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“What does that mean?” He watches my face with intense interest. “Is Smuckers giving back the company? Is there something in the will that reverts it?”
I shake my head. “Things work out, don’t you find?”
“You can’t say more?”
“I can swear to you that I never had my sights on Locke. I know you have no reason to trust me,” I say. “I know what the evidence makes it look like. What it makes me look like. I’m not that terrible person. It’s not what everyone thinks.”
My throat feels thick. It’s like the emotion of the last eight years is rushing up all at once, choking me.
“I want you to believe.” The words rush out of me. “I need you to believe in spite of the evidence.”
“Hey.” He pulls me onto his lap, holds me tightly. “I believe you.”
Emotion lurches through me. I’m stunned. Reeling. His arms pull tight around me. “I believe you. I trust you.” He kisses my cheek. “I see you.”
I swallow. I close my fingers around his arm. His breath warms my cheek.
And he believes me.
Contrary to all evidence, he believes me. The world seems full of possibility. Like what’s happening between us could be real. Like maybe things work out for Vonda, too. Like string and toothpicks can make a bridge.
Clanks and voices ring out from below.
“Show me one of those bridges,” I say. “I want to see.”
He’s got his phone and he’s swiping the screen. “Brett sent me this last year. This is before.” He shows me a picture of a tiny bridge with string running as tension wires under the arch of toothpicks. He swipes. “After.” It’s a sad little pile of quarters and toothpick bits.
“Awwww,” I say.
“Wait, I might have one of the old successful ones.” He’s flipping through his photo cloud when the elevator lurches back to life.
I grab onto his arm as it begins an excruciatingly slow descent.
“Hold up,” he says. “Don’t think I’m letting you out before finding a successful one.” He finally gets it, hands me the phone.
It’s the bridge—string and toothpicks supporting quarters, but the shot gets his face, and that’s what I love. He’s maybe eleven, crouching behind the table with a shit-eating grin on his face and those dimples in full force. Happy. Proud.
Eventually, we reach the bottom and the cage door opens to a group of guys in hardhats. They help me out first, all apologies. Henry goes to inspect the motor with them.
I wander over to the reclaimed junk he wants to incorporate into furniture like it’s something I super need to check out.
I’m afraid to think it’s real, but I do. My heart pounds like a happy drum. I smile. I shove at the pile with my foot and smile like a madwoman.
I feel him near. I don’t know why I always feel him.
I say, “They used to make everything so ornate. Even the most lowly electrical thing was ornately designed. Buildings had pretty flourishes they didn’t need. Why don’t they do it anymore?”
“We still do,” he says. “Just in a different way.”
I pick up a piece of grate with a vine pattern.
“How cool would it be incorporated into a table or seating?” he says.
I kneel and pick up a metal circle the size of a dinner plate with elaborate edge pattern, trying to get my head straight. It has numbers and a bird logo pounded into it. A patina of scuffs from across the ages.
I toss it onto the pile and pick up a block of weathered timber with old nails in it and a shiny metal plate the size of a playing card stuck to the side. “I know how to get this made into furniture. More awesome than you can imagine.”
It’s Latrisha I’m thinking of. This is her jam.
