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“But—”
“Please. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” Mrs. Morgan smiled, but the tension around the table had increased.
And when the café’s door burst open, Melissa jumped.
“Melissa,” a worried voice called out. “I need you to come to the bakery.”
Melissa turned to see Amanda scurrying toward her, twisting her apron around her hands, her face a grimace of concern. “The oven quit working and all those cupcakes you put in aren’t baking.”
“Did you call Alan?” Melissa asked, her mind scrambling. “He was the one who installed the stove and oven.”
“He can’t come until tomorrow,” Amanda said. “He’s working in another county today. What are we going to do?”
Melissa bit her lip, her mind racing. The cupcakes were for a conference in Junction City. If the organizers there liked what she had to offer, it could increase business for the bakery and maybe raise the profile of Bygones and the new businesses here.
And Mrs. Morgan was still waiting.
“So the oven won’t go on at all?” Melissa asked, taking care of her first priority.
Amanda shook her head, her brown ponytail bobbing.
“I’ll tell Brian. He’s really handy. I’m sure he can help,” Gracie said, then, before Melissa could protest, jumped to her feet as if relieved to have a reason to escape. She hurried over to where Brian sat with the older man and murmured something to him. Melissa looked away when she saw him frown, but then Brian strode over.
“Something wrong with your oven?” he asked.
“It doesn’t work,” Amanda said before Melissa could protest that everything was fine, which it wasn’t. She didn’t want Brian in her bakery. Especially not after the way he seemed to treat it so dismissively. “Could you come and fix it?” Amanda asked.
“Sure. I’ll have a look at it.”
“It’s fine. We can manage,” Melissa said, holding up her hand as if to stop him.
Brian shot her a frown. “How? Amanda said Alan can’t come till tomorrow. Can’t bake your fancy cakes if your oven doesn’t work.”
Melissa stifled another protest at his blunt assessment of her situation. Much as she didn’t like it, Brian was right.
“Okay. You can come and have a look at it,” she said, relenting.
“Thanks. I think.”
As Melissa held his steady gaze she caught the hint of a mocking smile teasing one corner of his mouth.
Her heart did a slow flop at the sight. Then she caught herself midreaction. Was she crazy? The man clearly didn’t like her or her bakery. Why was she even the least bit attracted to him?
Because, she thought as she strode out of the coffee shop, in spite of her innate need for independence and her burning desire to make her own way in the world, there were times she wondered what it would be like to have someone beside her.
Just not this guy, Melissa reminded herself.
* * *
“So I relit the pilot light.” Brian pushed himself away from the oven and, brushing the dust and crumbs off his shirt and pants, picked up his tools and got to his feet. “The oven should work now.”
It hadn’t taken him long at all to get Melissa’s oven going. The thermocouple wasn’t working so all it took was a quick run down to the new hardware store. Thankfully, Patrick there knew his stuff and had one in stock.
Replacing it was a simple job, but it made him feel useful again. Something he didn’t feel so often these days.
Melissa looked at the oven, then back at Brian as if she wasn’t sure she should believe him.
“Are you sure it will work?”
“Of course I am.”
“Okay.” She turned the knob of the oven, listening.
Brian heard a reassuring whoosh as the gas ignited.
“Great. Wonderful,” she said. “I thought I would have to start all over with the cupcakes.” She turned to Amanda. “Can you get them out of the refrigerator and put them in the oven? They’ll take a little longer to cook because they’re cold so adjust the time by about fifteen minutes.” Then she turned back to Brian with a grateful smile that didn’t help his equilibrium.
Something about this woman made him feel edgy, and he didn’t like feeling that way.
“Thanks again. I appreciate the help,” she said, giving Brian a grateful smile. “So, what do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” He’d only been here twenty minutes and half of that time was spent getting the panels off so he could get at the broken thermocouple.
“No. Really. I insist on paying you. I would have had to pay Alan and you saved my cupcakes. So how much?”
“I’m not that busy,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not like you dragged me away from my job.”
“All the more reason to pay you,” she said. “I’m sure you could use the money.”
Brian felt a sliver of cold slip down his spine. Bad enough that the comment was partly true.
That she was the one to say it only added to the humiliation piling on him the past few days. He thought the final straw had been her offering him a job in the bakery, but this was worse.
He turned away from her and the only sound in the heavy silence following her comment was the hollow thunk of the lid of his metal toolbox falling shut. Then the snap of the clasps.
“I’m good” was all he said, yanking the toolbox off the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean... It came out wrong.”
His only reply was to turn and stride out of the bakery, his booted feed thudding on the floor.
He headed down the sidewalk toward his truck, dropped the toolbox in the back of his truck with a heavy clang, then glanced back, checking for his grandfather.
A couple of minutes later Grandpa came walking down the sidewalk, a frown on his face. He was probably going to give him a reaming out for walking out on a lady, Brian thought, jingling his keys.
He knew he had been rude, but her comment was ruder.
However, as Grandpa drew close, the only expression Brian saw on his features was sympathy. Which was humiliating.
They got in the truck and drove out of Bygones in silence.
When they got home Brian parked the truck in front of the house and turned to his grandfather.
“Will you be okay on your own for the next hour? I need to get some work done.”
Thankfully his grandfather simply nodded and as he headed to the house, Brian went to his already tidy garage to clean up. He really didn’t have any work to do, but he needed some time alone. Time to think.
