You ever wake up at 2am and the silence in the house is so heavy it feels like it’s actually sitting on your chest? I’m sitting here in the kitchen—I probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee this late but my nerves are shot anyway—and I’m looking at this cutting board I made last week. It’s bird’s-eye maple, perfectly sanded, finished with three coats of food-safe oil, and it’s beautiful, I guess. That’s what I do. I make things that are supposed to last forever. I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve spent the last four years building a "reputation" in this tiny, suffocating town as the guy who can fix anything, the guy who does honest work. But you know that feeling when you realize you’ve built your own casket and you’re just waiting for someone to nail the lid down? It’s not like I didn’t have options, or maybe I did and I was just too much of a coward to take them. I went to school for structural engineering, which I hated, by the way—too many numbers, not enough soul—but then I came back here because my mom got sick and I just...