Chapter 1
The key jams in the front door of Springs & Bells Galore Hardware on a Tuesday that has the appeal of a wet rag in your face. July in Vermont means the air does nothing but squat thickly on your skin and the windows, not drifting, just sticking to everything. I use a shoulder to wedge the door open, stepping into the shop’s skinny, familiar dark before the heat can chase me in. For a second, it almost feels like coming home.
Almost. There’s the catch.
Inside, the ceiling fans spin their ritual circles overhead, not even pretending to do their job, just moving the torpid air from one end of the store to the other. The smell comes first: sawdust, metal tang, and that old, lingering, sweet-cheap paint thinner that’s soaked into every inch of the place. It’s weirdly reassuring, like nothing in here ever really changes.
Melvin’s behind the counter, cap pulled low, arms folded tight, glaring at the morning paper like it owes him money. He doesn’t look up. “Register tape’s just about gone,” he says. “And this heat’s a slap in the face. Might as well be breathing laundry.”
“Morning,” I offer, dropping my bag and flipping the OPEN sign. “Anything else on fire?”
“Front door’s sticking again. Humidity.” He manages to make humidity sound like a personal rival. “And someone’s been messing with the socket wrenches. That junkyard kid, probably. No respect for order.”
There isn’t really an order for the socket wrenches. Only Melvin’s order—which is subject to change without notice and lives exclusively in his head.
I fall into the opening routine. Check the register, listen to the click and shuffle of bills as I count them. Restack the caulk guns, though there’s literally nothing wrong with their arrangement. My hands know the moves, even if my brain is somewhere else entirely. There’s comfort in these motions, maybe the same as knowing exactly where to step in an old hallway to avoid the squeaky board.
I’m lining up paint sample cards when I catch sight of a shelf tag and pause.
It’s Drew’s handwriting. Loopy, slanted, the way he wrote when he was in a rush but wanted to make sure you could still read it. deck screws – ask Drew for grade rec. My thumb slides over the edge. The paper’s soft from use, the ink faded but hanging on. I could swap out the tag. I have new ones. The pricing gun is right there.
But I don’t change it.
The ledger comes next. I crack it open to today’s page, let my eyes scan past the numbers and see his notes in the margins, same slanted scrawl, little reminders and calculations. order more 3/8 lag bolts. check price on galvanized. I know how to do these things now, not because he showed me, but because I had to learn. There was no lesson plan. Just the aneurysm, and the hospital, and then the funeral, and then me: standing behind this counter with keys I’d never thought I’d need. A whole town looking at me and seeing the empty space Drew left before anything else.
No one warns you about the haunting part. How the ghosts are in every smudge on the counter, every half-used cup, every dent in the floor. I still catch myself waiting for him, expecting to hear his laugh from the back or his terrible singing echoing down the hall. It’s been three years. I half expect I always will.
Even the store feels haunted by him. Three generations: his grandfather, then his father, then Drew, each one holding on. Iremember how proud he looked the day his dad handed him the keys, like he’d finally made it, even if he never said so. Now it’s mine: the keys, the ghosts, the history pressing in. I never meant to take any of it on. But here I am. Sometimes I think the ghosts are what keep the place standing.
There’s a hook by the plumbing section labeled with Drew’s code—a jumble of letters and numbers only he ever truly understood. I know what it means because I asked Melvin, two months after the funeral. He stared at it forever and finally said, “Copper elbows, quarter-inch, compression fit.” Then he just walked away. Melvin’s been here since he was a kid, and he was Drew’s dad’s best friend. I couldn’t let him go even if I wanted to…not that he’d leave.
The day’s first customer is Mrs. Hemsley from Maple Street, 9:17 on the dot. She asks what Drew used to recommend for sealing a stone foundation.
“Hydraulic cement,” I tell her, and I’m glad my voice doesn’t crack. “For leaks. Then a parge coat after it sets. We’ve got the quick set in Aisle 3, parging mix by the mortar.”
She’s happy with the answer, heads for the aisle. I watch her go and build a smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes; I can feel it.
Melvin is watching, too. He changes the register tape with the slow precision of someone handling live explosives, and I know he’s clocking my every tell. With Melvin, silence is layered. This one means: I see you, I know this is hard, and I’ll shut up about it.
There’s a lull after that. Just the fans, and a truck passing outside, and my phone buzzing on the counter. The group chat lights up: message after message, all in a rush, like today they’ve decided to mount a family-wide intervention.
A Boston condo. Two bedrooms, brick and shiny, close to the T. Price tag is a joke.
A shared art studio in Jamaica Plain. Four artists, north light.
My sister: You don’t have to keep living his life. Boston misses you.
I flip the phone face down. It’s the same every time. They want me to come home. It’s well-meaning. But it isn’t as simple as packing up and leaving.
The bell over the door drags me out of it—and saves me from texting my sister something I’ll regret. Jordan Vale walks in: Sleighbell Springs’ chimney sweep, fix-it guru, and Drew’s old best friend. They look like they’ve already finished a full day, even though it’s barely coffee break time. Their flannel is dusted at the shoulders, streaked with something dark that could be soot or just Jordan’s personal brand of gross.
The heat doesn’t faze them. Jeans, boots, flannel, despite being July. Jordan’s philosophy: acknowledge discomfort, then ignore it into submission.
“Morning,” they say, which covers everyone in the store and the building itself. Jordan’s greetings are always broad-spectrum like that.
Melvin grunts. I say, “You’re early. The world end?”
“Barely.” Jordan’s already moving, straight to the screws, grabs a box one-handed, and swings back to the counter. “Any more copper flashing rolls, or did someone finally buy them?” They call this into the back, where I’m half-vanished behind the sandpaper rack.
