Josh climbed back into his truck and stifled a yawn. The house he’d bought after he moved out was too close to the school to qualify for bus service, but he didn’t mind. One of the reasons he enjoyed self-employment so much was that it gave him the flexibility to take his daughter to school and pick her up at the end of the day. He was already used to filling in the gaps when it came to Sasha’s care, and he was happy to do it.
Sasha had awakened at 5:00 A.M., too excited for the first day of school to stay in bed a minute longer. He’d tried to gain another hour of sleep by coaxing her back into her room, but Sasha wanted nothing to do with that plan.
Wide awake with no hope of falling back to sleep, he’d admitted defeat and rolled out of bed. Sasha bounded into the kitchen alongside him as he started the coffee. He poured her a bowl of cereal and sat with her while she ate. When she was done eating and the caffeine had started to clear out the cobwebs, he told Sasha to get dressed while he grabbed a quick shower.
He and Kimmy had a fifty-fifty physical-custody split. It wasn’t ideal and neither of them liked the thought of Sasha having to go back and forth between two homes, but neither of them wanted less time with her, so that’s what they decided on. A few years ago, Kimmy landed her dream job as a legislative policy analyst for the City of Rochester and often worked long hours as a liaison with the state and federal governments. An important meeting prohibited her from accompanying Josh and Sasha to school on the first day, and she’d been feeling guilty about it all week. Josh tried his best to assuage it. “It’s okay,” he’d told her last night when she called to speak to Sasha and apologized yet again for not being able to join them.
“I’ll be at the house in the morning to see her off,” Kimmy said.
Kimmy had arrived half an hour before they needed to leave for school. She took lots of pictures of Sasha: standing by the door, out on the front steps, with and without her backpack and lunch box.
“Can you take a few of us together?” she’d asked, handing Josh her phone.
“Sure.” He snapped what felt like hundreds of pictures of the two of them. Sasha finally tired of it, and Kimmy crouched down in front of her and smoothed her hair.
“I’ll be thinking of you all day today. Tonight, we’ll have a special dinner and you can tell me about your first day.”
“What if no one plays with me?”
“They will. You’ll see. And don’t forget that Daddy and I love you very much.”
“Okay.”
“I’m getting off early and I’ll pick her up after school today,” Kimmy said, even though she’d already mentioned it twice in the last twenty-four hours. She grabbed her purse and travel mug. Gave Sasha one last hug and kiss. “Gotta run,” she said to Josh.
He was leaning up against the counter. “Yep,” he said. The screen door banged shut and then it was just the two of them again.
Sasha’s early-morning enthusiasm had been momentarily eclipsed by her fear, but once they’d made it inside the building there hadn’t been any further delays, and he had Sasha’s music teacher to thank for that. Before pulling out of the school parking lot, he’d sent Kimmy a quick text letting her know that Sasha had made it into her classroom without a hitch. Telling Kimmy it hadn’t all been smooth would only add to her angst, and the last thing he wanted was to tell Kimmy that something else hadn’t gone quite the way they’d hoped.
* * *
Josh turned his thoughts away from Sasha and mentally reviewed his day. Lots of people dreaded Mondays, but Josh loved them. Mondays meant putting on his electrician’s hat and doing the work he loved. It meant losing himself in an intricate jumble of wires and using his experience and problem-solving skills to figure out a solution. Most importantly, it meant not sitting in an office all day staring out the window or at the clock.
He drove to his client’s home, and Carl came to the door and opened it before Josh finished knocking, his shaggy white dog, Norton, at his side. “Morning, Carl,” Josh said. He’d learned to speak loudly, because Carl had lost most of his hearing. “We’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
“Long as we’re done by noon,” Carl said. He was dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, and the work boots on his feet had probably been purchased sometime in the eighties. Carl was ninety-six years old and still lived alone. His daughter June checked on him daily, and Meals on Wheels kept him fed. His refusal to consider assisted living had less to do with an absence of any serious health problems and more to do with the fact that Norton might not be able to accompany him, and Carl would have none of that.
June had called Josh’s business line one day, frantic about the jumble of exposed wiring she’d discovered in the basement of her father’s house and in dire need of an experienced electrician. It seemed that Carl liked to tinker in his spare time—of which he had a lot—and though he’d probably been quite handy back in the day, he was not remotely qualified to work with electrical systems. Josh had told June he would make sure that it was safe and that everything was up to code.
Unfortunately, it had taken longer than he’d envisioned. A lot of the wiring was outdated, and each problem he’d uncovered led to three more, most of them critical in nature. How the house had not yet gone up in flames, he didn’t know.
Josh had yelled up the basement stairs the first day and asked Carl to bring him up to speed on what exactly he’d been doing down there. Carl had walked slowly down the stairs in his jeans and slippers and appointed himself Josh’s unofficial apprentice, offering helpful advice that, had Josh followed it, had the potential to electrocute them both. Instead of following it, Josh offered alternatives that Carl begrudgingly admitted “might work.” At one point, Carl had gone upstairs to use the bathroom, and when he returned, the boots had been on his feet. The dog had perched on the stairs and fallen asleep while Josh and Carl worked side by side until the Meals on Wheels delivery person arrived. “I’ve got to eat lunch and watch the news now,” Carl said.
“And then what?” Josh had asked.
“Then I take a nap,” Carl said. “Come back tomorrow.”
On their third day working together, Carl said, “It’s probably going to take us a while to get this all sorted out.”
Josh had requests for bids stacking up, as well as a few larger jobs that would require him to be on-site all day instead of arriving in the afternoon after spending the morning at Carl’s. He’d hoped to wrap this up in the next couple of days, but a lump had formed in his throat and all he’d been able to say was “Yeah.”
chapter 3
Layla