Page 219 of The Sweetest Return

But I was standing in his house with the code to his door, his arms around me, and the truth between us instead of another silence neither one of us could survive.

That had to count for something.

Maybe more than something.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ifound Pops in the equipment yard at Jones Outdoor with one boot on the running board of a flatbed truck and a clipboard in his hand like retirement was an ugly rumor people kept trying to start about him.

“You know we got people for that.”

He didn't look up. “And yet the people ordered the wrong edging for the Hill District job.”

“Yvette corrected it yesterday.”

“Because I saw it.”

“Because Yvette saw it and corrected it.”

Pops finally turned his head. “That what she told you?”

“That’s what the report said.”

He grunted. “Reports got a way of making things sound settled.”

I smiled because arguing with my father before noon was one of the ways he preferred to receive affection.

The yard smelled like damp soil, diesel, cut grass, and work. Trucks moved through the gate while a crew loaded pavers near one of the garages. Old soul played somewhere in a bay beneath equipment, engines, and men calling instructions across the property.

This place had raised me too.

Pops signed the clipboard and handed it off before heading toward the original brick office. I followed him inside past the framed picture of his first truck and the hand-painted Jones Landscaping sign he refused to throw away.

The company had grown around that little building. Glass conference rooms, design studio, dispatch, computers that made Pops accuse me of turning dirt into corporate foolishness.

The old break room had survived everything.

Scarred table.

Same vending machine.

Same coffee pot that had apparently been threatening employees since the Clinton administration.

Pops poured himself a cup.

I declined because I respected my stomach.

He noticed.

“You got something on your mind.”

“That on the clipboard?”

“No. On your face.”

“What face?”

“The one you had at thirteen when you broke my hedge trimmer and tried to confess without confessing.”