A Run of Good Luck

Earl Edwards had reached the point where bad news no longer surprised him.

It annoyed him. It pissed him off. Occasionally it made him want to put his fist through drywall or foot through a door, although he knew from experience that repairing drywall and interior hollow doors was more irritating than whatever had made him angry in the first place. But surprise required expectations. At 45, Earl had learned to stop having those.

He stood in the middle of his garage in Wheatland, Wyoming, holding a scrap of walnut in one hand and staring at a credit card statement in the other.

$18,742.

That was one card. There were three more.

The mortgage was behind. His truck needed tires. His oldest daughter needed money for college. His other two daughters had discovered that every request their parents made could be answered with an eye roll, an argument, or a bedroom door closing hard enough to test the structural integrity of the house.

And his marriage? That depended on which day you asked.

He loved his wife, Stephanie. That had never been the problem. Steph had been the most beautiful woman Earl had ever seen when he met her more than 20 years earlier, and as far as he was concerned, nothing had changed. Three daughters and two decades hadn't stolen her figure. She still turned heads when they went out together. Lately, he wondered whether she looked at him and felt like she'd lost.

They hadn't always lived like this. There had been years when they were broke and happy. Years when a cheap pizza and a movie after the girls went to bed counted as a date. Steph used to sit on the workbench while Earl tinkered in the garage, drinking a hard seltzer and talking to him about nothing. Sometimes he'd pull her between his knees, and whatever project he was working on wouldn't get finished that night.

Now every conversation eventually found money.

Earl was reasonably certain she still loved him. He knew he still loved her. But love and happiness had stopped being synonyms sometime around the third late mortgage payment.

The house had been their forever home when they bought it five years earlier. Built a little more than a decade ago, it had everything they wanted. Enough bedrooms for three daughters. A decent yard. A two-car garage Earl immediately claimed as his domain. On closing day, surrounded by moving boxes, Steph had told him, "This is it. Forever."

He had believed her.

The garage had been his obsession ever since. It was also, Steph frequently pointed out, never finished. Earl blamed ADHD. He would start building storage cabinets, get halfway through, decide he needed a rolling assembly table, build 80% of that, discover a YouTube video about French cleats, then spend $300 at Home Depot. Five years later, the garage was somehow both an elite woodworking shop and a monument to unfinished intentions.

DeWalt tools covered nearly every wall. Table saw. Miter saw. Planer. Jointer. Routers. Sanders. Drills. Impact drivers. Track saw. Nailers. If DeWalt manufactured a nuclear submarine, Earl suspected he would have financed one.

The irony was that he was good. Really good. He could take rough walnut boards that looked like firewood and turn them into furniture people ran their hands across when they thought nobody was watching. He understood grain and proportion almost instinctively. He could look at a photograph of a $4,000 dining table and figure out how to build something better.

He had been talking about starting a woodworking business for almost three years. Talking was free. Lumber wasn't.

That Saturday morning, Steph had asked him what he planned to do about the Visa bill. Earl had said he didn't know. She reminded him that not knowing wasn't a plan. He reminded her that he couldn't manufacture money. She reminded him that he had spent $649 on a planer. He reminded her that the planer was necessary for the business.

She asked what business.

That one hurt. Not because Steph was cruel. Because Earl had asked himself the same question. He walked away before either of them said something they couldn't take back.

So, Earl retreated to the garage and did the only thing he could control. He cleaned.

Two hours later, he was wrestling a sheet of plywood from behind a stack of maple when the corner caught something mounted on the wall. Earl heard wood scrape. Then something fell. He spun. The candle holder hit the concrete.

"Shit!" Earl dropped the plywood.

His grandfather had made the candle holder decades earlier. It was simple, dark-stained oak with a small shelf for a candle and a heart-shaped mirror set into the wooden back. Grandpa Edwards had been dead for 14 years.

