A Husband's Watch

Chapter 4

With his good arm, Darryl yanked open the doors to the freestanding garage out behind the house, his nostrils flaring at the blended scents of motor oil, paste wax, gasoline. With a reverence usually reserved for undressing his wife, he slowly peeled back the tarp he kept over the restored ’59 Big Bird. His breath caught, as it did every time, at how beautiful she was. It was probably stupid, hanging on to the car when he couldn’t even afford the insurance to drive it—it’d probably been a good three, four years since he’d last taken her for a spin—but to this day, he remembered the kick to his gut when he caught sight of her in Coop Hastings’s garage. More rust than paint, her white vinyl roof ripped and cracked, her chrome trim dull as a dead man’s eyes…and Darryl knew, with all the intensity of a sixteen-year-old in love, that it was up to him to save her. And if saving her meant months of agony and grossness by working his ass off on old man Yaeger’s farm to earn the three hundred dollars to buy her…well, let’s just say he’d yet to regret it.

He skimmed his hand along the gleaming, icy fender, restored as near as he could manage to the factory-finish Cherry Red, her new roof as pristine and unmarked as fresh snow. Underneath the hood sat a completely rebuilt V-8, packed with three hundred horses itching to be given their heads. He’d even managed to track down a decent set of white leather seats to replace the trashed originals. Oh, yeah, she was seventeen feet of sex on wheels, his Marilyn, with her lush curves and velvet purr. And she was all his, a thought that, for whatever reason, somewhat dulled the pain of the news he’d just been given.

“Darryl?”

He hadn’t heard Faith’s approach, despite the thin layer of ice covering the ground. She was standing in the doorway to the garage, her hair blowing every which way, Nicky in her arms. Behind her, Sierra chased Dot around the yard, giggling her head off. Or the dog was chasing her, it was hard to tell.

Darryl’s gaze veered back to Faith, who looked like she’d been lit up from inside. Her hair was shorter, too, he noticed. Frankly, he liked it long, but he damn sight knew better than to come between a woman and her hair. “I thought you said you canceled your appointment with Luralene?”

“I did, but I ran into Luralene in the Homeland. She took one look at my head and did everything short of dragging me bodily back to the shop. It was a freebie,” she said, as if she was trying to cover her butt. “Well, sort of. I traded for some of those blackberry preserves your mother gave us, since we’d be in our nineties before they got used up. Anyway…I’ve got news! I got a job!”

Darryl frowned. “Come again?”

“A job, at the Homeland.” She swiped Nicky’s curls off his forehead. “As a cashier, startin’ next week. Now I know this is going to take some adjustment, especially since you’ll have to supervise the older kids with their homework and on weekends. I know—the weekend part is the pits, but it’s the only job in town. That I can do, anyway. The pay’s not great, but it’ll help fill the gap, at least. And there’s benefits, if I end up staying on for a while….” Her brows pushed together. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Because he felt like that roof had caved in on him all over again? “How on earth did this happen?”

“I’m not sure, it certainly wasn’t something I’d consciously thought about. But there I was, trying to figure out how we were going to manage, and then somebody, um, at Luralene’s said she’d heard there was going to be an opening, and, well, the pieces just sort of fell into place. The manager—Roya Gibbons from church, you remember her?—hired me on the spot. Darryl,” she said with one of her exasperated breaths.

“What?”

“I’m only goin’ to work at the Homeland, not runnin’ off with the circus.” She hitched the baby higher up on her hip. “This is a good thing, okay? Go with it.”

Darryl lightly banged the heel of his hand against the front fender, then looked at his wife, his muscles pulling at his temples. “Did I miss something? I thought you always said you didn’t want to work outside the house?”

“We don’t exactly have any choice in the matter, do we? And I’m not about to watch my children starve because of some macho pride thing about you being the designated breadwinner.”

“We’re not in any immediate danger of starving, Faith. Maybe we’ve got to cut back on the frills right now—”

“Like what? The gas bill? The mortgage? Lord, Darryl—when’s the last time we all went to the movies? Or out to eat someplace other than Ruby’s? We were already riding about as fine a line as you could get. Of course…I suppose we could let my parents help—”

“Don’t even say that.”

“Well, then, buddy, it’s me or them. Take your pick.”

