“One of the legs was missing!” Ben exclaims.
“It was a small fix! I could’ve fixed that myself, you know. If you had any sense, you could’ve fixed it.” He grumbles this last part, and Ben rolls his eyes.
I am enjoying myselfimmensely.
But then Ben turns his attention on me, and I drop the smile I now realize I’d had plastered to my face as I watched their exchange.“Sorry about this. We’re—you know. Adjusting to all this time we spend together.”
“That’s all right,” I say.“I get it.” But I don’t get it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spent any extended length of time with my own father. Mostly it was only me and Alex, and I never got sick of him. Now I feel uncomfortable—I’m the awkward plus-one in this comfortable family moment.
“Dad, how about you go back to the office and keep working through those receipts?”
“Oh, I see. You’re giving metasksto placate me. Or else you’re trying to be alone here with this lovely lady. This reminds me of the time you were in ninth grade and had that redhead come here after school.”
“Jesus, Dad. You are theworst.”
I laugh, in spite of myself, and then put a hand over my mouth. Ben getting knocked down a peg—by someone who so clearly loves him, where the feeling is still light and jovial—makes me feel a little less nervous here in this big space, in his space. Henry winks at me and rolls away, the mechanized sound of the chair fading as he maneuvers himself around the glass cases toward a back room.
Then it’s just me and Ben, and he looks down at the floor and runs a big hand through his hair, shaking his head.“You’re early,” he says.
“Um, sorry?” I say, but I don’t really mean it.
“I wanted—I was going to be down here to greet you. My dad, he’s—he can be a lot.”
“He’s great.He makes a good first impression.”
Ben’s answering smile is crooked, sheepish. I like it so much that I can’t help but smile back.
“So,” he says, taking a cautious step toward me.“Hardware.”
He leads me back toward the wall of bins, steps away to pull over a ladder on wheels, the kind you see in one of those big-box hardware stores.“Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re looking for?”
“Well,” I say, twirling the crystal doorknob in my hand,“Now that I see how big this place is, I guess I’m looking for a lot. Doorknobs, cabinet handles, switch plates, that kind of thing…to start.”
“To start?”
“I’m hoping to find things that are, well, if not completely consistent with, then at least adjacent to the time when the house was built.” I twirl the doorknob in my hand again, welcoming its weight, and clear my throat.“I bought a house. Very recently.”
He gives me a long look, and I imagine this is not welcome news for him, given his recruiting goals. It’s probably much easier to recruit someone who hasn’t just purchased a home in an area you’re trying to get them to move away from. I expect, maybe, that he’ll be less helpful now, because let’s face it, I’m sure part of the reason he’s had me come out here, despite his promise not to talk about Beaumont, is to show me that he’s worth listening to.
“Congratulations.” He extends a hand toward me, palm up, and I have this odd moment of confusion, wondering if I’m supposed to shake it, and then he says,“Maybe you could let me have a look at that.”
Right. I hand him the doorknob, watch him as he turns it over in his hands, furrowing his brow in concentration.“This is Russell and Erwin,” he says, as though I’m supposed to know what that is.“Do you have other pieces like this in the house?”
“Some.It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, honestly—there’s things like this, and then some, you know, really cheap replacements here and there.”
“When was the house built?” He’s pushing the ladder down the wall a bit, climbing on the first step to look down at me before going any farther.
“1870. It’s a row house, Queen Anne style.”
He nods, and I can see his mind working.“This is probably original,” he says, climbing up the ladder and reaching toward one of the uppermost bins. I see a flash of his taut stomach and avert my eyes. Reluctantly.
When he comes down, he’s holding a bubble-wrapped package, and he sits on one of the lower steps of the ladder so that now I’m looking down at him as he unwraps it. He holds it out to me, an exact match for the doorknob I brought in. Those eyes.“Wow,” I say, and am mostly referring to the doorknob.
“I’ve got a lot more up there. These show up a lot, probably from houses in the area built around the same time as yours.”
“That’s—that’s great. I didn’t really count, though, before I came in. And there’s all the other stuff I should look for too. I should’ve made a list, I guess.”But I thought I was coming here as a formality,I don’t add.
“Well, we could start by checking out some of the things that match the style of the house. My dad organizes things mostly by period, so that shouldn’t be too hard. And Russell and Erwin did all kinds of hardware, so we could start by looking there…”
