Chapter 37

Oh, shit.

It’s Thursday morning. I’ve just arrived at my work site, and there’s a scrum of people outside the project super’s trailer. That huddle has trouble written all over it. The super, Kevin, is there, and the clients, and—this is the part that raises my blood pressure—Mad Max, the project developer. Max is a college-educated prick who got greedy and tried to cash in on the building boom in Revere Lake even though he doesn’t know shit about construction. Part of Max’s sucktastic management style is to be hands off even when a royal edict would prevent bloodshed, so the fact that he’s here can’t be good.

“Jack,” Max calls out. “Over here.”

They’re all standing there with arms crossed. It’s the work-site equivalent of facing a firing squad, but there’s nothing I can do besides walk over and join them.

Max looks ostentatiously at his watch and then raises his eyebrows at me. Asswipe. I’m, like, maybe three minutes late.

“We’ve got a problem.”

Max means, You’ve got a problem.

My eyes flick to the clients. She’s a rich California transplant with a huge entitlement thing going on, and he’s—well, let’s just say I’ve barely heard him utter a word in his wife’s presence. Which is fine, except if—when—his wife is being a total and complete asshole and he’s just standing by quietly, which keeps happening.

The wife meets my eyes with a glare. The husband won’t look at me. Typical. “You installed the wrong molding for the main floor ceilings,” she says.

My blood is already starting to boil. In the past, I’ve hesitated to go toe-to-toe with her, but all that’s gotten me is my pay docked to pay for mistakes that weren’t mine.

“No. I installed the right molding.”

She draws a hiss of breath. Not sure anyone’s said no to her in her entire life. But I’m not going to back down this time. You know why? Because I know I’m right. I know I’m right and I have paper to back it up—notes from my conversation with Kevin and receipts from the order that I ran by Kevin right after I placed it, to double-check.

What I don’t have is the original spec, signed off on by the client, because this whole project is a management clusterfuck.

Still, I’ve got enough to know that whatever went wrong, it wasn’t my fault.

And the reason I have that backup? Because of Maddie. Because of what she said to me:

This is about you thinking you’re not smart enough to do it. But that’s bullshit. The only reason you think you aren’t is because you grew up being told over and over you weren’t. But it’s not true.

I didn’t want to hear her when she first said it, but the words stayed in my head. They echoed around every time I was at work, and they made me feel surer about certain things. They made me feel certain I was right about Max’s incompetence and that Kevin’s way of doing things sucked. That we needed to do things more carefully, more officially, more efficiently. Altogether fucking differently, actually.

Most of all, Maddie’s words convinced me that I didn’t have to take Kevin’s bullshit just because I’ve always felt like I basically deserved whatever crap people threw in my direction.

“The only words I need to be hearing out of your mouth right now are an apology for fucking this up,” Kevin growls in my direction.

Excellent. My supervisor has sold me out again.

“Seems like we all agree about that,” Max says, smiling at California Girl with a submissive tilt to his head, like a whipped dog.

Any faint hope I had that Max was planning to stand up for me vanishes. So it’s going to come down to my word against the clients’ and Kevin’s.

For a long moment, I weigh my options. I can see the writing on the wall and cave. Or I can keep going down this path that Maddie has sent me down, and see where it leads.

“Can you hang on a minute?”

The paper trail to sort this out is in my truck. I dash over to the truck, dig out the folder I’ve been keeping, and bring it back. I pull out the notes and the receipts. I unfold them and hand them to Max.

He looks them over, and then he looks up at me.

Then he crumples the sheets tight in his fist and says, “Look. Jack. Leave the administrative stuff to me, hey? Your job is to hold a hammer. This is way above your pay grade.”

Sometimes you just have these moments where everything aligns. Like, all of a sudden, I get this sharp visual flash of that day when we were playing Wiffle ball in the streets and my dad chewed me out about the wreaths. About the order form I’d fucked up. Another asshole, another piece of paper, another ball-busting.

But that crumpled paper in Max’s hand, those pieces of paper, say I did right. I did okay.

I stand there, my arms dangling by my sides even though they all still have their body language tight and accusatory. I think about going home and telling Maddie this story, telling her what happened and what I did next.

Two things happen. My chest gets tight with grief. Because I’m not going home and telling Maddie this story. She’s not at home, and she won’t be, not ever again. Every day this week, I’ve been reminded of that fact when I walk in the door and am greeted by my silent, empty house. And no matter how much whiskey I consume at O’Hannihans, no matter how late I stay out, it’s just as silent later, too.

The second thing that happens is that I realize how I want this episode with Kevin and Max and the clients to end. I understand exactly what story I would want to tell Maddie, if I could.

Calmly, I open my palm, and after a moment of hesitation, Max restores the crumpled paper to me.

“My job was to hold a hammer.”

I say it quietly.

I say it to California Girl and Asshole Kevin and Mad Max.

I say it to my dad.

And most of all, I say it to Maddie and Gabe, who make me want to be a better person.

“I quit.”