“It’s just…this seems so, I don’t know. Upside down.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said in that tone of voice that sends chills up a man’s spine, and not in a good way. Against his better judgment, Darryl faced her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I feel good about this, you know? Real good, in fact. That I’ll be doing something concrete instead of sitting around and worrying to death about the situation. And for another thing…”

She lowered the baby to his feet, keeping her fingers curled in his hood so he wouldn’t topple over. “Look—I haven’t regretted a single moment I’ve been home with the kids,” she said, “and that’s the God’s honest truth. And I doubt seriously I would have considered looking for outside work if this crisis hadn’t pushed me into it. But…oh, it’s hard to explain.” She drew a deep breath, then turned to him, her brow crinkled. “It’s like…never going hungry, but never getting dessert, either. After a while you begin to feel…well, a little cheated, I guess.”

“And you’re blaming me for that?”

“No,” she said immediately. “How could I, when…?” She sucked in a breath, as if trying to regroup. “It’s just that you’ve always been sure of who you were, what you wanted to do…” Her sentence ended in a half-assed shrug.

A million and one emotions churning inside him, Darryl looked out over the yard, trying desperately to wrap his head around what she was saying. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose if it’s dessert you’re looking for, a grocery store would be a logical place to look for it.”

A soft laugh drifted from her lips. “At least it’s a chance to be somebody besides ‘Mom’ for a few hours a day.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, stubbornly.

“I did. Do. It just not all I want. Not anymore.” Her gaze flicked in his direction. “And then there’s Heather.”

“Heather…? Oh. You mean her dancing?”

“I know you think it’s foolishness—” Faith touched his arm when he blew out a breath “—and maybe nothing ever will come of it. Then again, I don’t see anybody with a crystal ball around here, do you? So who knows? But the point is, the child’s never asked for anything else her entire life.”

“We’ve already had this conversation.”

“So we’re having it again.” Faith reached over to stroke the Bird’s front fender; Darryl had to wrestle with envy for a second or two, but he got over it. “You remember telling me how badly you wanted this car,” Faith said, “and what you had to do to get it? Well, did you know your daughter’s been trolling for odd jobs herself, anything to earn a few dollars to pay for her lessons?”

His gaze snapped to hers. “On her own?”

“Of course, on her own, You don’t think I’d put the child up to it, do you? And guess what? She’s got herself two little jobs, helping Heddy Lancaster up at the library shelve books on Saturday mornings and reading to Minnie Hawkins’s old mother a couple hours a week.”

“Good Lord. How’s she think she’s gonna do all that and her schoolwork, and take dance lessons besides?”

“Exactly what I asked her. But she’s got it all figured out, showed me a schedule and everything.”

Feeling woefully left behind, Darryl walked over to the open garage door, leaning his good arm up against the frame. “Lord, Faithie…everything’s changing, isn’t it?”

“It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose,” she said softly behind him.

He grunted, then twisted to look at her. “You really think this job thing will make you happy?”

Long moments passed before she spoke. “I’ve never been unhappy, Darryl,” she said at last. “It’s just lately I’ve been feeling…I don’t know. Unsettled. Itchy. Like…like I needed to give birth to myself, or something.”

How anybody could look determined and vulnerable at the same time, Darryl had no idea. But his gut constricted with the urge to touch her, to draw her close and bury his cheek in all that bouncy hair, to let her soft scent both soothe and inflame the hunger gnawing at his insides. Only that’s when it hit him like an avalanche that he had no idea who his wife was anymore. Or worse, how he fit in with this new life she envisioned for herself.

“What do you want from me, Faith?” he said quietly, and her eyes veered to his. Finally, her mouth tilted into a small smile.

“Patience?”

Darryl shoved his good hand into his jeans pocket and let his gaze roam the yard. “Don’t you sometimes wish we could turn back the clock? To when we were still too young and dumb to know how hard it was gonna be?”

“Oh, Lord, no,” she said with a low laugh, her curls gleaming in the waning light when she shook her head. “I may not know who I am now, but for sure I don’t want to be that clueless eighteen-year-old again.” She shivered, then bent down to heft the baby into her arms, smiling for him when he grabbed her face with his pudgy little mitts and gurgled at her. “I need to grow, Darryl,” she said, her voice soft as a breeze. “We need to grow. So maybe this challenge has come along so we can do just that. Land sakes, it’s cold out here…c’mon, baby,” she called to Sierra. “Let’s get inside.”

