Page 58 of Playing for Keeps in Starr's Fall
“Zach?” Jenna’s voice seemed disembodied as it floated from the back of the store, where a door connected it to their living quarters. She came forward, pulling her cardigan more closely around her. “What are you doing here so early?” She pressed her lips together. “I thought you were taking abreak.”
“It wasn’t a break,” Zach replied evenly. Even though he’d stepped back from managing the store—or really, attempting to—he’d pulled his weight with shifts and grunt work, the same as he always did. “But I want to talk to you.”
“Oh?” Jenna’s eyebrows rose as she nodded. “Okay, well, this sounds serious.”
“I’m serious, if that’s what you mean. Let’s go into the barn.”
“The barn?” Jenna, Zach knew, hardly ever went into the barn, where they stored their inventory; she usually stayed in the store while Zach dealt with stock.
“Not the store’s stock barn,” he replied. “The other one.”
“Okay…” Shaking her head, Jenna followed him out of the store, to the barns behind. While the first one was used for inventory, the one behind was crammed full of furniture his parents had collected over the years. They’d never done much with it, and a lot of it was junk, but antiquing had been one of their hobbies. Zach had lost count of the number of weekends they’d gone trawling through the countryside looking for treasures while he and Jenna held down the store.
Now he unlocked the door and slid it open. Sunlight streamed into the dim space, catching the dust motes dancing through the air.
“I haven’t been in here since Laurie went through it months ago,” she remarked. “And I think it must have been years before that. I half wonder if we should set fire to the whole thing.”
“We definitely shouldn’t do that,” Zach replied. “Because I want it.”
Jenna swung around to look at him in surprise. “What?”
“I want it,” Zach repeated firmly. “All of it. This furniture has just been sitting here getting wood rot for decades. Mom and Dad don’t want it—I already asked them.”
Now her mouth dropped open. “You what?—”
“I called them last night. They were fine with it.” He met her gaze levelly. “And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be, too.”
Jenna gaped at him for a moment. “You talked with Mom and Dad?”
“Yes, on this thing called a phone?” He gentled his voice to keep from sounding too snarky because that wasn’t how he felt at all. The conversation had been both good and healing, and he thought Jenna could probably benefit from the same. “They were actually really glad to talk to me,” he told her, “and they invited me to come down to Florida for Memorial Day. You too. Said we should see each other more, even.”
“What…” Jenna looked completely flummoxed, which was fair, because Zach had been pretty surprised by the suggestion himself, as well as gratified.
“People can change, Jenna,” he said quietly. “They can have regrets as well as learn and grow. Even Mom and Dad.”
“And you?” she asked him after a moment, sounding thoughtful. “Is that what this is about?”
“I’ve changed,” Zach agreed. “But yeah. This is me moving on. Because the way things have been? Let’s be honest. They haven’t been working for a while, for either of us.”
Jenna was silent for a long moment, her gaze downcast, face drawn in pensive lines. Then, to his shock, it started to crumple.
“Jenna—” He flung one hand out toward her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his sister cry. She was always so strong, so indomitable.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffed, gulping as she wiped her eyes. “I just feel like I’ve been a… a bad person. A badsister, to you. Have I forced you out of the business? Ourhome?” She dropped her hands from her face as she looked at him bleakly. “Be honest.”
“Maybe it felt that way at first,” Zach answered slowly, “at least with the store. But this is a good thing for both of us, Jenna. This doesn’t have to be some big split. You need to have full control of the store without feeling like you’re cutting me out. And I need to do my own thing. Both of those are okay.”
She was silent for a moment, absorbing what he’d said. “Hence, the furniture,” she said at last.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She glanced around at the stacked furniture—sofas and armchairs, bureaus and desks, all piled haphazardly on top of one another. “So what are you planning to do with all this stuff?”
Zach sucked in a breath and then let it out slowly. “Well, it might sound a little crazy,” he began cautiously, “but I want to start a furniture restoration business. Working on the bookshelves for the boardgame café made me realize how much I actually like that kind of stuff. And obviously, I’m not super experienced, so I’ll have to start slow and work my way up, as it were, but… that’s what I want to do.” He nodded toward the furniture. “Start by refinishing this stuff, and then moving on to better-quality items, custom pieces. I’ve enrolled in a class on woodworking in Bristol. They have a whole series on making and restoring furniture.” He let out a shaky laugh; it felt both invigorating and scary to tell his sister his fledgling dreams, ones that were only just starting to become reality. “So that’s my plan,” he finished.
Jenna was quiet for a long moment. Zach had no idea what she was thinking, but if his sister was true to form, she’d soon tell him. She stayed silent, though, and that made him nervous. Was his plan that outlandish, that ridiculous, that she couldn’t bring herself to burst his bubble?
“I think that’s great, Zach,” she said finally, sounding so quietly sincere that he was rendered speechless. “But why not use the barn as your workshop? I mean, if you want to, at least at the beginning. There’s space here and it will cut down on costs, and…” She paused before smiling almost shyly. “And actually, it would be nice to work near each other, even if we weren’t actually together, I mean, if you didn’t want to be. I… I don’t think I valued your input as much as I should have, IknowI didn’t, and I didn’t realize that until you were gone.”
