Page 1 of Falling for You Again

Chapter 1

Home Away from Home

Shortly before 8:00 a.m., I give Blueberry, my adopted, one-eyed senior Russian blue cat, a kiss goodbye, just as I do every morning before leaving for the shop. I scratch him in his favorite spot under his chin while he lounges in a square patch of sunlight on the couch. “See you tonight,” I coo, already missing him. I don’t like leaving him for the day, but the shop isn’t a place for a cat, not with the noise and heavy machinery, and with people constantly coming and going.

Blueberry watches me leave with his permanent wink, stretching his legs and spreading his toe beans. He yawns deeply as I close the door and will happily nap for most of the day.

Across the hallway, I knock on my best friend Emi’s door. She lives in a one-bedroom apartment that matches mine, our floor plans flipped. We met at trade school, and I begged her to come work with me at Artisant when we graduated nine years ago. But she’s made a successful career at Stone & Bloom, an upscale kitchen and bathroom showroom, designing gourmet kitchens for restaurants and town houses.

“Coffee?” She greets me with a smile as bright as the sunlight in my apartment when her door swings open. Always stylish compared with my daily uniform of coveralls and steel-toe work boots, she’s wearing butter-and-wisteria-striped palazzo pants with a white ribbed tank topunder a softly woven white cardigan and camel leather flats. A wide gold headband holds back the curly cherry-brown hair I’ve always envied. My rose-gold-tipped brunette hair is flat and lifeless in comparison. Soft freckles dust her tawny nose and high cheekbones.

“Yes,” I agree, even though I already drank two espressos before my shower. I have a long, laborious day ahead.

“How’s Isadora’s table coming along?” Emi asks as we make our way along the Charles riverfront toward Bean There, Done That, the coffee shop we frequent in our Cambridge neighborhood.

Emi referred Isadora de Medici to me after she’d completed the kitchen remodel. Isadora is a lovely woman with four ex-husbands and two Italian greyhounds named Sophia and Loren she claims are more loyal than any man has been to her. She wears a sapphire on her right ring finger that is as large and blue as an ocean, a promise ring to never remarry, which she purchased after her fourth divorce. I’ve designed a custom table for her that will fit her kitchen’s new dimensions.

“Almost done,” I say of the 92-inch American walnut table. “Once I sand and stain, it’s finished. It’ll take another week, two at the most.”

Emi’s amber eyes glitter with excitement. “Excellent.” She rubs her hands together. “Let me know when it’s delivered. I’ll send Shae over. I want a photo with your table for my portfolio.”

“Will do.” I open the coffee shop’s door for her.

Bean There, Done That is bustling. We wait in line to place our orders and chat about the new cookbook Emi bought last night at Codfish & Chapters, a bookstore near Stone & Bloom’s showroom. She wants to cook a succulent artichoke-stuffed beef tenderloin for me and her coworkers Shae and Tam, one of the happiest married couples I know. I don’t think Emi would be thrilled to learn Uncle Bear and I have a bet on how long they’ll last since they live and work together. He’s giving them three years. My money is on five. Neither of us believe they’ll successfully balance work with their marriage. One of these days, something will give.

The barista shouts our names, and after we collect our coffees, we walk to the T as Emi plans a dinner party for Saturday night and I offer to bring the wine and dessert. We ride the Green Line together until she gets off at her station, then I switch to the Red Line, heading toward the waterfront and Artisant Designs.

Today is delivery day, and Uncle Bear keeps the rear roll door open to receive our lumber orders throughout the morning. It’s late spring, the temperature mild with the promise of a warm afternoon. The shop will get hot, and it already feels that way as I enter the brightly lit, cavernous space. Artisant Designs, as usual, is alive with activity. Brick walls support ancient, stained timber beams overhead. Underfoot, cracks vein the concrete floor. Mom is at the coffee bar, wearing her favorite purple puffer vest she keeps zipped to her chin no matter the temperature. It coordinates brilliantly with her silver-threaded brunette bob and purple Nike running shoes that support her weak arches. She manages the shop’s accounts and oversees customer service, and usually greets me at the front desk with a smile. But this morning, her usual buoyancy is replaced with a sour scowl. No doubt Dad did something to irritate her. He’s probably late with an order again.

My parents have proven that my uncle’s Bearisms are solid pieces of advice. Business and love don’t mix. As much as I enjoy that we all work here—the studio is the only place where, other than Uncle Bear’s apartment to celebrate holidays and birthdays, my family willingly spends time together—Artisant Designs has strained their marriage. Dad is incapable of pleasing Mom, and Mom constantly nags Dad. They haven’t been happy since they returned when I was sixteen, six years after they left us, and that was thirteen years ago. Honestly, I’m shocked they’re still married. They really should spend more time apart.

Dad is at the table saw. He guides a white oak plank through a blade that whines like a buzzing mosquito amplified a thousand times over. The earthy musk of freshly sawed wood infuses the air. Toward the back, Uncle Bear and Kidder, a lanky intern from the same tradeschool I attended, sort through this morning’s first of four deliveries, organizing the wood by type and cut.

“Want a cup?” Mom hollers at me with a lift of her mug.

“Just had one, thanks,” I yell back, opening my locker. I swap my backpack for gloves, safety goggles, and noise-canceling headphones.

Dad pauses the blade and pulls a headphone cover off an ear. “I’ll take a cup.”

“You got legs. Get it yourself.” Mom drinks deeply from her mug, giving Dad her back as she returns to her workstation.

Ah, love. Mom and Dad have their own special way of showing it.

I head over to Isadora’s table and sink on my heels, peering at the surface as I study the natural beauty of the live edge for imperfections. My fingers coast over the wood I started sanding yesterday, and, feeling a rough spot, I mark where I’ll begin working today.

I pull on my gloves.

Uncle Bear gestures for Dad to turn off the table saw. “I think they shorted us,” he says of the lumber.

“Want me to recount?” I offer.

“Grab the invoice. It’s on my desk.” Uncle Bear flaps his gloves at the old metal desk he found beside a dumpster some forty-odd years ago when he and Dad started working full time at Grandpa Walt’s shop.

I leave my gloves on Isadora’s table and approach my uncle’s desk. Not an inch of surface is visible under the heaps of furniture catalogs and haphazard piles of graph paper marked up with design sketches. Old invoices are mixed in with yellowing receipts, everything strewn about. Uncle Bear evidently missed the memo that the twenty-first century has gone paperless and we’re in a climate crisis. He prints his emails along with their attachments to read them, and that’s only when he gets around to checking his inbox, which isn’t often.

“What am I looking for?” I holler over the saw Dad has turned on again. We source lumber from four different mills. I leaf through a stack of invoices, nothing jumping out at me.

“Jackson’s. It’s on top,” Uncle Bear shouts.

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