Pretty sure it wasn’t his still sore ribs constricting his breathing, Darryl watched them troop back to the house before he slowly drew the tarp back up over the T-bird. He didn’t get it—one of the things that had drawn him to Faith from the beginning was how uncomplicated she’d been. Easygoing. Like him. How their roles had been so neatly defined—protector, protectee. Simple. Predictable.

Although, if he thought about it for more than two seconds, he didn’t suppose he could blame her for feeling whatever she was feeling. Hell, her entire world had just been turned ass over teakettle, what else was she supposed to feel? Except…except she’d said she’d already begun to feel this way long before the tornado.

Dammit! Hadn’t he been doing all along just what he’d promised? To be there for her and the kids, to provide for them, to put them first… If that had been enough at the beginning, why wasn’t it enough now? Because he knew it hadn’t been his imagination that once upon a time she’d looked at him as if he’d been her world. When he and the kids had been all she’d needed, when she’d found the same comfort in routine that he did. Only, since he had no idea what he’d done to earn those looks at the outset, he had even less of an idea how to go about getting them back now.

The knot in his chest tightened, rising to lodge in his throat as he stood in the open doorway to the garage, the icy air making his cheeks tingle. Slowly, steadily, he breathed out the temptation to panic, that his marriage—hell, his life—had hit a slippery patch and was skidding out of control.

Right toward the edge of a cliff.

Except…except a good driver, a smart driver, knows to turn with the skid, not against it, in order to get straightened out again.

Huh.

He flicked off the light switch, plunging Marilyn into darkness, then clanged shut the garage door. His cowboy boots, which he’d taken to wearing because they were a helluva lot easier to get on single-handed than his lace-up work boots, crunched the brittle, frosted grass as he crossed the yard. The sky was cottony and heavy, as if it was fixing to snow. He hoped not—shoveling snow one-handed was going to be a real bitch.

Again the panic rose in his throat. Again he refused to let it get a foothold. Because right now, he was steering with the skid. Avoiding tailspins. Focusing on nothing except getting back to normal, on doing whatever it took to win back that look of adoration he used to see in his wife’s eyes.

She was in the kitchen, fixing graham crackers and peanut butter for after-school snacks. Her cheeks were still flushed from the cold, making her blue eyes even brighter when she looked over at him. Tenderness, mixed with a healthy dose of anxiety, stole his breath. The one thing he feared most in the world was letting this woman down, of not being the man she needed him to be.

“So…what will I have to do?”

Her brows dipped. “Excuse me?”

“Around the house. Taking care of the kids. While you’re at work.” He rubbed his cast, as if he could will life back into his arm. “You think I can manage one-handed?”

Her expression thoughtful, Faith set the knife on top of the open jar, licked a smudge of peanut butter off her thumb. Even after all this time, even with two kids and a dog there with them, the gesture was enough to mess with his breathing. “With some modifications, I’m sure you’d do fine.”

“Okay, then. If me being Mr. Mom for a couple months is what it’s gonna take to…to get us through this, then I’ll just have to do the best job I can.”

Slowly, Faith smiled. And Darryl felt the tires once again grip the road, heading in the right direction. Except then she said, “By the way, your mother called a little bit ago, inviting us all to supper on Friday night,” and Darryl realized he didn’t dare relax behind the wheel just yet.

Try as she might, Faith couldn’t actually remember Darryl ever being afraid to go inside his parents’ house before this. Well, maybe afraid was too strong a word. Reluctant, maybe. But then, in his shoes, she’d be halfway to the next county by now.

She hauled Nicky out of his car seat, then joined her husband, standing in front of the house. The sky was already twilight-bruised, dark enough for his folks to have already turned on their Christmas lights. Thousands of them, outlining the roof, snaking up the porch posts, smothering every tree and bush in the yard, flashing and twinkling and glowing with irritating cheerfulness. Still, the kids were beside themselves, oohing and ahhing and jumping around like fleas, squealing their little hearts out. And that’s what was important, not her disgruntled mood. Even Heather, who being nearly twelve was far too dignified to run around and act like a child, stood in the center of the yard with her arms wrapped around herself, awestruck.

