she felt like it. These guys go for a rabbit in a snare. No relationship, or if one does develop, she\u2019s little more than a maid you can fuck. And somehow this makes you an alpha, however they define that. Giselle found one of those pickup artist sites by accident. She was horrified. \u2018Pull up your skirt and bend over. Now get in the kitchen and make me a sammich.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I snarl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then there are the ones who think they\u2019re entitled to any pussy that catches their fancy. They\u2019re animals. If Giselle ever got her hands on those guys&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ah, yes. <em>I<\/em> wouldn\u2019t even want to be on the wrong side of Giselle because her justice comes with cold steel and hot lead, and she never misses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat said, I\u2019m not sure how much of that is internet posturing and fantasy. Giselle\u2019s not squeamish\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s an understatement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2014but that turned her stomach. She was upset for days. She had to trawl radical feminist sites to wash off the filth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I raise an eyebrow.<\/p>\n<p>Bryce nods sagely.<\/p>\n<p>I see Gwen out of the corner of my eye, peeking around the corner of the house. I raise my eyebrow at her. She flushes and ducks back out of sight. I turn back to Bryce. \u201cGo get some goddamned clothes on. Half naked in front of my granddaughter. Really? You think that\u2019s okay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He slides me an irritated glance, but jogs off toward the street.<\/p>\n<p>The posts are set and bolted. It\u2019s time to put up the ledger boards. Blythe still isn\u2019t back, and it\u2019s not like her to abandon a job in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>We have enough people to put up the skeleton. We have enough daylight to put up joist hangers and possibly all the joists. We snap the chalk lines. We drill, screw, ratchet, hammer.<\/p>\n<p>At Winnie\u2019s direction, Gwen comes down the drive and around the corner of the house pulling a rolling cooler behind her. Then Calvin, Kaia, and Duncan follow with more. Everybody\u2019s provided for: water, lemonade, sweet tea, Gatorade, and Shasta.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry\u2019s car rolls down into the drive next and he emerges with enough Gates barbecue to feed all of Hyde Park.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKnock off,\u201d Winnie calls out the back window.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re only too glad to do so. It\u2019s noon. We\u2019re hungry, hot, tired. There\u2019s shade, food, and drinks. I instruct one of the kids to set up the sprinkler over in the corner of the back yard.<\/p>\n<p>Blythe is nowhere to be seen. She\u2019s been gone for hours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019s Mom?\u201d Calvin asks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWent for a walk,\u201d I say casually as I wipe my arm across my forehead. \u201cI\u2019ll go get her. She\u2019s probably hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea where she might have gone. I just start walking. It takes me about a half an hour to find her in Kemper Place, an old, posh, semi-gated neighborhood of about a dozen mansions, the whole of which is on the National Register of Historic Places.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s sitting on top of a stone wall across from an acre lot on which is a ramshackle Greek revival mansion about half the size of mine that\u2019s been under renovation for the last twenty years but never changes. It needs to be razed, but nobody\u2019s ever wanted to because of the neighborhood\u2019s historic status. The house itself has a plaque. There\u2019s one man dragging a tarp full of bricks from a pickup truck around to the crumbling chimney opposite the driveway. No one else is around. He looks tired. Hopeless.<\/p>\n<p>The wall Blythe is sitting on is low, with flat stones standing on end, perpendicular to the flat top, spaced about eighteen inches apart. She\u2019s sitting there between two of them, her feet dangling, watching the solo construction worker. Not the way she was watching Bryce, but absently, as if she\u2019s interested in his progress.<\/p>\n<p>She looks as weary and alone as he does.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh and sit down beside her.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n<p>Until I can\u2019t stand the silence anymore. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I say low. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to act like your dad or something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re not acting like a dad,\u201d she returns immediately, also low, her voice crackling with anger. \u201cYou\u2019re acting like a jealous lover.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe\u2014\u201d I stop. Jealous lover? Is she <em>serious?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d she asks sharply when I don\u2019t continue with the thought, whatever it was because I don\u2019t remember I\u2019m so shocked. \u201cBlythe what? Blythe blundered?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now I\u2019m annoyed. \u201cNo, and don\u2019t use that shit on me. It doesn\u2019t work.