Earl knelt. The wood was intact. Relief lasted approximately one second. A silver line ran diagonally through the heart. Then another. The mirror had shattered inside the frame.

Earl stared at it. "Of fucking course."

He touched one of the cracks. His stomach tightened. Seven years bad luck. It was ridiculous. Superstitious nonsense. Earl knew that. Unfortunately, knowing something was ridiculous had never prevented his brain from obsessing over it.

He was already drowning in debt. His marriage was cracking. His daughters treated him like an incompetent Uber driver with access to a debit card. His business existed primarily in his imagination. And now he had broken a mirror. Not just any mirror.

Grandpa's.

Earl sat on the concrete. For several seconds, he stared at the fractured heart. Then he started laughing. He couldn't stop. The laughter grew until his stomach hurt and tears ran down his cheeks.

"Of course," he gasped. He slapped the floor. "Of fucking course it gets worse."

He laughed for nearly three minutes. When it finally stopped, Earl wiped his eyes, carefully rehung the candle holder, and went back to cleaning.

Three days later, Doug Hensley called. Doug had seen a dining table Earl posted online months earlier. He wanted something similar. Instead of pine, Doug wanted walnut. Earl drove to his house expecting another person who loved handmade furniture until hearing what handmade furniture cost. Instead, Doug walked him through a 6,000-square-foot house and started pointing. Dining table. Twelve chairs. Two bookcases. Coffee table. Matching end tables. A king-size bed. Two nightstands.

Doug looked at Earl. "Can you do all that?"

Earl mentally calculated materials. "Absolutely."

"Twenty thousand cover it?"

Earl forgot how to breathe. "Yeah," he finally said. "I can work with that."

Doug transferred a $10,000 deposit the following morning. Steph stared at their bank account. "Is this real?"

Earl refreshed the screen. "It's still there."

She laughed. He hadn't realized how much he missed that sound. Then she kissed him. Not the automatic kiss married people exchanged before work. She put both hands on his face and kissed him the way she used to. For the first time in months, Earl remembered what it felt like to believe everything might actually be okay.

The next break arrived wearing brown shorts. Earl was cutting maple when a UPS driver rolled a hand truck toward the garage. The driver stopped. "You're building those?"

Earl pulled off his hearing protection. "Kitchen cabinets."

"You do that professionally?"

Earl looked around his shop. He had never known exactly when a person became entitled to say yes. "Yeah."

The driver laughed. "Man, I've been trying to find somebody. Wife wants our whole kitchen redone."

A week later, Earl had another $14,000 contract.

Then Doug posted pictures. Earl had finished the dining table first, a massive walnut piece with breadboard ends and a finish so smooth Doug joked online that his wife had caught him petting it. The post got shared. Then shared again. Within two weeks, Earl's phone wouldn't stop ringing.

Steph stopped asking how they would pay the Visa bill. They paid it. Then another. Then another. Earl bought tires for the truck without checking the bank balance six times first.

Something else changed too. Their daughters started helping. Not after yelling. Not after threats. They simply helped. One evening Earl walked into the kitchen and found all three unloading the dishwasher together. He stopped in the doorway. "Who are you people?"

His youngest laughed. "We're helping Mom."

"Should I call an ambulance?"

His middle daughter rolled her eyes, but she was smiling when she did it. Steph walked behind Earl and smacked his ass.

That had changed too. A lot. The woman who had spent months turning away from him in bed suddenly couldn't keep her hands off him. One night became two. Then four. Soon Earl realized they hadn't gone a full day without sex in nearly two weeks. It felt like being married 10 years earlier. Better, actually. Steph laughed more. She flirted with him. She came into the garage just to wrap her arms around his waist while he worked.

One night, she climbed onto the same workbench where she'd sat years earlier and watched him finish a cabinet door. "You seem happy," she said.

Earl looked at her. "So do you."

"I am."

"Because we're making money?"

Steph smiled. "Because I have my husband back."

