Quite Work

Brandon kept the workshop lights on long after midnight again. The neighbors thought he was building furniture. His sister thought he was avoiding his grief. Only the walls knew the truth. Brandon was addicted to fixing things that were never really broken.

It started with a chipped teacup. He glued it together and felt a small spark in his chest, warm and bright, the way a single match looks in a dark room. Then came the old radio from the attic, the cracked photo frame, the wobbly chair. Soon he was hunting for broken objects the way other people hunted for bargains. He drove across town for a toaster with a faulty lever. He bought clocks that ticked too loud. He repaired things even when they felt like they wanted to be left as they were.

The obsession didn’t look dangerous at first. It kept his hands busy and his mind quiet. After the funeral he moved through each day like someone walking underwater. He spoke when spoken to, ate when reminded, slept only when exhaustion pinned him down. But in the workshop he found a rhythm. Sanding, gluing, polishing. There was comfort in small steps that always led somewhere.

Every repaired object ended up displayed on the shelves crowding his house, lined up in neat rows like trophies. At first the display was a single shelf. Then a corner. Then the entire wall behind his couch. When that filled up he cleared his dining room and turned it into a museum of unnecessary victories. He ate dinner on the floor.

When his sister, Mylen, visited one Thursday morning, she had to squeeze sideways through towering stacks of polished, useless machines. She touched a newly mended kettle, its metal still smelling of steel wool, and winced at the sharp shine. It looked like a smile that showed too many teeth.

“You never even use them,” she said. She tried to sound gentle. “You fix them and they just sit here.”

“They’re reminders,” Brandon said. “Proof that something can come apart and still work again.”

Mylen didn’t push. She had tried talking to him months ago, tried coaxing him into walks, movies, anything that didn’t involve tools. Each time he nodded and promised to try. Each time she found him right back here, hunched over another object that never asked for his help.

She looked around, noting the near perfect order. Everything gleamed. Everything hummed with the energy he poured into it. Her brother, on the other hand, sat dim and still, the light in his eyes shifting like something trapped behind frost.

The problem wasn’t the objects. It was the one thing he refused to repair- a wooden music box their mother had owned. It had stopped playing the night she died. Brandon had taken it apart again and again for a year, but it never ticked. The gears rusted a little more each time. He hid it in a drawer and tried to drown the silence by fixing everything else.

He told himself the music box was waiting for the right day. The right mood. The right courage. But each time he opened the drawer, saw the flaking wood and the small crank with its stubborn stiffness, he felt something sink in his chest, heavy and familiar. So he shut the drawer each time and found something easier to resurrect.

One night the power went out across the neighborhood. It snapped off mid hum, leaving the house in a sudden stillness. Brandon lit a candle and looked around the workshop. All his perfect fixes sat in shadows. None of them made a sound. The silence was thick and wide, the kind that forces a person to hear their own breath.

Without the steady buzz of machines, the room felt too large and too empty. He walked between the stacks, running his fingers along polished surfaces. He tried to feel pride. Instead he felt tired.

He opened the drawer.

The music box lay there, small and stubborn. Dust had settled along the edges. He held it in both hands, the way he used to hold it as a child, tracing the carved vines along its sides. His mother used to wind it at night, the melody threading through the hallway like a soft promise. He could almost hear it now, which made the silence sharper.

He closed his eyes and listened to the stillness. For the first time he didn’t reach for his tools. He didn’t rush to take it apart. He simply sat with it, letting the weight settle into his palms. Minutes stretched. Something in his chest loosened, not in relief but in recognition.

In that quiet he realized the truth. Not everything that breaks wants to be repaired. Some things only want to be remembered. Some things refuse to be put back together because their purpose ended in a moment that cannot return.

The power flickered back on. The other machines woke with a soft buzz, but Brandon didn’t hear them. They sounded thin and far away, like insects behind a window. He set the music box on the table, not as a project, but as a companion. The shelves around him suddenly looked crowded and tired. He saw their shine for what it was, an armor built to hide the one thing he could not face.

He knew he didn’t need all of them anymore.

He blew out the candle and let the night breathe again. The faint trail of smoke curled toward the ceiling before vanishing. Brandon sat there for a long time, the music box quiet beside him, ready for a different kind of work, the kind done without tools.

In the days that followed he cleared space. Not all at once, but slowly. A clock went to a neighbor. A lamp to a thrift store. A radio to the kid down the street who liked to take things apart. Each object left him with a small ache and a small relief, the two feelings braided tighter than he expected.

One afternoon he placed the music box on the windowsill where sunlight touched it. It still didn’t play. It didn’t need to. The silence had shifted. It no longer felt like a weight. It felt like a room waiting to be lived in again.

And for the first time in a long while, Brandon stepped outside without checking if anything needed fixing.