He sat up. “He ran HMC, and my grandma was right there with him. They had five kids while he ran HMC.” He had seen someone who’d worked the job and managed a family at the same time.
He needed to go visit Grandpa, and he wished Grandma was still alive so he could ask her how she had liked her husband working a hundred hours a week. Maybe Grandpa hadn’t worked that much. Maybe Hunter worked too much.
He simply didn’t know what to do with his time if he wasn’t working.
If you had Molly, you’d know what to do with your time, he thought.
Lucy had asked him something, but Hunter hadn’t heard her through his thoughts. He bent over and started re-lacing his shoes. “I have to go, Lucy.”
“Tell me where you’re going,” she said, standing up.
Hunter heard the concern in her voice, and he looked up. “I’m going to go visit my grandpa. Ask him how he did it.” He finished tying his shoes and stood too. He stepped toward Lucy and hugged her. “Thank you, Lucy. You always find a path in my mind I haven’t been able to see.”
“You do all the work, Hunt, just like always.”
He stepped back and ducked his head. “How’s Georgie?”
“Not going by Georgie anymore,” she said with a smile. “He’s fourteen now, and he’s declared it’s ‘just George’.” She laughed and shook her head.
Hunter smiled at her. “I get that.” He paused and cocked his head. “You work a lot, right, Lucy?”
“A fair bit,” she admitted.
“How do you do it?”
Lucy blinked, and Hunter held up his hand. “Never mind. Too personal. I get it. I’m still learning that boundary.”
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “We’re friends, Hunter. It’s a hard line. Between us, and between how much I work and when I need to be done.” She set her notebook on her desk and turned back to him. “Let me tell you something my father told me, a long time ago. He worked a lot, but not in suits and office buildings. He had two jobs to support our family, and he’d come home for fifteen minutes to change his clothes and grab a sandwich before he went to his night job.”
She flashed a smile that contained a tiny bit of trepidation. Hunter shrugged into his coat, but he listened intently.
“He said that he paused on the front step of our house every time he got home. He’d shed anything upsetting, troublesome, or hard that had happened at work. Right there on the stoop. He never brought it home. Never. When he left the next day, he said, ‘Lucy, the troubles were always waiting, right where I’d left them. I’d pick them up and take them with me. Work on them while I was gone. Drop them when I got home.’” She smiled again. “That’s what I try to do. Set strict hours for myself and take nothing home. It’s worked for Allen and I. It may not work for everyone.”
Hunter couldn’t even imagine his father doing that. Sometimes things happened that required immediate attention. Could he simply say he wasn’t available if a crisis didn’t happen during his designated work hours?
He didn’t want to spend his life apologizing to his wife and kids when he had to “run to work real quick.” He already knew nothing at HMC was done quickly.
“Good luck, Hunter,” Lucy said. “We’ll talk about how things go with your grandfather next week?”
“Yeah,” Hunter said, distracted as he turned toward the door. The drive out to the farm passed quickly, and Hunter dang near rammed his truck into the front porch when he saw a familiar sedan in his rearview mirror.
“Molly.” He slammed on the brakes and twisted around, watching the taillights on a dark blue sedan as they left the farm. Part of him wanted to race after her and tell her he’d quit in the morning.
When he got out of the truck, though, his dad said, “Hunter,” and laughed as he came down the steps. “What brings you to the farm in the middle of the week?”
What a great question. Hunter turned and met Dad’s eye, then looked back down the lane. The car had rounded the corner, and he couldn’t see it anymore.
He couldn’t see which way to go in his life. He turned toward his father and hurried forward, stepping right into his arms. Hunter had always been able to go to his father and feel like he belonged, and though he was an adult who’d