I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
What I wanted to type:Margaret just offered me Gram's inheritance, and I'm terrified I'm not worthy of it. What if I take the shop and fail? What if I prove her wrong about what she saw in that loud eight-year-old kid?
What I almost typed:She wants me to take over the shop. The one Gram loved. I don't know if I deserve it.
What I actually typed:
Hog:Can I come over?
The response was immediate.
Rhett:Yeah. Door's open.
I grabbed my coat and shoved my unfinished project into Gram's old bag. The worn canvas had darkened where her fingers had held it, thousands of hours of carrying yarn and needles.
Margaret was already gone—she'd locked the front door, and the CLOSED sign faced the street.
My Prius started on the second try. The heater blew cold for three blocks before warm air kicked in. Thunder Bay at nightwas quiet, streets empty except for the occasional truck spraying salt and the glow of the casino across the harbor.
Rhett's place was twelve minutes away. Twelve minutes to let the words spin in my mind. What Margaret had offered. What it would mean if I said yes.
Someone your grandmother trusted with her gift.
Rhett had stood in his father's workshop talking about making what his dad had left him into something more. Building something that mattered. He took what his dad had taught him and made it his own—maintaining and expanding it.
And here was what Gram had left me, offered to me with both hands. The shop she'd loved. The community she'd helped build. The gift she'd fought to keep alive in me, even when I was convinced hockey was the only thing that mattered.
Why was I terrified to take it?
Because it wasn't hockey? Because it was small and quiet, and the parts of me that most people couldn't see or value? What if Margaret was wrong? What if I wasn't ready? What if I never would be?
Gram had seen something in me—the parts she fought to keep alive.
The parts Rhett kept seeing and kept showing up for. Kept choosing.
I parked outside his building and killed the engine. Sat there with my hands on the steering wheel, knuckles white from gripping too hard, watching my breath fog the windshield.
The wheel was cold plastic under my palms, ridged where it had worn smooth from thousands of drives I'd taken. My right hand throbbed against it—the wrapped knuckles pressing into the hard curve.
My phone buzzed.
Rhett:You coming up or going to sit there in your car having an existential crisis?
I looked up. He was standing at his window, coffee mug in hand, lit from behind by his living room lamp.
Hog:The second one
Rhett:Come have your crisis on my couch. More comfortable
I exhaled. Just a little. Just enough.
I grabbed my bag—Gram's bag—and headed inside.
Chapter ten
Rhett
I'd lit candles like a romantic cliché and immediately regretted it. I blew half of them out. Then relit two. My Bluetooth speaker hummed quietly in the corner—Clapton'sSlowhand. Dire Straits had felt too slick, and Massive Attack was too heavy. This one had room to breathe between the notes, like us.
