Nobody made a big production of the paperwork sitting in a drawer, waiting for August. It was just there, quietly true, the way most of the best things about that summer were quietly true.
I got a summer job at the hardware store, the same one where Mom and Marcus had first met, mostly as a joke between the three of us that turned into an actual paycheck. My manager, an older man named Gus who’d worked there thirty years, asked me once why a kid with a brand new car needed a summer job at all.
“Long story,” I told him. “The car’s actually for sale, if you know anyone looking.”
He didn’t ask further, though I caught him watching me with something like curiosity for the rest of that shift.
Gus brought it up again a week later, slower this time, more careful.
“You know,” he said, restocking a shelf of paint rollers beside me, “your mom and that fella of hers met in aisle six, right over there. Told me the story myself once, years back, before you were even part of the picture yet.”
