Under His Roof

CHAPTER IV

The third day in the Bennett house felt twice as long as the first two.

By noon, I had rearranged the clothes in my small dresser three times, wiped down the bathroom counter out of sheer boredom, and walked two laps around the tiny backyard.

Sitting in that quiet bedroom with nothing but my own thoughts was slowly driving me crazy. Every time I looked at my phone, I saw dead silence from the people I used to call my best friends. No texts, no calls, just an endless stream of updates from a world I didn't belong to anymore.

When Mrs. Bennett came home for lunch around one o'clock, carrying a bag of groceries, I was standing in the kitchen staring out the window at the neighbor's fence.

She set the brown paper bags on the table and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.

"You look like a caged bird, Daphne."

"I feel like one," I admitted, turning around. "Is there anything I can do? Anything at all? I can't keep sitting in that room."

Mrs. Bennett smiled softly, pulling a carton of milk from the bag.

"Well, your father mentioned you used to help organize his charity galas. I don't know about galas, but the hardware shop downtown is absolute chaos right now. The inventory system hasn't been updated since 2010, and Mr. Bennett is ready to pull his hair out trying to find parts."

"The hardware shop?" I repeated.

It wasn't Paris, and it certainly wasn't a fashion house, but right now, a hardware shop sounded like absolute freedom.

"I can organize things. I'm actually really good at that."

"Good," she said, tapping the counter. "Because Zeke is down there right now trying to sort through fifty boxes of plumbing fixtures by himself. He could use another set of hands, even if he won't admit it."

My excitement faltered for a fraction of a second.

Spending three hours in a cramped room with Zeke Bennett wasn't exactly my idea of a peaceful afternoon. But the thought of staying in the house alone was worse.

Twenty minutes later, I walked down Main Street toward Bennett Hardware & Supply.

The front of the building looked as old as the rest of the town, with a faded green sign hanging above a dusty glass window displaying lawnmowers and paint cans.

Inside, the air smelled of cedar shavings, motor oil, and old paper. Heavy metal shelves reached all the way to the wooden ceiling, packed tight with tools, ropes, nails, and rows of plastic bins containing parts I couldn't name if my life depended on it.

Mr. Bennett was standing behind a high wooden counter, talking to an older man in coveralls.

When he spotted me, his face brightened.

"Daphne! Martha said you might come down," he called out, leaning over the counter. "Back room is through that swinging door. Zeke's in the stockroom trying to make sense of the new shipment."

I nodded, smoothing the front of my jeans, and pushed through the heavy wooden door into the back of the shop.

The stockroom was smaller than the retail floor, lit by buzzing fluorescent bulbs that hummed quietly overhead. Stacked cardboard boxes lined the walls, some spilling over with copper pipes, brass valves, and black rubber gaskets.

Zeke was standing near the middle of the room, his back turned to me.

He had pulled off his heavy canvas jacket, leaving him in a gray T shirt that showed the line of his shoulders as he lifted a heavy wooden crate onto a metal shelf. His dark hair was sticking up in places, damp near his forehead from working in the warm room.

"Your mom sent me," I said, stopping a few feet away from the doorway.

Zeke didn't drop the crate.

He set it down with a heavy thud, then turned around slowly, wiping his hands on a blue rag he had tucked into his back pocket.

His eyes swept over me, taking in my plain white sweater and clean sneakers.

"She sent you here?" he asked, his voice low and raspy. "To do what?"

"To help," I said, holding my ground. "She said the inventory is a mess."

Zeke let out a short, breathy laugh that had zero humor in it.

He tossed the rag onto a nearby workbench and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Daphne, this isn't a boutique. These boxes weigh forty pounds each, and everything in here is covered in grease. You're going to ruin those shoes."

"I don't care about the shoes," I lied, though a small part of me winced at the thought of oil getting on my leather sneakers. "Just tell me what to do. I know how to organize things."

He stared at me for a long moment, clearly searching for a sign that I was about to give up and go home.

When I didn't move, he sighed, reaching into his pocket to pull out a yellow legal pad and a pen.

"Fine," he said, handing the pad toward me. "Start with those bottom shelves. Write down the part numbers on the brass fittings, count how many are in each box, and cross reference them with the manifest on the desk. Don't touch the top shelves. I'll handle the heavy stuff."

