Chapter 4 - The Sound of the Gate
By Tuesday evening, the silence in our house had changed. It wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence of Sunday night; it was the quiet of a storm that had finally broken, leaving the air washed clean and smelling of pine and damp earth.
Dwight came home at six, carrying a large cardboard box filled with spare compressor valves and a white bakery box tied with pink string.
He set the box on the kitchen island, washed his hands at the sink, and pulled the lid off the bakery box. Inside was a brand-new chocolate fudge cake with eight fresh candles already stuck into the icing—this time with blue frosting stars piped around the edges.
"The other one was bad luck," Dwight said simply, not looking at me as he reached into the cupboard for plates. "We’re doing the volcano over. Proper this time."
Cal, who was sitting at the kitchen table with his ice pack forgotten on the counter, let out a loud, genuine laugh for the first time in three days. "Can we use the red food coloring twice as much?"
"We can use the whole bottle," Dwight said, winking at him.
Later that night, after Cal was finally asleep in his bed—his breathing deep and regular, the white bandage over his eyebrow looking small and harmless against his forehead—Dwight and I sat out on the back patio in the cool September air.
The stars over Rogers were sharp and bright, piercing through the dark silhouette of the oak trees at the back of our yard.
Dwight reached across the space between the lawn chairs and took my hand. His fingers were rough, calloused from years of wrenching on heavy metal machines, but his grip was steady.
"Your phone stopped buzzing around three," he said softly.
"Trisha left a voicemail," I said, staring out at the dark lawn where the little card table still leaned against the fence. "She said the landlord gave her until tomorrow morning to find a co-signer or clear her equipment out of the studio."
"And your mom?"
"Sent a text saying we’re dead to them." I let out a long, slow breath that I felt all the way down in my toes. "She said we ruined Thanksgiving before it even started."
Dwight was quiet for a moment. He squeezed my hand, then pulled a small slip of paper out of his shirt pocket—a receipt from the hardware store down on Walnut Street.
"I bought a new gallon of WD-40 on my way home," he said casually. "That screen door in the kitchen was squeaking every time you walked through it. Fixed it right up."
May you like
I leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling the familiar, solid weight of him against me. For the first time in six years, the front gate didn't rattle in the wind, and nobody was standing outside waiting for me to pay their way.
"Good," I whispered into the dark. "It was about time."
