The Load-Bearing Wall
Comic literary fiction · A hardware store · 14 chapters · 31,959 words · free EPUB
Steve Roberts runs his family hardware chain into a spectacular midlife crisis, then decides the only honest way back is to rebuild the flagship store himself — one aisle, one marriage, and one load-bearing wall at a time.
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From Chapter 1
The fluorescent lights hummed at a frequency Steve had learned to ignore, the same way he'd learned to ignore the pile of unpaid vendor invoices sitting on his desk, the same way he ignored the fact that it was barely Tuesday and he'd already checked his email fourteen times. He stood in aisle seven of the Flagship Store, clipboard pressed against his ribs like a shield, and counted boxes of drywall anchors.
One. Two. Three. Four.
He liked counting. Counting was honest. A number either matched or it didn't. There was no ambiguity in arithmetic, unlike the silent treatment from his son, who hadn't spoken to him directly in three weeks except to demand the charger or complain about the Wi-Fi, or the look Marla gave him—sharp, assessing, as if he were a spreadsheet she couldn't reconcile.
Doug came around the corner pushing a cart loaded with return merchandise, his uniform shirt hanging loose on a frame that had shrunk ten years but refused to accept it. He smelled like Old Spice and peppermint, the cologne-and-candy combination that had been his signature since the nineties.