\u201d So she gives me the silent treatment. \u201cAre you hungry? Thirsty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She growls, but in capitulation. She has to be ravenous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour mom made sweet tea and scratch lemonade. Your dad got Gates. Lots of it. I was shocked he\u2019d shell out for that much food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re slipping,\u201d she mumbles. \u201cHe asked me if I wanted him to go get it. I said yes, then he waited for me to go get my credit card. He couldn\u2019t even be bothered to front it or even go get my damned purse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I roll my eyes. Of course. Yes, I\u2019m slipping. I was more concerned about Blythe than thinking about the fact that Jerry wouldn\u2019t shell out for anything for anyone else, including dinner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe takes advantage of you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou want to kick him out too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to kick anybody out!\u201d I almost roar. \u201cAnd I told you to cut that out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr what?\u201d she snaps.<\/p>\n<p>I have no <em>or what<\/em>. She gives as good as she gets and I like that about her, but she hears things that I didn\u2019t mean and don\u2019t feel. If, I concede to myself reluctantly, I knew what I meant and felt. Which&nbsp;\u2026 I\u2019m turned upside down right now.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jealous lover.<\/em> \u201cSo Dad and potential boyfriends are off the table as topics of conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re gonna make it about you, they are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grind my teeth. \u201cIt\u2019s not about me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinn\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hold up a finger. \u201cShut it. I said I was sorry. You started out at breakfast looking for a fight. I gave you one. You\u2019re welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She looks away. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I didn\u2019t get much sleep last night,\u201d she admits reluctantly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeither did I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She doesn\u2019t move, so I don\u2019t. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening to us, Finn?\u201d she asks weakly, as if lost. \u201cI\u2019m building a deck to\u2014um, because I want to. You\u2019re losing your cool with my dad. You and I are arguing more and more&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I know what she means. Something\u2019s come between us and I don\u2019t like it. It can\u2019t be DIY Shi\u2014<em>BESTIE!<\/em>\u2014suddenly tying my knickers in a knot. She\u2019s lived there four years and it\u2019s almost done. It\u2019s not even the deck that, I will admit, is going to be a thing of beauty, especially once the pergola\u2019s blooming with purple wisteria up against the red siding.<\/p>\n<p>I close my eyes. I get it now. Red and purple.<\/p>\n<p>The tension between us is getting thicker and I don\u2019t know when or why it started.<\/p>\n<p>But she is right about one thing. I open my eyes. \u201cYour dad\u2019s pissing me off because he\u2019s trying to edge me out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To my surprise, she doesn\u2019t immediately protest. To my shock, she says, \u201cI know. I don\u2019t know what to do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I shrug. \u201cHe <em>is<\/em> your dad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA dad I don\u2019t&nbsp;\u2026 know very well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That surprises me a little. \u201cWhat do you mean, you don\u2019t know him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She shrugs. \u201cHe never really made an impression on me in any way. I mean, I did what he told me to. There\u2019s nothing to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ah, I see. She was a cipher for so long it surprised both of us when she finally popped up with a brain and a personality to go with it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe sat in your chair Thursday night and I made him move. He was pissed all through dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I had witnessed that, but said nothing, encouraged she\u2019s not blind to it and she\u2019s not going to ignore the issue. The tension between those two was as thick last night as the growing tension between her and me. I suspect that was why she didn\u2019t sleep well. It\u2019s not the first time he\u2019s tried to take my place at the foot of the table, but he\u2019s frightened of me because he thinks he knows what I\u2019m capable of. All it takes to move him out of my chair is a side-eye.<\/p>\n<p>Someday he\u2019s not going to move and then he\u2019ll regret it.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t know half what I\u2019m capable of.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d she says, hurt in her voice. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to keep hold of my mom if I shake my dad, even a little bit. I don\u2019t want to get rid of him. I just want some distance. The closer he gets, the more time he spends with us, me, the more he takes. He takes and takes and takes whatever he can\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou let him,\u201d I point out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I don\u2019t <em>let<\/em> him!