“Look, Mama!” Sierra yelled. “The horsie moves his head!”

A few feet away, Darryl chuckled. It was the first time he’d looked even remotely relaxed since they’d left the house. “That’s a reindeer, sweet pea. You know, like Santa has on his sleigh?” He pointed to the roof, where a lighted St. Nick and more deer precariously perched. Along with an angel, a snowman and a three-piece Nativity scene. L.B. and Renee believed in covering all the bases.

The front door swung open, instantly sucking all the kids into the house, trading them, it seemed, for the scent of roast pork and cornbread and some kind of pie. “Y’all coming in?” L.B. bellowed, but Darryl said they’d be there in a minute, Nicky wanted to see the lights. Actually, Nicky was giving Faith that “Uh…should I be scared?” look, but that was beside the point. The door closed again, bouncing the plastic holly wreath. Anxiety once more vibrated from her husband, vaporizing what little sense of peace she’d been able to hang on to.

For all they seemed to have gotten over the immediate hurdle of Darryl’s accepting their temporary role reversal, tension still clung to their marriage like baked-on grease. Not really a surprise, considering it had taken her about ten seconds to figure out he was only going along with her as a means to get back in her good graces. Or at least in her bed. Or her back in his, whatever. But that was Darryl for you. She’d never seen a person so set in his ways, so content to live his life the same way, day in and day out. For somebody who refused to give up an article of clothing until it literally disintegrated off his body, or who had a fit when his favorite TV show changed to a new night, that tornado had flattened a lot more than his business.

But that was nothing compared with the hell of having your wife put your sex life on hold.

Not a conscious decision on Faith’s part, but with everything going on, she just hadn’t been in the mood, for one thing. Which was very strange for her, because in theory, sex ranked right up there with long hot baths and Baskin-Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream as one of God’s great gifts. Okay, in practice it did, too. So why she was in this I’d-rather-sit-on-an-anthill mood, she had no idea. She just was.

And she was losing the feeling in her cheeks from the cold.

She looked over, frowning. There he stood, staring at the lights. “Darryl?”

“I know, I’m working up to it.”

Faith sighed. “Or we could just wait until your mother sees me standing behind the cash register, let her draw her own conclusions.”

“I already told L.B. about you going to work,” he said, which was news to her. “Which is why I’m still out here.”

“When’d you do that?”

“Yesterday, actually.”

“I see.” Her gaze swung to the blinding house. “You know, this is not exactly a groundbreaking event. Me going to work, I mean.”

“Tell that to L.B. Besides, it’s not about you going to work. It’s why you have to go to work that’s the problem.”

“Only if you let him make it one.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who got reamed for not having a backup plan.”

“Oh, and he did?”

“Actually, yeah. He was insured up the wazoo.”

“When he was just starting out, when you guys were still babies?” She shook her head. “I somehow doubt it. He was lucky, Darryl. Real lucky, that nothing happened. I do know where your father’s coming from,” she said gently. “I always have. But this isn’t about him, it’s about us. How we decide to work through our challenges. And besides, you most certainly do have a backup plan.”

“Oh, yeah? And what might that be?”

“Me,” she said. “Now can we go inside before my ears fall off?”

Although the conversation stayed in safe territory all through supper, Darryl didn’t miss the glances passing between his parents, the unspoken worry like an untouched side dish planted on his mother’s Sears-issue maple dining table right between the mashed potatoes and the three-bean salad. The meal over, it was as if his father’d just scooped it right up and carted it into the TV room, where he was clearly determined to force several helpings down Darryl’s throat, never mind that he’d already had more than his fill before he got there.

The kids were all in the living room, helping his mother decorate the new artificial tree they’d carted home from the Wal-Mart in Claremore earlier, while Faith was down the hall, changing Nicky’s diaper on his parents’ bed. Over the past day or so, the initial panic in the aftermath of the tornado’s damage had given way to something far more terrifying—a sense of foreboding that things were never going to be the same, no matter how much he might want it. Not in his work, and not in his marriage.

At this point, he wasn’t sure which scared the bejesus out of him more.

He wondered now why he’d thought that proving his willingness to handle the house and kids while Faith was at work would be enough to lure her back into their bed. But nope. Not even after he’d told her he’d figured out how to sleep on one side so he wouldn’t snore. So he’d finally ditched the subtle approach and just flat out asked her if she wanted to fool around.

