Dating Daddy's Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Apron

Britt finds Kiersten at her stove, takes her sketchbook, tells Jarrod she's filing in front of everyone, and finds a patent for her own chair with his name on it.

I didn't text back.

I drove to East Grand Rapids in my father's old flannel and yesterday's jeans.

There was a white Range Rover in my driveway.

I parked behind it, close enough that it wasn't going anywhere.

The house smelled like burned butter.

Kiersten Draper was at my stove with a spatula, wearing my apron over a white silk blouse.

Her platinum bob was perfect at seven-forty on a Saturday.

Coby sat at the island in his crew hoodie, eating cereal out of the box.

The pancakes were stacked beside him, untouched and gray in the middle.

Jarrod leaned on the counter with his coffee and his phone.

All three of them looked up.

"Oh," Kiersten said. "You must be Britt."

We had met a dozen times. Every company party. Twice at his birthday.

"Jarrod said you might come by." She smiled at him. "He said you'd be dramatic about it."

"Did he."

"I'm just helping out. Somebody had to feed this poor kid."

"He's sixteen. He can make toast."

"Well, apparently he's been living on whatever you put in front of him." She flipped a pancake. It tore. "Honestly, Britt, I don't know how you did it. Ten years of this?"

She waved the spatula around my kitchen.

"I'd lose my mind. No job. No degree. Just laundry."

Coby put his cereal down.

Jarrod didn't look up from his phone.

"Take off my apron," I said.

Kiersten laughed. "It's an apron."

"Coby made it in third grade. Those are his hands on it. Take it off."

For a second nobody moved.

Then she untied it, slowly, and let it fall on the floor by the stove.

"There," she said. "Happy?"

I walked over, picked it up and shook off the flour.

I folded it in half and in half again.

I didn't say anything to her at all.

I went upstairs.

The attic stairs came down out of the hall ceiling on a cord.

My things were in the far corner, under the eaves, where Jarrod had put them when we redid the guest room.

One big cardboard box, taped shut.

BRITT, SHOP, in black marker, in my own handwriting from ten years ago.

Next to it, my mother's bar clamps, eight of them, tied together with baling twine.

I opened the box with my car key.

My sketchbook was on top.

Green cloth cover, the corners worn to cardboard.

I opened it to the middle without meaning to.

The rocker's runner, drawn full size across two pages, with every bend marked.

Twenty minutes in the box. Ninety degrees on the form. Clamp at the crown, then the toe.

Under it, in pencil, a date. I was nineteen.

I closed the book and pressed it to my chest for a second.

Then I taped the box shut again, picked it up and went down the attic stairs backward.

I carried the box to my car.

I came back for the clamps.

I came back a third time for the apron and my winter coat.

They were all still in the kitchen.

Kiersten had her hip against my counter now, sipping coffee from my mug.

The one that said WORLD'S OKAYEST BOATBUILDER. Dad gave it to me.

"Jarrod," I said.

He finally put down the phone.

"Britt, let's talk about this calmly. Not in front of..." He tipped his head at Coby.

"No. In front of everybody."

I looked at Kiersten. I looked at Coby.

"I'm filing for divorce on Monday."

Jarrod's face did nothing at all.

Kiersten's did a lot.

She tried to hide the smile behind my mug and didn't manage it.

"Okay," Jarrod said. "If that's what you want. My lawyer will call yours. Do you have one?"

"I will on Monday."

"You know what you signed."

"I know what I signed. I was twenty and nobody told me to get a lawyer. You were thirty-one."

"That's not my fault."

"No," I said. "Nothing ever is."

Kiersten set the mug down.

"Britt, honey. Nobody's going to give you anything. You get the car." She laughed. "And I guess the apron."

"I'll take it."

I turned to go.

"Are you coming back?"

It was Coby.

His voice cracked a little.

He was looking at the cereal box, not at me.

I thought of the slammed door. I thought of what he'd said.

I thought of him at six, asleep on my lap on the dock, with sunscreen on his nose.

"Not to this house," I said.

He nodded at the cereal.

I walked out.

Nobody followed me.

In the driveway I sat in the car with my hands on the wheel.

Kiersten's Range Rover was still blocked in behind me.

I started the engine, and I let her stay blocked for a while longer, and then I backed out.

At the first stop sign I pulled over.

My hands were shaking too hard to drive.

I reached over the seat and pulled the box toward me to look at the sketchbook again.

I lifted it out.

I lifted out the old spec sheets, the photos from the Grand Rapids show, the newspaper clipping in its plastic sleeve.

At the bottom, face down, was a picture frame.

I didn't remember packing a frame.

I turned it over.

It was a certificate with a gold seal.

United States Patent. Rocking Chair. The drawing was my runner, my bend, my spindles.

Inventor: Jarrod Ackerly.

The filing date was the August after our wedding.

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