\u201d she barks. \u201cThey\u2019re little things. He takes them before I notice. My time. My dignity. My airspace. My food. My money. I wanted to feed everybody today, so I let him go get it because that\u2019s his only real contribution to this project. But he\u2019ll eat more than anyone else. It\u2019s the extra I resent, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I do know, but one thing catches my attention. \u201cWhat about your dignity?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s looking down, looking around, finding a few weeds to pull and mangle. \u201cLittle things,\u201d she says again, muttering. \u201cI\u2019m not even sure if I can explain it. Tone of voice maybe. He\u2019s doing it to the kids, too, if they catch his attention enough. He doesn\u2019t say the s-word or the d-word, but it\u2019s sort of, I don\u2019t know, in his voice. It\u2019s really slight. You have to be paying attention, though, and sometimes I think I\u2019m imagining it. I don\u2019t know if the kids notice and I haven\u2019t asked because I don\u2019t want to point it out if they haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My jaw grinds.<\/p>\n<p>The s-word. The d-word.<\/p>\n<p>Stupid.<\/p>\n<p>Dumb.<\/p>\n<p>Any variation, including tone of voice, sarcasm directed at any individual and most of all oneself\u2014 I don\u2019t allow it. Not from Blythe, not from the kids.<\/p>\n<p>There are few things that will make my blood pressure rise faster than hearing my loved ones being belittled and <em>especially<\/em> belittling themselves.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve kept his mouth under control for the last few months, ever since Jerry and Winnie began showing up for dinner every night. Before that, they weren\u2019t around much. Too busy cruising, and they cruise so he can eat as much as he wants and Winnie can travel the world without having to take care of his appetite. It was Winnie the Skinflint\u2019s idea after a cost-benefit analysis. I thought it was a brilliant plan, but they haven\u2019t done much of that since she started gaining traction as a frugality maven.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want me to have a go at him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d she says wearily. \u201cI need to do&nbsp;\u2026 whatever&nbsp;\u2026 myself,\u201d she says wearily. \u201cBut my mom&nbsp;\u2026&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jerry and Winnie are attached at the hip. I like Winnie. I always have. She\u2019s smart and resourceful, and she knows how to carry a conversation. I have other reasons to be very grateful to her. Jerry\u2019s always annoyed me, but now that all this has been spoken, it\u2019s going to be harder for me to be civil. I must, though, for Winnie\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s where we leave it. Blythe loves her mother dearly and needs her. I owe Blythe\u2019s mother a debt of gratitude.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry is the thorn to Winnie\u2019s rose.<\/p>\n<p>I gesture across the street. \u201cWhat\u2019s with the haunted house?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She chucks her chin at the would-be mason. \u201cSpent all his money on infrastructure. Foundation\u2019s sound and square now but he can\u2019t afford to do the rest and his wife\u2019s on his case to get it done because she has delusions of grandeur. He works on it around his day job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s he do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She puffs a sad laugh. \u201cHe\u2019s an actuary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>God, what irony. \u201cHe\u2019s not going to be able to do that chimney himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that. So does he.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou talk to him a lot?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYup. This is on my morning walking route. On weekdays, he\u2019s here until nine, rain or shine.\u201d She pauses. \u201cHe\u2019s about to give up, but if he does, he\u2019s looking at a divorce and bankruptcy. That\u2019s the only reason he\u2019s still trying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s told you this or you\u2019re extrapolating?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExtrapolating. I give him&nbsp;\u2026 three more months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I look at the house again. She has a soft spot for crumbling things. Houses. People. I can\u2019t tell by looking at it that it\u2019s sound, but I\u2019ll take her word for it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes he know what you do? You haven\u2019t offered to help him, have you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo and no.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That surprises me and I look at her. \u201cWhy not? That house is your wet dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She looks away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would\u2019ve razed it,\u201d I grumble.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know,\u201d she whispers.<\/p>\n<p>Fuck. That sounds like an indictment.