Now for the part Tara didn’t know.
When she left, I was a day laborer. A guy with a truck and a tool belt and two babies, taking whatever work came. That’s the man she walked away from, and I think it’s the man she assumed she was coming back to — a tired, struggling single dad who’d be so grateful for a little help that he’d let her waltz right back in.
But seventeen years is a long time, and I am very, very good at my work.
I never got rich. Let me be clear about that. But I got good, and then I got known, and about eight years ago I started my own company. Small. Honest. Reliable. The kind of outfit where the owner shows up to the job himself. I named it Boone & Sons, partly as a joke, partly as a promise, back when “Sons” were in middle school. It did well. Not yacht-and-second-home well. But a nice house, paid for. College funds for two boys, filled. A new truck in the driveway, with the name on the door.
