Theo stayed quiet, not interrupting or trying to offer meaningless comfort, which was a damn blessing. I didn’t think I could deal with platitudes right then. A right hook might’ve been involved if he’d even tried, and I had a pretty mean one. I could’ve put him on his ass. But he just stood quietly beside us, letting us have the moment without trying to detract from its severity or meaning.
Avery started pacing, striding thoughtfully toward the shelves and back again. I watched him, also quiet as I thought back to how my mind had gone numb for those first few minutes after the doctor had named the disease that was eventually going to take our dad from us.
“So what now?” he finally asked. “What do we do?”
I leaned my palms against the counter and bowed my head. “The doctor said we need to start planning for the future.”
He snapped his gaze to mine. “What thefuckdoes that mean? Planning for what?”
“Everything, Avery,” I said softly. “We have to plan for everything. What’s going to happen to the shop and to his house. Who’s going to pay his bills. His…”
Trailing off, I inhaled a deep breath and tried to speak around the jagged-edged rock in my throat. “His care. When the time comes, he won’t be able to live alone, so we need to figure out how we’re going to manage that.”
Nobody ever wanted to think about these things, but this was real. It was here. And Istilldidn’t know where to even start.
When I finally glanced up again, Avery looked exhausted. “We’re already covering the stuff he’s been forgetting on the business end of things.”
“I know, but it’s only going to get worse and we need to be as prepared for that as we can be.”
“Fuck.” He groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Okay, but I’ll ask again, what now? What the hell are we supposed to do?”
Theo finally spoke then, his voice calm and even. “What parts of the business has he still been handling himself?”
I blinked a couple times.Okay. Okay, wait. That’s actually a pretty practical way of looking at it. Whatishe still doing now? Because those are the things we’ll need to focus on integrating into our own schedules first.
Avery raked his fingers through his hair. “He still does payroll sometimes, but no one around here will let him forget about that. There’s also vendor orders, tax paperwork, and some of the customer invoicing.”
Theo nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s a good start. What about the rest of the shop? Is there anything urgent that needs to happen here?”
“Yeah.” Avery leaned both hands on the counter. “We’re going to bleed money trying to modernize all this stuff. Half of the shop’s systems are older than the dinosaurs and he kept forgetting about updates. I’ve been on him about it for months, but if we leave it much longer, they’re all going to be obsolete.”
Mentally, I was already making a list. This was actually really helpful. Avery and I would have to divide and conquer with the paperwork, but it was doable. The upgrades, however, were a problem.
“That part is pretty fixable,” Theo said, directly contradicting my thoughts. When I snapped my gaze up to his, he was still looking at Avery. “I know some people who would be willing to help.” He said it almost offhandedly, like it was completely normal to have those kinds of connections. “You’ll need good estate lawyers, too. I can give you some names of people I know and trust. I might even be able to swing thefamily-and-friends discountfor you.”
Avery frowned. “You know estate lawyers?”
Theo paused, then shrugged. “Yeah, man. I know lots of people.”
Well, if that isn’t cryptic as hell. I swear, sometimes he’s so damn mysterious that it’s like he secretly belongs to the CIA. Or maybe he’s just a fugitive. Yeah, that’s more likely.
Either way, the offer itself felt sincere and that was oddly comforting. It was good to know that there were people we could reach out to and that someone we already knew could put us in touch with those people.
Theo was turning out to be pretty useful in navigating this conversation, offering exactly the kind of questions we needed to keep us on track, but still, this wasn’t the first time I’d heard him sound just a little different than the guy we were getting to know, like he was a lot more experienced and knew a lot more than he let on.
Avery’s phone rang before he could ask more questions, and when he glanced at the screen, he grimaced. “It’s a customer. I should take it.”
“Go,” I muttered.
He nodded, squeezing my shoulder on his way out the door to take the call. Theo leaned back against the counter beside me, his voice quiet and gentle when he spoke again. “I’m sorry, Raquel.”
“I knew something had changed,” I admitted, staring down at the grease stains on my hands and wondering if the doctors might’ve been able to do more if I’d just gotten him there sooner. Logically, I knew there wasn’t much anyone could do for this disease, but shit. “I think a part of me has been preparing for this for a while, but it still sucks.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I imagine it does.”
He sounded so sincere and so warm that my throat threatened to close up all over again. Tears sprang to my eyes, burning hot right behind them. I never got like this at work. I never got like this period, but it felt like a wave of emotion was building deep inside, rising and just on the cusp of a crest.
“Are you still going camping this weekend?” he asked.