She’d said she was too tired.

Too tired? Since when? In all the time they’d been together, she’d never avoided sex, unless it was that time of the month, she had the flu or something, or she’d just had a baby. Or one of the kids was sick. Other than that, every Tuesday and Friday night, like clockwork, she’d be there in bed, all naked and sweet-smelling, waiting for him. And he’d prided himself on learning where all her sweet spots were, on what each little moan and hitched breath meant, on making himself hold off until she was satisfied. In fact, he had it down to a damn science, is what. Now, suddenly, she didn’t want it anymore? What the—?

“You look like you could use this,” his father said, jerking him out of his thoughts. Darryl almost smiled at the sight of the pair of longnecks in L.B.’s hands. “Or are you still on those painkillers?”

“Hell, no,” he said, relieving his father of the extra bottle. “I stopped those after the first day.” They both took long swallows before Darryl said quietly, “This some kind of peace offering?”

With a grunt, L.B. sank into the worn corduroy recliner that had probably grown roots into the sculpted pile carpet. The “den,” they euphemistically called the converted, fake-paneled half of his parents’ double garage. What it was was a sanctuary for Y chromosomes. His mother’s idea, actually, to keep everybody from “stinking up” the rest of the house. Whatever. Barcaloungers, a pool table and oversize electronics were the order of the day, the air permanently stained with the scent of nachos and hops.

“Maybe,” L.B. said. “I feel bad about coming down on you so hard. It’s just…you know how I feel about…about how it’s going to look, is all.”

So much for the peace offering. Leaning stiffly against the door frame between the den and the kitchen, Darryl forced another swallow of his beer down a tight throat. “To whom?” he finally asked. As if he didn’t know.

“Her parents, for one thing.”

“Dammit, L.B.,” Darryl said quietly, “it wasn’t like I asked that tornado to rip apart the garage. Or my arm. And you know something—I’ve busted my butt these past twelve years to prove myself to Faith and earn her parents’ respect. So how come I can’t seem to get yours?”

His father’s eyebrows shot up. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re so all-fired concerned about what everybody else is gonna think, you haven’t stopped to consider what I might be going through. Because, believe me, the last thing I want is to look like a failure in Faith’s eyes.”

The words had escaped before he’d even known they were there. Silently swearing, Darryl pushed himself away from the doorway and walked over to the window, staring out at the glittering reindeer on his parents’ front lawn.

“You two having problems?”

The worry in his father’s voice scraped through him. He hesitated, then said, “All I’m saying is that it’s going to be a lot easier for Faith and me to sort through this mess without having to deal with your old-fashioned ideas about who’s supposed to do what, on top of everything else. No, maybe I don’t like it either, but right now, I’m up the creek without a paddle. Or much of a boat, for that matter. I can’t work, I have no place to work and…” He stopped.

“And what?”

“Nothing.”

“Cut the bull, Darryl. What’s goin’ on?”

Darryl walked over to lower himself onto the edge of the second recliner, glaring balefully at the cast before lifting his eyes to L.B.’s. “The doctors think I might have some nerve damage in my arm.”

His father stared at him for a good long time before he finally said, “But it’ll go away, won’t it?”

“That’s the part nobody knows.”

“Are you saying…you might not be able to work again?”

“How many one-handed mechanics do you know?”

L.B. let out a curse.

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” Darryl concurred. “The ironic thing is, of course, if I’d died, Faith would at least have gotten the life insurance money. This way…well, frankly, I’m not sure what she’s got.”

“And you can stop that talk right now,” L.B. said, thunking his empty beer bottle on the end table beside the recliner. “It’s a setback, son. Not the end of the world.”

The world, no. His world was something else again. Fixing cars was the only thing he knew how to do. Only thing he’d ever wanted to do, ever since L.B.’d hauled him up to get a look under the hood of their old Ford pickup when Darryl was four years old. He scrubbed a hand down his face and said. “True. But I got an awful lot of ‘I don’t knows’ to work through. Ryan said we can start with therapy soon as this cast gets off, maybe even sooner. I might get better, might even have a full recovery, but I can’t count on it. He said nobody really knew what caused these things, so there was no way to predict what might happen. All we can do is hope for the best.”