<\/p>\n<p>I slide off the wall and wait for a few seconds until she does too. We walk back to Bestie together in silence. Her head\u2019s bowed. She\u2019s dragging her feet. I don\u2019t know whether she\u2019s more upset with me or her dad. I ask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just upset. I don\u2019t know why. Things are&nbsp;\u2026 I don\u2019t know. Changing. Somehow. I feel it but I can\u2019t\u2014 I don\u2019t know how to deal with it. Maybe if I knew what it was, I could, but I don\u2019t even know that much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMe neither,\u201d I say wearily because I feel it too. \u201cMe neither.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerptchapterhead\">11: ROUGH-IN<\/p>\n<p class=\"lionpov\">Blythe<\/p>\n<p class=\"sectiontop\">\u201cHOW MANY BLOG posts are you going to get out of today?\u201d Finn mumbles wearily late that night as we sit on my couch next to each other. We\u2019ve both had hot showers and downed half a bottle of muscle relaxants each, but neither one of us can move.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d known this day was going to be massively long and difficult, and it had been, especially with our argument in the middle of it. But my mood improved with food and water and Gatorade, and the tone of the afternoon changed as we chugged right along.<\/p>\n<p>We still had loud, driving music, as both Finn and Bryce are metal heads with a sprinkling of old rap. Me, not so much. The kids protested, but God forbid I should be forced to listen to the latest auto-tuned pop starlet or whiny emo indies on <em>my<\/em> job site. The kids fetched, carried, cleaned up. My mom told them what to do. My dad sat and gabbed with the neighbors. He drank Pepsi, lots of it, and ate ribs, lots of them. He went back to Gates for more. On my card. Neighbors came by again, some with their kids, who were playing in a sprinkler. This was far more interesting than what we\u2019d gotten done thus far, and a couple of guys even pitched in to help when we started hanging the joists. Again, some other neighbors decided they needed to supervise, beer in hand, and offer advice.<\/p>\n<p>Finn got pissed off again. \u201c<em>READ THE GODDAMNED SIGN! NO ALCOHOL ON THE JOB SITE!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before the day was over, there was a block party in my back yard, with too many neighbors and too few jobs, and Posey was feeling abused. When her requests for people to move out of her lens were ignored and I pointed out to Finn that the men were brushing her off because she\u2019s a tiny nineteen-year-old, he had to break out the bellow again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>SHE\u2019S A FUCKING PROFESSIONAL! TREAT HER LIKE ONE!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the time we called it quits just after dusk and everyone went home, I was too tired to nurse the last of my anger with Finn and I supposed he felt the same way. But I haven\u2019t forgotten. Neither has he. It hangs between us, begging us to continue with it until it gets resolved.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow.<\/p>\n<p>Probably not pleasantly, which is why we\u2019re avoiding it.<\/p>\n<p>How many articles am I going to get out of just today? I can\u2019t think hard enough to answer his question. I shrug. \u201cFive? Ten. Something between. Add in the tutorials, probably fifteen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He grunts.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n<p>Neither do I.<\/p>\n<p>We sit there staring at the fake Picasso illuminated by the dim warm light coming from the lamps on the end tables. We aren\u2019t even awake enough to watch a movie.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dracula<\/em>, whispers the argument.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI need to get home,\u201d he mutters.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, he isn\u2019t moving.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re going to end up falling asleep right here on the couch, sitting up, if we don\u2019t move soon. My eyelids are drooping. Finn\u2019s almost doing the church nod.<\/p>\n<p>I look at him and try to smile. It\u2019s too much work. \u201cWant to put up on the Futon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He takes a deep breath, his head dropping back and his eyes still closed. \u201cHell. No.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t either. It\u2019s there for emergencies, but sleeping on it is not pleasant. He opens his eyes and laboriously turns his head to look at me, a half-smile on his face. \u201cWe did good today, Blythe,\u201d he murmurs, his warm baritone kindling my sense of accomplishment in spite of my exhaustion.<\/p>\n<p>I smile slowly, letting the feeling grow, my chest filling with pride. \u201cWe sure did, Finn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We share this moment of victory over the clay soil, concrete, unwieldy beams, angry blog denizens, and one huge section of this house I hadn\u2019t known what to do with.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s not moving or talking. I\u2019m not moving or talking. The argument\u2019s going to come back if neither of us moves or talks. Since I can\u2019t move, I start talking.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, we\u2019re right on schedule. Nothing ever goes this right, so I didn\u2019t expect we\u2019d get the joists put up, much less the stair stringers, and had planned accordingly. Either I\u2019ve made a colossal mistake or trouble\u2019s waiting for us next week. Even if we don\u2019t have to backtrack, it\u2019s costing me an arm and a leg in materials. Professional labor would have cost me my other limbs and possibly my firstborn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe,\u201d he says huskily when I\u2019ve paused to take a breath, \u201cyou <em>are<\/em> a professional now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I blink.