I looked at the bench. The good Stihl was there, where I had put it back. But I counted the sockets in my head, and I knew. The big socket set Harold used for the snowblowers had been gone since summer. And there had been a second grinder, an old one, on the shelf under the window.
“The chainsaw is right there,” I said. “I took it out of your hands.”
“That is Harold’s good one,” Brandon said quietly. “I took his old one. The one he kept for parts. In August, when you were at your sister’s in Cedar Rapids. Kelsey had the garage code.”
Kelsey made a sound like she had been hit.
“Why?” I asked.
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said it. “Scratch tickets. And the sports betting on my phone. It started small. Five dollars, ten dollars. By August I owed a guy at work six hundred dollars, and he was getting mean about it.”
“And selling the rest of the tools for three thousand?”
“Was going to cover everything,” he said. “And I was going to win it back. I always think I am going to win it back.”
Kelsey was crying hard now. “He told me last night, Mom. I found the betting app on his phone. Eleven hundred dollars since the baby was born. Diapers money. Daycare money.”
The baby crawled over to the workbench and grabbed the leg of Harold’s stool and pulled herself up. Nobody said anything. We just watched her stand there, wobbling, holding on.
I picked up Harold’s work gloves and put them on.
“Here is what is going to happen,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to drive out to Highway 3, and you are going to buy back every one of those tools with your own money. Not Kelsey’s. Not mine. Yours.”
“I don’t have it,” Brandon whispered.
“Then you will earn it. Right here. Every Saturday, you will sharpen blades with me. Eight dollars a blade. You keep two. The rest goes to the pawn ticket until it is paid.”
He stared at me.
“And you will go to the meeting at the Methodist church on Tuesday nights,” Kelsey said, through her tears. “Gamblers Anonymous. I already looked it up. Or you can find somewhere else to live.”
He nodded. He couldn’t speak.
It took him seven Saturdays. He was terrible at sharpening at first. He burned his thumb twice. But he kept showing up. And on the eighth Saturday, we drove out to the pawn shop together. The man behind the counter had kept Harold’s things in the back, because he remembered Harold. He said nobody else ever paid cash for broken engines.
Brandon carried the old chainsaw back into the garage like it was made of glass. He set it on the shelf where it belonged.
He has been going to the Tuesday meetings for eight months now. He deleted the apps. Kelsey handles the money. They are doing better than they have in years.
And he still comes on Saturdays. He is good at it now. Better than me, honestly. The line of mowers in the driveway has gotten so long that we put up a second sign.
Last week, he hung a new board over the workbench. He carved it himself, with Harold’s tools. It says Harold and Ruthann’s Shop. Since 1983.
The yellow tape measure hangs on a nail right under it, dent and all.