L.B. sagged back against the chair. “I take it Faith doesn’t know?”

“No. And I’d like to keep it that way for now. No sense worrying her any more than she already is, especially if the condition clears up on its own in a few weeks. So don’t you tell Mama, either.”

After a moment, his father nodded, then said, “So, what is this, exactly? A numbness or something?”

Darryl shrugged. “Sometimes. Other times my arm hurts like a bitch.”

“So that’s a good sign, right?”

A tight smile stretched across Darryl’s face. “I suppose.” He stood, walking over to stand by the door, listening to his kids’ laughter spilling from the living room on the other side of the kitchen. “You know, everybody says we’re a lot alike, you and me.”

“And how’s that?”

“I don’t really know how to let a woman take care of me, either. It feels…backwards. Unnatural. Like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain.”

His father pushed himself out of the chair and came to stand beside him, planting a firm hand on his shoulder. “Now you listen to me—I don’t care what those doctors say. They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about half the time, anyway. You remember how that hotshot in Tulsa told Edie Samson she had six months to live? That was, what? Ten years ago? And she’s still goin’ strong. So you’re gonna lick this, you know you are. Son, look at me.”

After Darryl carefully twisted around to meet his father’s gaze, L.B. said, “It’s not always easy for me to put my feelings into words, so I probably don’t say this as often as I should, but I’m proud of you. Real proud. You’ve done good by Faith and your kids, as good as any man could have, if not better. And since I didn’t exactly have a shining example of what a father was supposed to be when I was growing up, I can’t take credit for how you turned out, that’s just who you are. And all I know is, whatever it is inside you that’s made you like that, it’s not gonna let you down now.”

It wasn’t until some time later, though, after they were back home, the kids all in bed, that L.B.’s words got through. Darryl had gone to the kitchen to get a snack when the murmuring of the ten-o’clock news lured him to the living room doorway. Already in her robe and pajamas, Faith sat cross-legged on the pulled out sofa bed, the steely light from the TV slicking over her face and arms and breasts as she swiftly folded the mountain of fragrant laundry in front of her, the routine so familiar he could predict her every move—sorting everything into piles like a card shark, snapping out every T-shirt before she folded it so there wouldn’t be any wrinkles, her fingers a blur as she tucked pairs of socks into tight little balls. He stood there, watching, letting the ordinariness, the consistency of the moment seep into his soul, easing the various nagging aches in his battered body. Maybe it wasn’t much, this life of his, but it was his life. And it was real.

Oh, they’d known about each other from toddlerhood; in a town the size of Haven, that went without saying. But oddly enough, their paths hadn’t really crossed all that much. Now and then at church, maybe, or when her mama or daddy came into the filling station and she’d be in the car. She hadn’t struck him as the kind of girl to be stuck up, but she never exactly went out of her way to be friendly, either. So he’d been more than a little amazed when she’d started flirting with him once they reached high school. Didn’t believe it at first, frankly, thinking maybe she’d been put up to it by some of the other girls. Or that maybe she’d turned into one of those people who got off on making the conquest without any intention of following through.

Oh, how wrong he’d been. Because Faith had followed through, all right. Every chance they could get. Not right off the bat—there’d been a whole lot of cold showers in those early days. And Darryl had never once pressured her to go any further than she wanted to. In fact, more often than not, it was him calling a halt to things, if for no other reason than he wanted her respect every bit as much as he wanted her to know she had his. Although the truth of it was, he didn’t just respect her, he’d come about as close to worshipping her as a person could, and still retain at least some ability to function.

Eventually, though, nature won out, and Darryl’d found himself sneaking off to Claremore for condoms. Guess he should’ve read the fine print, though, ’cause that first box was still half-full when Faith told him she was pregnant. Man, he’d been scared. Couldn’t breathe properly for two weeks. Still and all, at least he knew he had something to offer her. Maybe it wasn’t much, by some folks’ standards, but he knew they’d never starve. Cars and trucks always broke down, eventually, especially around here where folks weren’t inclined to trade up every two years, just because. And as long as cars and trucks broke down, they’d need fixing. And that, he was good at. Damn good. So even though the timing hadn’t been ideal, there’d never been a question about him being able to support Faith and the baby. As well as all the babies that had come along afterward.