“Good,” he says. “My wife’s already pissed I keep bringing home gloves that look like they lost a bar fight.”
I snort. “Tell her I said sorry.”
“She already hates you for cheating me at the poker game last month.”
“You lost fair and square,” I remind him.
We have a standing poker game once every month. Typically, we play for beer, but old Tim’s wife is one helluva baker, so I traded beer for three of her homemade apple crumb pies.
I sigh and shake the pen. Fucking ink is frozen on me.
“That about does it,” I grunt.
Kelly would have my ass for using pen and paper instead of the tablet she bought me, but she’s not the one slogging through mud in insulated gloves with frozen fingers.
Tech is great until it stops working—or you drop it in a thick puddle of sludge.
I glance around the yard.
Logs are stacked, and tarped.
The mill humming steady. Steam rises where warm wood meets cold air.
We’re tucked high on Bearpaw Ridge—mountains, not postcard Maine.
Temperatures hit mid-thirties at noon if we’re lucky.
We’re usually not.
Don’t matter anyway, because with every nightfall, the temps drop in half.
And the windchill? That sonovabitch cuts like a blade.
“This ain’t spring,” I mutter.
Nathan jogs up, barely old enough to shave but already built like a workhorse.
“You guys heading to lunch?”
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Boss says we’re allowed.”
I roll my eyes.
“Go eat before you pass out. I gotta check the office.”
They head off, boots squelching, voices fading as they argue about who owes who five bucks from last night’s basketball game bet.
I turn back toward the office, notebook tucked under my arm.
Inside the back door, I stomp mud from my boots, hang my coat, peel off my gloves—and then I stop.
Because even with the mill roaring, forklifts beeping, first shift filing past toward the lunchroom and second shift still feeding lumber through the saws—I hear it.
Voices.
Kelly’s is unmistakable.
Bright. Annoyingly efficient. Talking too fast.
