The young man had raised the shotgun so it rested on his shoulder, a threat she didn’t plan on acknowledging.

“Tell you what. I’ll just leave the cookies on the porch.”

She wished him a nice day and was walking back to the car when the sound of the shot scorched her ears. Falling from the sky were pieces of the silver tin and bits of chocolate chip cookie. The bastard had blown up her offering like a clay pigeon.

Henry

Claudine had turned the dining room into a war room: property deeds and boundary outlines, weather forecasts and fabric swatches covered the table. She never thought for a moment they wouldn’t get it.

If Bill Gates and Paul Allen could work out of a garage, they could work from home. Keeping a low overhead was fine with Henry; they ran off Claudine’s start-up energy, coffee, and hard-boiled eggs. (She wasn’t much of a cook.) Whatever way she wanted it was fine; he wasn’t interested in running a business the way she was. Would rather focus on actual work. Creating the perfect house. A home.

The only hitch was Henry’s drinking. It hadn’t slowed down. It wasn’t so much a habit but an addiction.

Yes, the affair was over. But they’d never once spoken of it. His choice as much as hers. It was better that they dove straight into this next stage in their lives. Calhoun + Calhoun. Still, Steve was never far from his thoughts. Living in a city of less than seven thousand usually meant running into everyone all the time. There were only slightly lower odds during high seasons when the population swelled to around twenty-five thousand. But if you really wanted to, you could make sure it didn’t happen. And he really wanted to. Henry managed to avoid Steve. There was no way he was going to subject himself to that level of shame. Feel like he was nothing. A talentless hack with an adulterous wife. The welcome numbing that came with each drink smothered the rage that built up whenever he thought about it for too long.

He knew Claudine had been going to see Jonathan Miller too much. She was convinced she could get him to come around. The plan was to show him that at his age—he had to be in his late eighties—the property was more a burden than anything else. Didn’t a nice condo with all the amenities sound like the perfect way to finish out his years? Sell the land and buy the comfort.