"Pen's on the table."
Curt said it before I had my door open.
"Sign, and the boys load your bags."
It was 4:30 PM on Friday, outside the Brueckner Mechanical shop.
His deadline was five.
Wes had driven me.
Dawn's pickup was in for brakes.
The shop's roll doors were up.
A grill was smoking on the apron.
Twenty-two employees stood around it in work jackets with paper plates.
Bryce used to call it Friday brats.
He'd never once brought me.
My bags were stacked beside the box truck.
There were thirteen black bags with silver numbers.
There was also what was left of bag one.
A folding table stood in front of them.
On it were the statement, check 5518, and a pen.
A wrench held the check down.
Curt turned to his crew.
"This is the girl."
"She shut my son's wedding on a hundred and eighty people."
"We're offering thirty grand to make it right."
He let them chew on that.
"Thirty grand is generous."
A couple of men nodded.
A welder looked down at his plate.
Wes got out of the driver's side.
He came around and stood by the hood, not by me.
Curt saw him and smiled like a man spotting his banker.
"Novak."
"I put eighty-five a year on your boards."
"Talk to her."
Wes looked at him.
"Talk to her yourself."
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't mention the boards.
He leaned on the hood and folded his arms.
Curt turned back to me.
The smile was gone.
"Pen's right there."
I walked to the table.
I didn't pick up the pen.
I looked at the check under the wrench.
Same number.
Same signature.
"No."
Curt waited, like there'd be more.
There was.
"The bags are mine."
"The thirty's yours."
"Nobody's trading."
I walked past the table to the stack.
Bag two was on top.
I could tell from the corners it was books.
I got it on my shoulder anyway.
I carried it across the lot to Wes's SUV.
Wes opened the hatch.
He held it up.
He didn't touch the bag.
I went back for bag three.
When I turned around, two of Curt's men had set down their plates.
One of them was the worker from the courtyard.
He was the one who'd waited while I took the tin.
He picked up bag four.
The other one took five and six, one in each hand.
Nobody said anything.
Curt said, "Hey."
They kept walking.
The bags went into the back of Wes's SUV, one after another.
Wes folded the back seats flat to make room.
Bag one went in last, half empty, tied off with a knot.
The other twenty employees watched while their brats went cold.
Curt didn't stop them.
In front of his own crew, he couldn't.
The worker set the last bag in and nodded to me.
Then he went back and picked up his plate.
Curt pulled the check out from under the wrench.
He folded it into his shirt pocket.
"My lawyer wants this in front of a judge by Christmas."
I closed the hatch myself.
At 9:00 PM Wes let me into Harbor Point through a side door.
The rink lights were at a quarter.
The ice was gray and smooth and empty.
He had two cups of frozen custard from a stand on Layton.
Mine was butter pecan.
He'd asked Dawn.
We sat on the home bench with our feet on the rubber floor.
The cold came up through my sneakers.
We traded worst shifts.
I told him about a bus rollover on I-43, nine patients and four beds.
He told me about a reefer trailer that died outside Des Moines.
"Forty thousand pounds of frozen pizza."
"In July."
"I sat in the cab with it for eleven hours."
"Did you save it?"
"Half."
"I sold the company two years later."
"Because of the pizza?"
"Because I missed hockey."
I laughed with custard on my spoon.
Then I set the cup on the boards.
"You keep not saving me."
He looked at me.
"In the lobby, the bay, the box."
"Today."
"You just stand there."
"Why?"
"You never asked."
I thought about that.
In the hallway I'd told him I didn't need pity.
He'd listened.
He'd listened every time since.
I leaned over and kissed him first.
He tasted like vanilla.
He kissed me back like he'd been waiting to be asked.
At 11:40 PM I sat on Dawn's living room floor with fourteen bags.
Dawn was asleep in her recliner with the TV on mute.
I sorted them the way I'd sort a waiting room.
Clothes went in one pile.
Scrubs went in another.
Books went against the wall.
Mom's tin sat on the coffee table, where I could see it.
Bag seven was shoes.
Bag eight was my bathroom drawer, dumped in whole.
Bag nine was the junk drawer.
There were chargers.
There were takeout menus.
There was a roll of quarters.
At the bottom, wrapped in a dish towel, was something flat and hard.
I knew the shape before I unwrapped it.
The screen was cracked corner to corner.
I'd stopped using it in 2025.
I pressed the side button.
Nothing.
Bag nine held my old phone.
Dead.