Pretend You Love Me by Julie Anne Peters Page B

behind the shop and sat for a minute, trying to slow my pounding heart. I swore I wouldn’t do this;
     wouldn’t come here. I’d respect his wishes, his decision.
    Respect.
    He didn’t extend it to me. All the times I’d come to work with Dad, come to the shop, we’d make a day of it. A pit stop at
     the Suprette for a couple of sticky buns and a quart of orange juice. Our favorite breakfast. He’d pour the juice into his
     coffee mug, then mix it with vodka when he thought I wasn’t looking.
    I was always looking, Dad.
    I turned off the truck. I got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. I could just run in, get what I needed, get out. The
     back door key was still on the windowsill where it always was. Only over the years it’d been incorporated into a spongy spiderweb.
     The door still required a good heft of shoulder. Dad vowed he’d fix that loose frame. Someday, he’d said. Someday.
    “You ran out of somedays, didn’t you, Dad?” I flicked the light switch. Nothing. Of course, the electricity would be off.
     What was I thinking, that everything was the same?
    Some things were. Dad’s two oak filing cabinets,
circa
1940. His steel desk. The stockroom shelves of PVC pipe and copper tubing, bathroom fixtures, valves, vent caps, flare plugs,
     flex connectors. When I was little and Dad would bring me to work with him, he’d plop me on the braided rug behind his desk
     and give me boxes of elbows and wyes and flare nuts and male and female adapters and nipples and stub outs and tees and unions
     and compression caps. I’d play for hours and hours fitting all the parts together, screwing and piecing. Everything fit perfectly.
     Like life. No leaks.
    What was I saying? Life leaked from every loose coupling. There wasn’t enough plumber’s putty in all the world to keep the
     life from leaking out of Dad.
    Stop it, I admonished myself. He’d made his choice.
    That was the part I was having trouble with. His choosing to die.
    The building still belonged to us, at least. Great-Grandpa Szabo had built it himself, brick by brick. From the ground up,
     he’d built ourreputation, the family business. He meant for it to stay in the family. Forever. It would have too, if only Dad had trusted
     me.
    Shut up, brain. It’s not his fault.
    Whose fault is it?
    Darryl’s, if anyone. He trashed the business.
    Breathe in deeply; hold, hold. Don’t let it get to you, I told myself. Control. Action. I released my breath, along with the
     tension in my muscles. In my jaw, my stomach. It’s all about control.
    Action and control.
    Dad’s toolbox lay open on his desk. I closed the lid and latched it; noticed a stack of mail in his outbox. For some reason,
     I riffled through the envelopes: Rural Phone and Electric, Farmer’s Insurance, Aquastar Heaters, the Mercantile—
    “Dammit, Darryl,” I cursed him out loud. “The least you could’ve done is paid the bills. He trusted you.”
    He trusted you, Darryl. He trusted you with the business. The least you could’ve done is cared.

    Nel was swabbing the floor when I pushed through the café doors at the tavern. She flung the mop down and rushed over to meet
     me. To hug me. “Mike, you’re a lifesaver,” she said.
    “I thought I was an angel.”
    She cupped my chin. “That too. I found the shutoff valve, at least.” The hardwood floor was damp and discolored around the
     booths, and the whole place reeked of sewage. Poor Nel. She’d be bleaching for days. The phone rang and she hustled around
     the bar to answer it. “You know where everything is in the bathrooms?” She lifted the receiver.
    “I’ll find it.”
    “Hello? Oh, Miss Millie. I just wanted to call and tell you I had to close early today….”
    Miss Millie. She’d assumed Dad’s exalted position of town drunk after he’d relinquished the honor.
    Both restrooms had been mopped, but there was still standing water around the toilets. I’d never worked on these particular
     units. They were