Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

DYLAN

My daddy died on Tuesday. Someone told me that was three days ago. But from the moment I got to the hospital and they informed me, time did a funny thing. It stretched out for a singular moment across an infinite expanse and then played on a loop at one hundred miles per hour. That probably doesn’t make sense unless it makes sense. You have to be part of the club. The Dead Parents Club.

The Dead Parents Club is an umbrella of clubs really. Your membership could be to The Dead Moms Club. It could be to The Dead Dads Club. It could also be The Orphan Club, meaning both are gone.

Technically, I’m a member of the Orphan Club, but Momma died when I was little and I don’t remember her at all. So my heart—not living or feeling in technicalities—is planted firmly in The Dead Dads Club.

But as I said, it’s Friday night. His “celebration of life” is tomorrow, and I’m currently trying to expend nervous energy by cleaning out his tool shed. I bet you didn’t know a man could own exactly one million different screwdrivers. Or that the best way—and I do mean the absolute best way—to organize your nails and screws is by putting them in coffee cans and old peanut butter jars.

My daddy was a pack rat. A moment ago, I found an old gym bag stuffed full of PVC pipe.

I curse under my breath, mumbling to myself as I set one of the full trash bags into the dumpster I pulled over here. I can’t be too loud, or my namesake, Aunt Margaret, will hear me. Of course, I’ve never been called Margaret a day in my life. I’ve always been Maggie to my dad and Dylan to everyone else. Apparently, my mother was a big fan of Bob Dylan. Thus, Margaret Dylan was born.

Every time she hears me cussing, she comes out on the back porch and asks me if I need any help. I know she doesn’t actually want to help. That woman couldn’t tell a flathead screwdriver from a hole in the wall. If I’m being honest, she’s probably clutching her pearls at my profanity. She and Dad weren’t exactly close. They loved each other, but they had very different opinions about what has value and what doesn’t. Despite being raised by the same parents, she values money while he valued people and relationships.

If you ask me, I wish he’d valued money just a little bit. Otherwise, Stanley’s Hardware—the one and only hardware store located in Magnolia Ridge, North Carolina—would not be beating foreclosure back with a stick.

For the record, I blame most of it on the fact that even though we’re over an hour’s drive from any big city, you can still go shopping on your phone while sitting on the toilet and get it delivered to your door in two days. It’s a business model that’s tough to beat.

“You need any help over there?” Aunt Margaret calls from the porch.She must have bionic ears.

I’ll just have to think all my cusses really loudly in my head but not actually say them out loud. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait to do that?” she asks.

“I’m sure,” I say, keeping it short. I love that woman. I really do. She was a good aunt to me as a kid. But I’m counting down the days until she leaves to go back to her home in Raleigh, where she and her husband and their four Yorkies live. In case you’re wondering, their names are Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, and I get a Christmas card every year of them wearing tiny dog sweaters in various holiday prints that my aunt hand stitched. Yes, I too, wish I was making that up.

I open the last coffee can on this particular shelf, only to find three-inch roofing nails inside. Jesus, Dad, ever heard of storage bins?

“Ain’t no sense in wasting money, Maggie. These work fine.”

So I guess you could say he cared about money a little bit.

My mind is racing with everything I have to do this weekend and on Monday. My friend Eden says I should take a few more days off to “sit with my grief,” but I can’t stomach the idea of sitting like a lump—the way I have for the past three days—any longer.

On Tuesday, Eden drove me home from the hospital, guided me to the couch, where I curled into a ball, and then tucked a blanket over me. She stayed with me all night, camping in the recliner next to me and checking on me every time I shifted from one side to the other.

The next morning, she made me scrambled eggs and toast and fed me a few bites to make sure I actually ate some of it. Then she took me to the funeral home, where I signed paperwork. It was probably important paperwork I should’ve read first, but the guy was talking and his voice was muffled in my ears, and I just signed when he pointed.

When she took me home, she made me take a bath. She ran the water, added salts and bubbles, and even helped me undress. I sat in the water while she used a cup to splash water over my back and shoulders.

Eden has been my very best friend since we were toddlers. Our moms were friends, and her mom has been there for me and my dad in countless ways. Eden is like my sister, so pardon me if I’m not at all concerned about her seeing me naked. I think in my sadness, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She didn’t leave my side until my aunt arrived and even then, it was only long enough to go home and shower and change her clothes.

She has a husband at home, but even so, when she came back, it was with a bag. When I told her she didn’t have to stay with me, she said, “Tom is a grown man. He will be fine.” And that was all the time spent on the subject.

Today she’s done a good job at being a buffer between me and Aunt Margaret, who informed me this morning that she wasn’t going to fight me for my dad’s store and it was all mine.

Um, thanks?

Sorry Aunt Margaret, but I didn’t see you stocking any shelves after school and on the weekends, or learning to run the register, or teaching yourself how to do the books to save money. I didn’t see you helping Dad keep it afloat during the hard years or dropping out of college your freshman year to help him run it. So, thanks, I guess.

One more day , I think to myself. Just one more day and she will be gone. And then I get to figure out how to save my dad’s store.