That landed harder than Earl expected. He set down the router bit in his hand. "I didn't go anywhere."

"You did a little."

He wanted to argue. Instead, he looked around the garage. Maybe she was right.

Steph reached for his hand. "I know I was hard on you."

"We were scared."

"I'm still sorry."

Earl stepped between her knees. "We're okay."

She kissed him. For the first time in years, Earl didn't just feel wanted. He felt like himself.

The woodworking business became real so quickly that Earl barely understood how it happened. Eight weeks after breaking the mirror, he had work booked nearly six months out. That created a different problem. Earl still hated sanding. He also hated puttying screw holes. He hated both with such irrational intensity that half the unfinished projects in his garage could be traced to reaching one of those two stages.

So, he hired Trey. Trey was a young construction student at the local community college who wanted hands-on experience and didn't mind starting at the bottom. He showed up 10 minutes early for his interview wearing work boots and carrying a tape measure on his belt. Earl liked him immediately.

On his first morning, Earl handed him a random orbital sander. "You sand."

"Okay."

"And putty."

Trey waited. "That's it?"

"Those are the two things I hate most on Earth. Do them well and I'll probably put you in my will."

Trey laughed.

Within a month, Earl increased his hours. Then his pay. He started teaching Trey joinery and cabinet construction between jobs. The kid absorbed everything. Earl discovered he liked teaching almost as much as building.

For the first time, the garage looked less like the graveyard of Earl's unfinished ideas and more like the workshop he had always imagined. The cabinets finally had doors. The rolling assembly table was finished. The lumber was organized. Every DeWalt tool had a home. Earl even finished the French cleat wall.

One night, he stood alone in the garage with a beer and looked around. He had done it. Actually done it. His eyes landed on Grandpa's candle holder. The broken heart reflected him in fragments.

Earl raised his beer toward it. "Seven years bad luck, my ass."

Three days later, he noticed the first coincidence. Doug ordered another piece, and during the conversation mentioned the money he'd inherited after his business partner suffered a fatal heart attack. The partner had died three days before Doug first called Earl. Earl thought about it for perhaps 10 seconds. Then forgot.

The UPS driver came next. He stopped by to inspect his completed cabinets and mentioned how lucky it was that he'd even been on Earl's route. "Not usually mine," he said. "Rick got messed up in that wreck, so they moved everybody around."

"Bad wreck?"

The driver's smile disappeared. "Paralyzed."

Earl looked at him. "When?"

The driver told him. Same week.

A month later, a woman hired Earl to build an entertainment center after her original woodworker lost three fingers on a table saw. Then a contractor hired Earl because his cabinet supplier's warehouse had burned. Then a rancher ordered a $9,000 bedroom set using insurance money after a freak hailstorm destroyed three structures on his property.

Earl started writing things down. That was when the pattern became impossible to ignore. Every major break had a shadow. Every door that opened for Earl seemed to have slammed shut on somebody else's fingers. He told himself it was confirmation bias. His brain was searching for connections because brains liked connections.

Then his oldest daughter received the scholarship. $25,000. She screamed when she opened the email. Steph cried. Her sisters tackled her. Earl hugged all four women and tried to celebrate. But something cold had already crawled into his stomach.

That night he searched the scholarship. The original recipient had withdrawn. Earl kept digging. She hadn't withdrawn voluntarily. The 18-year-old girl had been killed when a pickup crossed the centerline outside Laramie.

Earl closed the laptop. He walked into the garage. Grandpa's candle holder hung exactly where Earl had rehung it months earlier. The broken heart reflected his face in pieces.

"Oh, come on."

He stepped closer. The cracks seemed darker than he remembered.

Earl called his mother. He tried to sound casual. "Mom, you remember that candle holder Grandpa made? The one with the heart mirror?"

Silence. "Earl, what about it?"

"I broke the mirror."

Another silence. Longer. "When?"