I took the pad, my fingers briefly brushing against his.

His skin was warm, rough, and calloused from manual work.

I pulled my hand back quickly, taking a seat on a small wooden stool near the lowest shelf.

For the first hour, we worked in total silence, broken only by the low hum of the ceiling lights and the occasional rustle of paper.

Watching him work was actually strange.

I was used to men who sat behind glass desks in tailored suits, typing on sleek laptops and ordering people around.

Zeke was completely different.

He moved with a quiet, efficient rhythm, lifting heavy boxes without complaining, checking serial numbers with a focused frown, and stacking wood neatly against the far wall.

There was no wasted motion. Every movement had a purpose.

I picked up a heavy brass valve, turning it over to find the small stamped serial number.

"Is this a four inch or a three inch?" I muttered to myself, squinting at the worn metal.

Zeke paused, holding a crate of iron brackets.

He glanced over his shoulder at the part in my hand.

"Three quarter inch," he said simply. "The four inch ones have the double threading on the flange."

I looked at the valve again, seeing the faint double ridges near the edge.

"Oh. Okay."

He didn't make a joke about it. He didn't laugh at my total lack of hardware knowledge.

He just went back to lifting his crate, setting it on the top shelf with a soft grunt of exertion.

"How long have you worked here?" I asked after another twenty minutes of silent counting, unable to take the quiet anymore.

"Since I was twelve," Zeke replied, his voice muffled slightly as he reached into a high box. "Sweeping floors at first. Started taking inventory when I was fourteen."

"Do you like it?"

He stopped, turning his head to look down at me from where he stood near the ladder.

His expression was hard to read, his gray eyes narrowed slightly in thought.

"It pays the bills," he said flatly. "And it keeps the shop running. My dad's knees are getting bad. He can't stand on the concrete floor for ten hours a day anymore."

I looked over at the doorway leading to the main shop, picturing Mr. Bennett limping slightly as he walked behind the counter earlier.

I hadn't noticed it before, but now that Zeke mentioned it, the slight stiffness in his father's walk made sense.

"So you're staying here? After high school?" I asked softly.

Zeke climbed down off the ladder, stepping onto the concrete floor with a quiet thud.

He picked up a clipboard from the desk, his knuckles turning white around the wooden edge.

"I wanted to go to the trade school two towns over," he said, staring down at the paper. "Mechanical engineering program. But it costs money. And right now, the shop needs the extra hands more than I need a piece of paper."

He said it without self pity, just stating facts like he was reading off an invoice.

But there was a heavy weight underneath his words that I recognized all too well.

It was the feeling of having your choices taken away from you, of watching the future you expected slip out of reach because of circumstances you couldn't control.

For the first time since I arrived in Cedar Ridge, I saw something beyond his cold exterior.

He wasn't just some angry kid holding a grudge over a high school memory.

He was a nineteen year old carrying the weight of his family's survival on his shoulders, working himself to the bone while watching other people live the life he wanted.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, the words slipping out before I could filter them.

Zeke froze.

He looked up from his clipboard, his dark eyebrows pulling together as he stared at me.

The silence in the small back room suddenly felt tight, charged with an intensity that hadn't been there a minute ago.

"Don't," he said, his voice dropping an octave, low and dangerous.

"Don't what?"

"Don't pity me, Daphne," he said, stepping closer to the shelf where I sat.

The scent of pine and faint engine oil drifted off his shirt.

"I don't need sympathy from someone who spent her whole life floating on her father's money."

My sympathy instantly vanished, replaced by a sharp flare of annoyance.

I stood up from the stool, holding the yellow legal pad against my chest like a shield.

"I wasn't pitying you," I said, looking him dead in the eye despite the fact that he towered over me by nearly a foot. "I was just being human. But I forget, you don't think I'm human. You just think I'm a caricature."

Zeke stared down at me, his jaw clenching tightly.

For a second, I thought he was going to snap back, to unleash whatever old anger was sitting at the back of his throat.

Instead, he took a slow breath, stepping back to create distance between us.

He picked up his rag from the bench and began wiping down his hands, his knuckles red from the cold concrete.

"Finish the bottom row," he said, his voice completely level again, closed off like a locked door.

"We close at five."

He turned his back on me and walked back toward the front of the shop, leaving me standing alone among the boxes of metal and wire.