Page 100 of Brewbies
“Of course. I mean, there’s always that contingent with the big truck wheels and Confederate flags who will protest just about any-damn-thing. That Venn diagram intersects with the old ‘traditional values’ people, but they’re a dying—if entitled and wealthy—breed out here. But yeah, the scuttlebutt around town is that most folks are real salty about her leaving. That Cirque du Café was certainly fun, and several people made B&B and vacation home reservations in case it’s coming back next year.”
They did?
“Do you think Caryn drove her off?” Gwen’s question cut through a thousand thoughts and emotions trying to crowd into him at once.
“Caryn, my mom Caryn?”
“Yeah, I saw them drinking at Olive or Twist on Friday night. I was going to say hi, but the conversation sounded serious. I bet your motherlovesthat your…lady friend has pink hair.” She snort-laughed.
It occurred to Ethan that in a normal situation—in a normal town where the head real estate agent didn’t pants you in eighth grade—her question would be wildly inappropriate.
He grunted something that sounded like an excuse and ended the call, realizing belatedly he’d never answered her question, nor did he tell her to hold the Raven Creek property.
Because it wasn’t his. He’d given it up. Given over to her.
Hell, he’d spent the past couple of weeks trying to figure out just how the hell to fix this. How to win back a woman who didn’t really want to be won.
Ethan stared at the chair he’d been wrestling with all morning, wondering why nothing would fit together like it should. The measurements were right. The components of the highest quality. The tools well kept. It was part of a fucking set he’d made from the same batch of wood.
Get off my property.The look in her eyes as she spewed those words at him haunted every goddamn minute.
Because when it came to ownership, Darby had stolen the one thing he’d always wanted to give to someone.
And even he was surprised that thing wasn’t Raven Creek.
Picking up the sledgehammer in the corner, he decided a little smash therapy was in order.
It felt good to create things. But sometimes, it felt better to demolish them. Shatter into a thousand pieces.
Because his tragedy was that he got everything he’d set out to achieve, and it left him emptier and angrier than he’d ever been.
She was leaving, which had been his aim all along.
So why did it feel like the world was ending? Why did the thought of Raven Creek without her kitschy little trailer on the corner by the swing seem like just an empty plot of dirt?
Nostrils flaring, muscles full of blood and rage, and surging with a primal violence he’d flirted with but never allowed himself to feel, Ethan lifted the hammer over his head and prepared to bring it down like Hephaestus.
A movement in the shadows stayed his hand, but when he turned to where the scroll saw sat, the corner was empty.
Except for the memory that lived there.
Grandpa Townsend retrieving pieces of a writing desk Ethan had thrown in the corner in a fifteen-year-old tantrum at his own mistakes.
“You know, Tove’s father’s family used to have a saying.Træet ønsker ikke at blive en båd.The tree doesn’t want to be a boat.”
Ethan scowled up at his grandpa, the metaphor not sinking into his thick head. “We’re not working on boats, dur. And I just can’t do it. I’m not as good as you are.”
When other men might have cuffed him for his back talk, his grandpa only squatted down, set the discarded block on his own woodpile, and hugged him. “This happens to everyone,” he soothed with a shake of his silver-gold head.“It isn’t the woodworker that is in the wrong. But neither is it the piece of wood. Sometimes, it’s just not supposed to be what you’re trying to make it. It already knows its fate. It already decided, and you can’t exert your will on it.”
Grandpa Townsend smiled, flashing the same dimple in his left cheek that Ethan claimed as a Townsend birthright.
“Kinda like women, in a way…but you’ll learn that later.”
“Ew, Grandpa.”
The memory blurred through a skein of moisture as Ethan dropped the axe, picked up his phone, and tapped out a text.
I’m coming over.