<\/p>\n<p>Oh.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I am. I\u2019ve never thought of it that way.<\/p>\n<p>I watch his clear blue eyes, study the crow\u2019s feet and the grooves around his mouth, let my eyes roam over his blond hair. \u201cI need the name of your hairdresser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He laughs, so familiar, so comforting. \u201cYou don\u2019t need her yet,\u201d he mutters, now looking at my hair, which is still damp from the shower. His smile is wry when he looks me in the eyes again. \u201cEvery day\u2019s an adventure in this house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my fucking pigsty, you mean?\u201d I ask sweetly. Viciously.<\/p>\n<p>His smile begins to fade, so mine does too because I\u2019ve never seen that look on his face before. I don\u2019t know what it means.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d I whisper, ashamed of myself. \u201cThat was mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t respond to that. In fact, I don\u2019t think he heard me because now he\u2019s looking at my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Lust charges through me so fast and hot, I gasp and lick my bottom lip.<\/p>\n<p>The hell?!<\/p>\n<p>He twists toward me.<\/p>\n<p>Kisses me.<\/p>\n<p>Not the way a father-in-law would or should kiss a daughter-in-law.<\/p>\n<p>The way a man kisses a woman he wants.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s watching me as he kisses me, daring me to rear back in disgust, to make him stop, to tell him to go home, to tell him never to come back again.<\/p>\n<p>I open my mouth and swipe his tongue with mine.<\/p>\n<p>He groans and tilts his head to get deeper into my mouth, then raises a hand, shoving his fingers through my hair and clasping my head to keep me where he wants me.<\/p>\n<p>He presses me back into the couch and I let him, throwing a leg over one of his.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlythe,\u201d he whispers as he kisses me, harder, more urgently, as if he\u2019s a starving man, wrapping his big hand around my bare thigh and pulling it higher until it\u2019s wrapped around his hips and I can feel his denim-covered erection <em>right there<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a starving woman, but this isn\u2019t <em>any<\/em> man.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s the man who\u2019s been with me every single step of the way since my husband died. He\u2019s the man who gave me wings so I could fly. He\u2019s the man who\u2019s helped me build my blog and my business. He\u2019s the man who\u2019s spent the day setting six-by-six posts with me and is totally exhausted. He\u2019s the man I accused of acting like a jealous lover.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s my father-in-law.<\/p>\n<p>What am I <em>doing<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinn,\u201d I groan when I feel his hand on the skin of my belly, under my tank top.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTell me to stop,\u201d he croaks while nuzzling my throat, his hand cupping my breast and thumbing my nipple. \u201cTell me to stop, Blythe. Tell me to go home. Tell me to get out and never come back. Tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s fanning the sparks that have been teasing me the last few months. It\u2019s turning into a raging bonfire, and I want it to consume me.<\/p>\n<p>Not with just anybody.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTell me to stop,\u201d he begs again as he now slips his hand between my legs, works his fingers up the inside of my boxers, and touches me where no one\u2019s touched me in six years. \u201c<em>Please<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>If someone holds a gun to my head, I might be able to.<\/p>\n<p><em>I come over because I love you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>No, I won\u2019t be able to.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wingding\">\u203b<\/p>\n<div class=\"navblock\">\n<p class=\"leftnavblock\"><a class=\"arrowsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/thebooks\/blackjack\/\">\u2190 Book 7<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"rightnavblock\"><a class=\"arrowbig\" href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/thebooks\/1520main\/\">Book 9  \u2192<\/a><br \/>Prohibition, Kansas City, Missouri<br \/>The Machine, the Mafia, the Mormons.<br \/>A gangster and a preacher\u2019s daughter.<br \/>A speakeasy, a bet, and a baby.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"date\">20260331<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tales of Dunham #8\u00a92017 Moriah Jovan177,000 words (484 pages) Book 8 in the Dunham universe Buy direct: &nbsp; Amazon Kindle \u2022 paperback Barnes &#038; Noble Nook \u2022 paperback Apple iBooks Google Play Books Kobo eBooks Blythe Marston was widowed at 28, nine years and four children after she and her high school sweetheart had married. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":18726,"menu_order":28,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4330","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4330"}],"version-history":[{"count":129,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25692,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4330\/revisions\/25692"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}