Chapter 897

"Are they afraid I'll take over their work?" Brandon teased. "I'm just curious." I watched as he skillfully sanded down the wood. "You're really good at this. Did you used to do this kind of work?" I asked. He stopped and said, "Yeah, I've done many jobs like this before." I handed him a glass of water and helped brush the sawdust off his face. Then, I sat beside him. "Don't tell me you used to do this to make a living." Brandon took a sip of water. "That's exactly what I did. I had to earn my tuition and help pay for Ellie's medical expenses. My mom couldn't have done it all alone, and it would have been too tough for her." As he mentioned this, I thought about his father and my own parents' deaths. But all that was in the past now. I thought about how young Brandon must have been back then. "You were just a kid, weren't you?" "I was around 11 or 12 years old. But I was pretty tall for my age, though a bit thin. They hired me for the construction job thinking I was a teen, maybe