Chapter 145: Her Husband Wasn’t Her Manager

"You can buy four fans," Dove told the wholesaler. "You can’t buy first choice of everything I find for the rest of the month."

He looked at the window display, then at the list in his hand. "I’d be taking the risk of moving them."

"You’d be buying fans you already have customers for. That’s fine. It doesn’t make my next trip yours."

The man tried looking past her at Edrik. Her husband sat on the stool behind the counter, checking a loose strap on their tool bag. He put it down slowly enough that the wholesaler appeared to regret choosing him as the easier conversation.

"She’s the one selling," Edrik said. "Ask her."

Dove didn’t turn it into a speech. She gave the buyer a smaller offer with an ordinary bulk discount and no claim on future stock. He thought about it, asked for one extra pack of batteries at their listed price, and accepted. Apparently he could hear an answer when nobody let him shop for a different one.

They tested the four fans in front of him before his assistant collected them. Two wall models and two battery models left with their instructions and the right power details. Dove kept her family’s battery fan for the room, with two working wall models left to sell. The broken one stayed in the repair box.

The goods he paid went onto actual shelves. Rice, oil, soap, wrapped bedding, and a store voucher redeemable at the nearby grocery counter, which Dove checked before accepting. She used part of it for fresh vegetables and a large cut of meat. Being successful was going to taste better than another argument over crackers.

Thorne helped close after the buyer left. Dove caught his shirt near the curtain and pulled him close enough to kiss. Edrik paused with a crate in his arms, watching the way her husband’s hands settled at her waist.

"You can stop looking jealous and put that down," she told the bear.

"I was waiting for the crate to become less important."

"It became less important several seconds ago. Keep up."

He set it down, came over, and kissed her cheek without trying to take Thorne’s place. Dove laughed when both men stayed close in the narrow doorway. She had created a traffic problem and had no intention of apologizing for it.

On Day Seventy-Five, she washed with pond water while the shop remained closed, then dressed in one of the recovered tops. It fit without pulling across her chest, which she considered a personal victory. Edrik considered it something else and watched until she threw him a clean shirt of his own.

Sprout’s daily shelf held six packs of ginger ale, which she brought out onto the counter. Five sales paid thirty-eight normal coins. Dove kept one for four Favor and put the others near the front window, advertising sealed drinks at room temperature. They were not cold because she wished hard enough.

Thorne carried a bucket of ordinary ice over from the restaurant after trading for it, and they chilled their household bottles for dinner. Dove watched the first drops of water gather on the glass. She had once taken things like this straight from a refrigerator without thinking. Now she wanted to sit down and enjoy one before somebody decided she needed to do something else.

The five sale packs went quickly, bringing pantry goods and cleaning supplies. She stored one newly traded bundle and practiced with Edrik in the rear yard. When Sprout settled the rewards, Dove was still trying to get her heel where her husband wanted it. He showed her again, then waited while she tried it without his hands guiding her. She appreciated that enough to kiss him after the lesson, which ruined his serious expression completely.

The manual remained unbought. Sprout offered a portable drinks cooler on its shelf, and Dove asked about running costs before she let herself love it. It needed power like everything else. She saved the listing rather than buying equipment for a shop she’d rented only for a fortnight.

Customers asked for lighter shirts, more batteries, and cups that didn’t get too hot to hold. Dove wrote those down. She could look for useful stock before it became somebody’s emergency instead of waiting for Sprout to decide what mood the entire town needed tomorrow.

Thorne repaired a loose metal edge on their second cart while Edrik checked its wheel under load. They also checked the pickup before the next trip. Thorne reshaped the brace while Edrik held the frame firm, strengthening it under his hand. They tested the repair after he let go, then stopped for lunch. Dove watched Thorne mold a stubborn bracket faster than he had weeks ago. He caught her looking and smiled before returning to the tool.

Outside, the street had become warm enough that people lingered in the shade between shops. Somebody had opened an upstairs window over the restaurant. Dove heard a child laughing, then a bucket scrape along a balcony. She liked knowing what those sounds were. They belonged to people living nearby, not another unexplained noise outside a door.

By afternoon, water began spreading across the intersection at the far end of the block. It came from beneath the street, clear at first, then muddy where it lifted grit out of a broken seam. A maintenance crew put barriers around it while a worker shut off the supply to that stretch.

Dove went to the shop threshold with both men beside her. The crew leader asked businesses to keep the work area clear. Their own building still had water, but the low trench wouldn’t drain enough for the repair team to reach the damaged line safely.

"We need a portable pump," he told another worker. "The one from the south crew’s already in use."

Dove looked back at the freight contact’s route sheet. He had marked a municipal equipment yard near the outdoor store, with a service shed above the drainage ditch. She had saved it when he pointed out the yard, before either of them knew the street would flood.

Now she took the sheet off the wall. If they could find the right machine, she knew somebody who would pay for it.