Page 56 of Shake the Habit

He eyed me but then nodded back. “Why did I act like that? I love her so much but we were missing something.”

“What is it?”

“Communication? I don’t know, but we were like a plant with rotten roots,” he said, and tapped his hat on the fruit tree. “We wouldn’t have been able to grow anything good together.”

That might have been true, based on how they’d been acting. But I was still so sorry about this. My party for Sir had apparently been more of a disaster than I’d realized, which I’d found out this Monday morning when I’d come into work and found Marc staring blankly at the office wall. He had explained that when he and Taygen had left together, they’d taken a long drive and talked more than they had in weeks. “We didn’t even argue,” he’d told me, his voice flat. “Both of us acted like we’d spent the day doing conditioning drills, like we were exhausted. I was. I just felt so done.”

My heart had sunk when I’d heard those words. “You were done?”

“Yeah,” he had answered. “We broke up. I told her she could keep the shitty ring I gave her, to sell it or throw it out her car window if she wanted. I told her that I love her, but we were done.”

I’d given him some space after that, although his mother had been texting me constantly and I was hearing a lot from his sisters, too. Everyone was worried. One person who hadn’t been in touch with me was Taygen herself, and I hadn’t reached out to her yet, either. I’d wanted to know what had happened and how Marc would feel about me talking to her, first. Then he’d given me a ride to the Woodson farmhouse this afternoon and I’d finally asked him how he was doing, and out had come the story about being flattened by the truck.

“Marc, I’m really impressed,” I told him now.

“Because I broke off my engagement?” He slowly stood, staring. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No, I mean it,” I insisted. “You did the mature thing. You’ve had a lot of pressure on you, not just with work but from her and her family. From our family, too! It probably would have been easier to keep your head down and push aside any doubts you had, but you’re correct. Your relationship was going to fail if you didn’t fix your problems. This is so hard, but I think it was the right decision. But I’m also very sorry,” I added.

“Her family wants to kill me. They think it’s all my fault.”

“It isn’t.”

“No, it’s not totally me but I was so dumb. I love her so much, KayKay.”

He looked just the same as he had when he was a little boy, and I hugged him. He let me for a moment before reminding me that we were on the jobsite and I had to let go.

“It’s Caleb’s jobsite,” I said. “He doesn’t care if I hug you.”

“We’re professionals,” he said gruffly. “Let’s go check on the new well.”

A crew was digging so there would be water in the house again and some work had begun inside that building, too. Framers were currently shoring up the attic to prep for a new roof, a metal one that would last just about forever. Then our cousin Dasia would lay out a whole system of heating and cooling, followed by insulation, followed by a million other things. It was a big project made easier by the fact that the house was nowtotally empty. Caleb had come over to clear out his old bedroom and he and I had also boxed what remained in his mother’s former room. Everything was packed into the outbuilding that held my nana’s car.

“Still stinks,” he’d summed up that situation, which was sadly accurate.

Anyway, the house was empty and Marc’s work at the barn was slowly wrapping up. Despite the problems at the beginning, I thought that it was turning out beautifully, and Caleb agreed. He kept saying that it didn’t even feel like the same place, which was exactly what I wanted. It would have been much, much better if the whole thing had—

I stopped walking. “Marc, what’s going on?” I asked, pointing at the farmhouse, and he put his hat back on to block the sun so he could see.

“Lunch?” he suggested. It was late in the day to break for that and still too early to leave, but the guys on the framing crew had emerged from the house. They were now standing together in a huddle in the front yard.

They watched us as we approached. “There’s something up there,” one of them called.

“An animal?” Marc asked. “Bats?”

“No,” the guy said, and the crew looked at each other uneasily. “I don’t know what it is. We don’t want to work in that attic.”

“If y’all are walking off the job, I need an explanation,,” my cousin told him, and they looked at each other again. Obviously,walking off the job wasn’t something they wanted to do, and just as obviously, they also didn’t want to go back inside the farmhouse.

“There are mice in the walls,” I offered. “You might behearing rodents.” And yes, that was disgusting, but was probably something they’d encountered before and it was no reason for them to be in the front yard, acting nervous. “We’ll get someone out here next week.”

“It was talking,” one of the other men burst out.

“You’re hearing voices?” Marc asked him incredulously, but the guy shook his head like he hadn’t really meant that. “You know how old houses are,” my cousin continued. “There’s any number of things you could have heard. Come on, I’ll go up and look around with you.” They glanced at each other and then they did follow him back into the house.

Sir had been sticking next to me as we spoke to them. “I’m not going in and you’re not either,” I told him, and he wagged his tail. But I looked at Lara-Lee’s broken desk on the porch, under the dirty tarp. I had told Caleb that I would help him with it, and I didn’t want him to see all those chocolate bar wrappers hidden inside and feel even worse about his mother.

He did so much for us. As Sir and I went to get boxes out of the dumpster so I could sort the junk, I discussed some of what we owed to our other roommate. “It’s not only how he lets us use his car. He runs with us, even though he could go a lot further and faster on his own. He didn’t mind stopping four times this morning when you went to the bathroom, even though one ofthose times was fake because you wanted to sniff something. You know that as well as I do.” The dog frisked along beside me in his giant, lumbering way, and he admitted nothing. “He makes dinner, which is just for me, but he buys you special food that’s really expensive and he always gets you toys. There are a million and two little ways that he helps us and makes our lives better. So much better!”

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