A Love Lost to the Years novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Count the Months

Sheldon walks into Nordlund Joinery in front of customers, offers a free building and tells Kenneth to count the months before Annabel hired him. Annabel arrives, sees the card with the mill's address, and begs him not to go.

Nordlund Joinery opened at nine, and by ten Kenneth had sanded the same drawer front twice.

The shop sat on a lake street by the ore docks, two bays with a drafting table in the corner.

A stove in the other corner smelled of cedar all winter.

He drew every piece by hand before he cut it.

It was a habit left over from two years as a draftsman at an architecture firm, back before the shop.

He didn't like to talk about those years.

At half past ten, a young couple came to collect their dining table.

They were buying their first house, and the woman kept running her thumb along the edge of the walnut.

"Do you want a hand loading it?" Kenneth asked.

"We've got the truck out front," the husband said. "Is it heavy?"

"It's heavy and it's honest."

They were still counting out the straps when the bell on the door rang again.

Sheldon Lowry stepped in with his camel overcoat over his arm and his hat in his hand.

He was shaved and rested, and his eyes were dry.

"Mr. Nordlund," he said. "Please. Two minutes, and then I'll never trouble you again."

The couple glanced over from the table.

Kenneth wiped his hands on a rag.

"Say it from there."

"I owe you an apology." Sheldon's voice dropped and thickened.

"What you saw last night was a man at the end of his rope, and a good woman too decent to throw him out."

He shook his head. "You must feel humiliated. I'd feel the same."

"I feel fine."

"Of course. Of course you do."

Sheldon looked around the shop and let his eyes land warmly on the walnut table.

"This is beautiful work. It's a crime that it all sits on a lease."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm asking for nothing. I'd like to help."

Sheldon spread his hands.

"I own two buildings on the next block, with proper light. Move in. No rent for the first year."

"A man like you shouldn't be sanding drawers in a shed," he added.

He said all of it kindly, and loudly enough for the couple to hear.

Kenneth looked at him for a moment.

"No," he said.

"You haven't thought about it."

"I thought about it while you were standing there. No."

Sheldon smiled and shook his head sadly.

Then he came a step closer, and his voice dropped for Kenneth alone.

"Then do one thing for me. Count the months."

"What months?"

"Nine years ago this June, Annabel ended our engagement," Sheldon said.

"Eleven months later, she walked into a joiner's shop nobody had heard of and ordered a desk."

He let that sit.

"She had never lifted a hammer in her life. Count the months, Mr. Nordlund."

His voice dropped further. "Then ask yourself why she picked you."

"I know when I met my wife."

"Do you know why she came here?"

The couple at the table had gone still, the husband with a strap in each hand.

Kenneth crossed the shop, opened the front door, and held it.

"Sir," he said, loud enough for the street, "you've been very generous, and I want you to leave my shop."

Sheldon put his hat on.

He did not seem angry.

He laid a plain white card on the corner of the bench, and tapped it twice.

"In case you want to see what she's like when she wants something," he said. "Fourteen Ore Dock Road. Stand where it used to be."

Then he went out into the cold, and the bell rang behind him.

The wife at the table had her hand over her mouth.

"I'm sorry," Kenneth said. "That's not how we usually end a sale."

"Is he, um, dangerous?" the husband asked.

"He's polite. I think that's worse."

They finished strapping the table, and the woman pressed a thank-you card into his palm on her way out the door.

When they were gone, he picked up Sheldon's card and looked at it.

There was only an address on it, in black ink, and no name.

Ore Dock Road ran along the harbor a mile from the shop.

He knew the stretch.

It was a flat gravel lot with a chain across the entrance.

He had driven past it a thousand times without once wondering what had stood there.

He was still holding the card when the bell rang again.

Annabel came in with her coat open and her car keys in her fist.

She had been running, or close to it.

She saw the card in his hand before she said a word.

All the color went out of her face, and she crossed the shop in three steps and stopped an arm's length from him.

"What did he give you?"

"An address."

"Did he tell you what it is?"

"He said to stand where it used to be."

She looked down at the card, and then at him.

For the first time in seven years, Kenneth watched his wife be afraid.

"Don't go to the mill," Annabel said. "Whatever else he tells you. Please. Don't go."

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