Trent went straight into the business after high school. Within a couple of years, the sign on Dad’s truck said “Gerald and Son Contracting.” Singular. Son.
I remember the day that sign went on. I was 16. I stood in the driveway reading it while Dad and Trent high-fived next to the tailgate.
“Looks good, huh?” Dad said.
“Looks great,” I said.
Nobody noticed I was the only one not smiling.
After that, dinner turned into a business meeting. Dad and Trent talked about permits and load-bearing walls and the Henderson job and the Patterson job, and I sat there eating my mashed potatoes.
Sometimes Mom tried. “Michael got an A on his English paper,” she’d say.
Dad would nod without looking up from his plate. “Good. Hey, Trent, did the inspector ever call back?”
I moved out at 18. I got a little apartment above a laundromat and a job at the hardware store on Kingston Pike, stocking shelves and mixing paint for $11.40 an hour. At night, I carved. I sold pieces at craft markets on weekends and later through a small online shop.
It wasn’t a fortune. But it was mine.
Around that same time, I taught myself chess. I’d play online late at night, study openings, lose a thousand games, slowly get better. Chess became this quiet, peaceful thing for me, the same way carving was.
And one night, the two things just clicked together.
I started carving chess sets.
My first full set took two months, and it was rough. The knights looked more like dogs than horses. The bishops leaned like they’d had a few drinks. But I kept going.
By 25, I was selling custom sets for $400 to $500 each. Themed sets. Tournament boards. I had a small following online, people who left comments like, “This is museum quality,” and, “How many hours did this take?”
Strangers appreciated it.
My father never did.
I’d bring pieces to family dinners. I’d pull up photos on my phone. I’d tell him about the orders I’d landed.
“That’s neat, Michael,” he’d say. Then, without even a breath in between, “So, Trent, how’s the Henderson job going?”
Every single time. Like I was a commercial break between the parts of the show he actually wanted to watch.
Trent wasn’t trying to be the favorite. I want to be fair about that. He just was. He spoke Dad’s language. They could talk about framing nails over a beer for three hours. I spoke a completely different language, and my father never once tried to learn it.
But I kept trying anyway.
Every birthday, every Father’s Day, every Christmas, I made him something by hand. A carved picture frame. A desk box with his initials. A coat rack with oak leaves cut into the rail.
He’d say thanks. Put it somewhere. And I’d never see it again.
Specialty: Emotional Turning Points
Rachel Monroe writes character-driven stories about betrayal, second chances, and unexpected resilience. Her work highlights the emotional side of family conflict — the silences, the misunderstandings, and the moments when someone quietly decides they’ve had enough.