He rearranged his tools on his worn workbench, then pulled out a broom, wishing for the umpteenth time he had a bigger garage to work in. A truck could barely fit inside the space. He needed room for a hoist and a lift and a much larger space for tools. He could only take on a few small jobs because of the lack of space.
Unbidden came Melissa’s voice and her painful words. “...you could use the money.”
He attacked the floor with the broom, sending what little dust was left flying as he struggled to dislodge the shame crawling through his belly at her words.
And the anger they created.
The ringing of his cell phone pulled him back from his frustration. He looked at the number. It was his old high school friend Kirk.
Kirk used to live in Bygones and work with Brian at the factory. When he got laid off, he and his pregnant wife, Abby, moved to Junction City. Kirk got a job driving a long-haul truck for a trucking company. He’d told Brian, if he was interested, he could get him a job there, too.
“So I called my boss and told him about you,” Kirk said when Brian answered. “Told him you might be looking for a job.”
Brian felt a lift of anticipation. Long-haul trucking wasn’t the kind of job he wanted, but then, neither was working at a bakery, which, right now, was his only other option. “What did he say?”
“The only work he could get is relief work. You’d get a few trips a month, but if you do good with that, you might be able to work it into a full-time position.”
“And how long would that take?”
“Half a year. Maybe more. Depends on how things pick up.”
“I can’t live off those kind of wages.”
“You can’t live off what you’re getting now. But you could totally live with me and Abby.”
Brian glanced over the yard that had been his home since he was born. Large trees shaded the house to his right. Some of them had been planted by his parents when they were still alive. Some by his grandfather, who owned the property when it was still a farm. Ahead of him lay the pasture he and his father had fenced two years before his father died.
He and his sisters had inherited the farm when his parents died. They subdivided the yard site off what was left from the farm. Brian got the house and ten acres. The girls got the money from the sale of the land. Everyone was happy. Though the girls didn’t want to live in Bygones, they were thrilled their childhood home would still be available for them.
When Brian worked at the factory he often imagined the day he would drive back to the house he had grown up in to find his wife waiting for him, their children running down the driveway toward him just as he and his sisters did when their father came back from working the fields. But Brian was twenty-nine now and no closer to the family he had always dreamed of. And now he had no way of supporting this phantom family.
Even if he took this job in Junction City.
“That would mean selling my place. I can’t afford to pay rent and the payments on here.” The thought of selling a place that had been in his family for four generations stuck in his throat. “Let me think about this for a while,” Brian continued. “I don’t want to make a hasty decision.”
“I know, but I’m still telling this guy about you. Send me your résumé and I’ll give it to him. Maybe something else will come up in his branch in Concordia.”
Brian bit his lips, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll do that. Thanks for thinking of me.”
“Hey, what are friends for? I’d love to work together again. Just like old times.”
“Yeah. Like old times.” Brian doubted anything would be like old times. Life was moving on and things were changing.
Brian said goodbye and dropped the phone in his shirt pocket, his thoughts chasing each other around his mind.
Should he take this job? Was he being foolish hanging on to this place, clinging to the hope that Randall would start up the factory again?
Can you turn your back on your childhood home? Your father’s childhood home?
He had to be realistic. Do what needed to be done. If the part-time job turned into a full-time one, then he couldn’t let sentiment interfere with the reality of making a living.
Please, Lord, help me to let go of my worries. Help me to know what I should do.
“Are you busy?”
His grandfather’s quiet request broke into Brian’s prayers.
“No. Just thinking too much,” Brian said, giving his grandfather a wry smile. He grabbed a plastic lawn chair and set it down in front of the garage. “Here. Have a seat.”
His grandfather eased himself into the chair, his hands resting on his bony knees as he looked out over the yard. “Many good memories here,” he said. “I miss this place.”
“Do you regret moving away?” Brian asked, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, his own thoughts still spinning.
“I moved because I couldn’t face the thought of living in Bygones without your parents around. It was hard enough after your grandmother passed on, but after your parents died, I wanted to leave this place behind me.”
Brian’s mind ticked back to that horrible time after the car accident that had killed his parents. He was still working at the plant when it happened, though his sisters had lived away from Bygones for a number of years by then.
Holly and Louisa had always said that Bygones would be a blip in their rearview mirror once they graduated. Both had held true to that promise after high school.
Brian had never understood his sisters’ desire to live in the city. He needed to stay here. He craved the security he got from his job, his community of friends and his faith. He needed the quiet he could depend on receiving when he stood outside and watched the clouds chase each other across a broad expanse of Kansas sky.
He had always wanted to stay in Bygones and raise his family here. That had always been his main goal in life.
Now the promise of a job lay before him.
Part-time work, maybe, and you’d have to move in with Kirk and Abby and move away from here.
The only other option available to him right now was the bakery job. That he even considered it showed him how far things had fallen in his life and his plans.
“That was a hard time,” Brian agreed, pushing his negative thoughts aside. “I understood why you wanted to leave.”
His grandfather sighed. “It was hard. Especially coming so soon after your grandma died. But I think I made my decision to leave too hastily.”
Brian wasn’t surprised to hear the yearning in his grandfather’s voice. Every time Brian visited his grandfather at the home he lived in, all his grandfather could talk about was Bygones.
“You do love it here,” Brian continued. “Lots of memories.”
His grandfather smiled, leaning forward in the chair as he pointed out the apple trees in the orchard. “I remember planting those with your grandmother. We planted the rootstock, and she budded them. Then she tended them and pruned them. Always were her trees. Used to make the best pies and applesauce from them.”
“She loved gardening, didn’t she?”
