Stay Until the Snow

As a kid, I took everything apart. The trick was getting it back together before Dad noticed.

After college, that particular skill got me a job as a live-in companion and personal care assistant. The pay was outrageous. So was the challenge of the man I’d been hired to look after. He used a wheelchair, wanted nothing to do with anyone, and had already driven away seven assistants.

His mother took one look at me and decided someone his own age might have a chance.

“Keep it simple,” she whispered outside his bedroom. “Don't stare. Just help where you can.”

Then the lock clicked.

She went white. “Gray? Open the door. Don’t scare your mother like this.”

The house manager's spare key wouldn't turn. Everyone started talking at once.

I pulled a bobby pin out of my hair.

“Want me to try?”

When the door opened, I forgot how to breathe.

Graham Sterling, the golden boy from my high school, sat on the other side of it. The boy I'd spent years trying to get over.

His eyes caught on my face. For one impossible second, I thought he remembered me.

Then his expression shut down.

“Get out.”

Chapter 1

People called my dad the neighborhood appliance doctor. He could mend pretty much anything, provided it didn't involve feelings.

Frank Harper had raised me behind the counter at Harper Repair, our little appliance shop on the west side of Bellweather, New York. While other kids learned piano, I learned to take apart a toaster. By the time I could reach the workbench without a stool, I knew which drawers held screws and which ones held Dad's emergency candy.

He felt bad about the piano lessons. I felt bad that he thought I wanted them.

I liked finding the small, stubborn thing that stopped a machine from working. Sometimes the broken part wasn't even the interesting part. Sometimes you could move something, change a fitting, make the whole thing easier to use. Dad taught me to look before buying a replacement. I got so good at looking that he started checking what I'd taken apart before he went to bed.

Other parents wanted their kids to make it big. Dad would have promised to go vegetarian if it meant I’d only take apart something he could afford to replace.

“Something small today, Riley,” he'd say. “Preferably something I can afford to replace.”

All that carrying and hauling had made me strong, too. Dad still tried to take the heavy end of everything. I still let him think he had it.

When I graduated from college, my classmates scattered toward big tech companies and jobs in New York, Boston, and Chicago. Dad asked about all of them during our video calls. Then he'd ask whether I'd heard anything promising. Then he'd look over his shoulder at the shop and go quiet.

I knew that look. He missed me. He also thought saying so would make me come home, which would mean he'd ruined my life.

So I didn't make him say it. On graduation day, I packed my bags and caught a bus to Bellweather.

I reached the repair shop in time to find a dirty sneaker planted on his workbench.

Three of the neighborhood punks stood around him. They were older than the last time I'd seen them, but they'd apparently put no work into their manners.

“Come on, sir,” the one with his foot on the bench said. “Just sign. It'll be easier for everybody.”

Dad stood very still, holding a paper he'd folded and unfolded until one edge had gone soft.

I put down my suitcase.

The first smack knocked the sneaker off the bench. I caught the other two around the back of the head before any of them turned properly. My palm stung all the way to my wrist.

“What the hell—”

The speaker saw me.

“Riley?”

“Move.”

They moved.

This wasn't a new relationship. Dad's repairs had been undercutting the people who sold cheap, unreliable appliances for years. They wanted customers buying replacements. He kept telling people their old ones had years left in them.

When I was little, the harassment mostly came after dark. A broken window. Damage to the door. Dad would sweep up and tell me not to worry. I'd head out with a toy staff, looking for someone to worry on his behalf. I hadn't always found the right kid. The neighborhood had developed a broad, healthy respect for my willingness to try.

Now I picked up the paper.

It was a shop transfer agreement. They wanted the business and the right to take over the premises. For nothing.

“Explain,” I said.

The boy nearest the door looked at Dad, then at my hand.

“We're just passing along a message. The sellers said they'll cover the settlement money if he gives up the shop. Please talk to him.”

“What settlement money?”

Dad closed his eyes.

Little by little, I got it out of them. He'd repaired an electric kettle, replacing a faulty power connector. The owner now claimed it had sparked at home, frightening an older relative so badly she'd fallen and ended up in the hospital.

They had photographs, paperwork, and a story ready to go. They wanted $40,000. Or the shop.

Dad knew he'd been set up. I could see it in the way he wouldn't look at the men. But somebody was in the hospital, and he couldn't stop thinking about that. He'd spent his life making sure the things he handed back were safe. They'd found exactly where to hurt him.

On some little jobs, he made a dollar or two after parts and expenses. Most of what the shop earned had gone into keeping us fed and getting me through school. There wasn't a spare fortune hiding under the counter.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked.

“You had finals. Then graduation.”

As if there would ever have been a convenient day to tell me.

I opened the front door and held it.

“Out. I'll find the money.”

One of them started to speak.

“And if you come in here to threaten him again, you won't be walking out this comfortably.”

They hurried past my suitcase. Dad watched me shut the door, the unsigned agreement still trembling in his hands.