"Did you have your things put in storage?" his mother asked, as they followed his father past the dark, empty open office with cubicles. "Or is it already en route?"
She was pretending to joke, but she wasn't. Not hardly at all.
Nothing ever changed here. The fabric on the cubicles wore the odd strip of duct tape. The walls in the hall needed fresh paint. The floor begged for new carpet. He passed a yellowed memo that instructed how to use the fax machine.
"I'm not moving back, Mom," Sterling said, laconic but firm as they entered the quiet factory. His voice was amplified by the large expanse of concrete floor and high, tin ceiling. The distant patter of rain was the only sound except for the scuffs of their footsteps.
His mother stopped walking so he and his father did, too. Sterling looked past the silhouettes of equipment, into the tall shadows of the building's interior. It always smelled the same here. Cedar and pine, cool metal and fresh, Pacific Northwest air. Familiar.
Not like home, he reassured himself. Not anymore. But familiar. Nostalgic.
"How will you run the factory from North Carolina?" his mother asked.
"I don't intend to. I told you that on the phone."
His father jangled his keys. "It doesn't look like anyone's been here. We can go."
"Dad." Sterling appreciated that small towns like Liebe Falls were relaxed and had low crime rates, but they'd called him here on the pretense of a security concern. The least they could do was play it out. "I'll make sure all the doors are locked. It will just take a minute."
"You're spending too much time in cities, son."
Sterling shook his head and started toward the nearest door.
"Never mind. I'll do it," his father said gruffly, and walked over to rattle the bar. It held.
Sterling watched him, trying to figure out why his father was so reluctant to do something so basic. Plain old age?
"You're not saying anything. Are you thinking about it?" his mother asked.
"I have my own company to run, Mom."
She made an exasperated noise. "What company? Where?"
His father was making his way around the inside perimeter, but Sterling wasn't sure he'd checked the last door he'd passed. Sterling steered his mother in that direction. "You know. Patty and I run a consulting firm."
"You don't make anything."
"Just money."
"You run around telling people what to do. You can do that here. It's your heritage, you know."
"Telling people what to do?"
"Honestly, Sterling."
Sterling smiled. It didn't hold, though. This company had been his father's heritage until Grady Fogarty had bought in. Sterling still felt responsible for that and it had nothing to do with Paige. She had said she wasn't nursing any ill-will so he ought to be able to leave, confident his father would own the company, but he wasn't confident. He was worried.
"Your father needs you, Sterling. He can't run the company while running for Mayor."
Sterling frowned at his father as he came through the darkened space behind a stack of lumber. "Since when are you running for Mayor?"
"That's just an idea your mother has."
"He'd had enough of working with Grady. I suggested it."
"If Grady retires, I'll be needed here," his father pointed out.
"Not if Sterling comes back."
"Sterling's not coming back." His father wound behind the planer to check another door.
Strange. His father used to want him here almost as badly as his mother did. He missed another door, too. Sterling went to check it himself.
"The Liebe Falls Business Association has offered their support," his mother said, keeping pace and reaching for Sterling's arm as she stepped over an oil stain.
"Heavily influenced by the wives of the LFBA, of course," his father added, his big voice bouncing around the hollow space.
"Walt, you put food on half the tables in this town. Don't downplay how important that makes you to people."
His father tucked in his chin and shot off to the next door.
"It embarrasses him," she confided, keeping her hand curled through Sterling's bent elbow. "He's never had the self-assurance you have, but I think it would be good for him. Of course, you'll need to mind your behavior. No more performances like today. What on earth were you doing, going to that house with those women?"
"Stress tests on Roy collectibles."
"That's not funny." She released him. "You could have ruined everything, chasing that girl again."
"I wasn't chasing her. I was asking about her plans." Why did he feel like he was lying? Maybe because he'd dragged them both through an ugly chapter in the past for nothing. "Do you want the company back, Dad?"
"Hell, yes," his father said, heading toward the man-door beside the bigger rolling door of the shipping bay.
"We want it for you, Sterling," his mother said.
"I want it for myself," his father corrected. "Worst thing I ever did was let Grady Fogarty buy in."
"And you're not to blame yourself for that, Sterling."
"I don't, Mom. I was eleven." A lifetime of being exposed to emotional blackmail had given him a strong ability to detect and deflect it. But deep down, he did blame himself. It wasn't just the mess he'd made of things with Paige. If he hadn't scuffled with her brother in the sandlot seven years before that, their fathers might never have wound up in business together.
Lyle might not have held a grudge and used his sister to settle it.
Is that what had happened? Maybe Paige had been her brother's innocent pawn. They turned it into me wanting to lose my cherry to you.
She wants it to be you.
Fuck he hated Lyle Fogarty. Probably more than his father hated Grady.
"No, it wasn't your fault." His father sounded angry as he moved to the final door. Blaming himself, maybe, for being quick-talked, because there was something extra in the thrust he gave that door, making it clang and echo.
"It wasn't anyone's fault," his mother said, her pitch an octave higher. "Grady Fogarty could sell you the water from your own tap. He made it seem like such a good idea, but the minute we accepted his investment check, we realized what a mistake it was to let the company fall out of family hands. So if you could stay in town to help your father get it back, Sterling, it would mean a lot to him."
"That's what I came back to do, Mom, but-"
"So you do want to work here."
He mentally counted the days until he would leave on Sunday. They were going to pass like kidney stones.
"Stop badgering him," his father said. "He's not ready. I'm not ready."
Sterling wasn't sure if he was being supported or insulted. He pulled up socks on companies a hundred times the size of this one.
"He can still help with the negotiation," his mother said.
"I can handle my own negotiations, Evelyn. And it's better if I do." His father sent a look that made her avert her face.
"I'm just saying, Sterling makes his living at this sort of thing. Take advantage of the education you paid for."
And the double edge on that comment wasn't meant to remind Sterling of his obligations at all.
"I don't need any help," his father said, "Now, let's go home. I'm hungry."
"I'll just get that door." Sterling pointed. "You missed it."
His father stopped him with an impatient look. "I'll do it," he muttered, and grumbled about wild goose chases as he strode to the back wall of the factory. "All of them have held. We didn't need to do this."
"He feels threatened," Sterling's mother said. "He's not ready to admit how badly you're needed here."
"That's because I'm not," Sterling said, as his father pushed the last door open.
~ * ~
The receptionist at Liebe Falls Legal Services kept her ear pressed to the telephone as she nodded and waved Paige toward the back offices.
Paige smiled, relieved. All that held her together this morning was static cling and her crap day was only beginning. Thank God it was Friday.
She used the photocopier and helped herself to coffee from the staff room, then brushed her knuckles beneath the ‘Britta Beck, Notary Public' nameplate as she nudged open the half-closed door. "Got a minute?"
Britta glanced up. She'd had her afro trimmed close, died bright red, and straightened sometime in the last few weeks. Paige was having trouble getting past the feeling she was talking to a stranger.
"Zack told me you stayed at the house last night, but he didn't say anything about you having a black eye. What the hell?"
"Yeah, that was an accident." Paige brushed at the tender spot on her cheek as she closed the door and took a seat. "Rosie fell into me. She was drunk." She shrugged.
"That's why you didn't go back to Seattle? To babysit a drunk? Sweetie..."
"I know, I know. But that's only part of it," Paige said on a heavy sigh. "I swear, this town is like the mafia. Every time I think I'm out, it sucks me back in. But Rosie is a mess. I had to stay with her. She lost her job, so that's super cool."