"A few months ago."

His mother's breathing changed. "Earl, tell me you're joking."

"I wish I was."

"Your grandfather didn't make that mirror."

Earl stared at it. "What?"

"He made the holder around it."

"Why?"

"I don't know everything. He wouldn't talk about it. I remember him telling your father and me never to remove it. Never break it."

Earl swallowed. "That's insane."

"Probably. Your grandfather was superstitious."

Earl almost laughed. Then she continued. "He used to say something strange about it."

"What?"

"Never mend a broken heart."

Earl stared at the fractured glass. "That doesn't make sense."

"I always thought he meant relationships."

Earl ended the call. He searched the garage until midnight. Old boxes. Family photographs. Grandpa's tools. Nothing.

Then he remembered the shards. When the mirror broke, several tiny pieces had fallen onto the concrete. Earl had vacuumed them. His shop vac stood beneath the workbench. He tore it open. Fresh sawdust. He had emptied it dozens of times since then.

The pieces were gone.

His phone buzzed. Another customer. Earl ignored it.

The following week brought three more contracts. He stopped celebrating. Every good thing frightened him. When Steph told him the last credit card was paid off, Earl wondered who had lost everything. When Trey brought in a massive commercial job through someone from school, Earl wondered who had gotten hurt. When his middle daughter announced she'd gotten the job she wanted, Earl searched local news before congratulating her. He couldn't prove anything. That was almost worse.

Then Steph walked into the garage on a Tuesday afternoon holding an envelope. She was crying. Earl immediately stood. "What happened?"

She laughed. "Nothing happened." She threw her arms around him. "We're done."

"With what?"

"The house."

Earl pulled away. "What are you talking about?"

"The mortgage company called. There was an error with the original closing, the insurance settlement, some escrow issue. I don't even understand all of it yet."

Earl's skin prickled. Steph was smiling so hard her cheeks trembled. "They're clearing the balance."

Earl stared at her. "The whole balance?"

"All of it." She kissed him. "We own the house, Earl."

Their forever home. The place where they had raised their daughters. The house where Steph had once toasted forever over takeout boxes. Paid for. The largest gift yet.

Earl looked past his wife. At the wall. At Grandpa's candle holder. At the shattered heart.

Steph followed his gaze. "You okay?"

Earl couldn't answer. His phone rang. He looked at the screen. Unknown number. He declined it. "Where are the girls?"

Steph frowned. "They went to Cheyenne."

"All three?"

"Yeah."

"Together?"

"Earl, what's wrong?"

His phone rang again. Same number. He declined it. "When did they leave?"

"Maybe an hour ago."

His chest tightened. "Which car?"

"The Subaru."

"Who's driving?"

"Our oldest. Earl, you're scaring me."

He called his daughter. Straight to voicemail. He called again. Voicemail. The unknown number returned.

Steph looked at his phone. "Answer it."

Earl couldn't. He looked at the broken mirror. For months, he had wondered why it had never taken anything from him. The business grew. The debt disappeared. His marriage healed. His daughters changed. He had found himself again. He had even found Trey, a kid who made him realize success could mean giving somebody else a beginning. Every gift became larger than the last. And every gift had been purchased with somebody else's suffering.

Until now.

Earl finally understood what had frightened his grandfather enough to build a wooden prison around a tiny heart-shaped mirror. Luck wasn't created. It was borrowed. And eventually, every loan came due.

The phone stopped ringing. For three seconds, the garage was silent. Then it started again. Unknown number. Steph whispered his name.

Earl stared at the fractured heart. The house wasn't his greatest fortune. Neither was the business. Neither was the money. It wasn't the shop he'd dreamed about for five years or the marriage he thought he'd been losing. His greatest fortune had left for Cheyenne an hour earlier. All three of them. Together.

The phone kept ringing. On the fourth ring, Earl finally understood.

The mirror hadn't been taking from him.

It had been saving up.