Chapter 10: The Showroom

I didn't sleep on Sunday night either.

I lay in my old bed and watched the number under the photo climb.

Six thousand. Nine thousand.

The comments were worse than the caption.

"Gold digger downgrade lol."

"Didn't she used to be his secretary or something?"

"Imagine raising a man's kid for ten years and then doing this."

On Monday morning my lawyer called and told me not to say anything in public.

On Monday afternoon Cullen came for his tools while I was at her office in Holland.

When I got back, his rolling chest was gone from the shop.

The yard truck keys were on their hook.

And on my bench by the steam box, lined up straight, was my pencil.

The one he'd pulled out of my hair.

I stood and looked at it for a long time.

Then I went out to the yard truck.

The broken Traverse City rocker was still under its tarp in the bed.

I pulled the tarp back and worked one of the back spindles loose with my hands.

It came apart in my fingers along a glue line.

On Tuesday I drove to Grand Rapids with that spindle on the passenger seat.

The Ackerly showroom takes up two floors of an old brick furniture factory on the Grand River.

I had picked the paint color for that lobby. Lakeshore Sand.

There was a life-size photo of the Lakeshore Rocker on the wall behind the front desk.

Under it, in brass letters: AN ACKERLY ORIGINAL.

The girl at the desk saw me and went white.

She'd seen the post.

Everybody on the sales floor had seen the post.

I watched it move across the room in a ripple of turned heads.

Two salesmen. A woman arranging throw pillows. A couple shopping for a dining table.

I walked right through them.

Kiersten's office was glass, in the middle of the floor, so everybody could watch her work.

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