Usually, at this point in the day, Will tracks down Casey to pass along the lunch Meredith sent for him. And then, one way or another, they tend to end up passing the afternoon together, whether Will means for them to or not. They’re figuring out clearing the tree from the road the first few days, and after that, things just…come up. One afternoon, there’s something wrong with the cider press, and Casey needs another pair of hands; they’re interrupted doing that by Betsy Lundgren, who lives a few miles away, and has a storm damage issue she hasn’t been able to resolve by herself. While they’re there, three of her pigs get loose, and Will and Casey spend the bulk of the afternoon struggling to catch them in the mud, howling at first with frustration and rage but, eventually, with laughter. By the time they get home, they’re both mud-covered and badly in need of a shower, but when they get there, a few other locals are waiting for them—well, for Casey, anyway—hoping to ask for help or advice.
And after that there’s always something to do, every afternoon, and a number of the mornings besides. It’s not that Glenriver doesn’t have a mayor and a local government meant to handle emergencies, but, well. It’s the same mayor that had been seated when Will was a child, and he’d been old even then, and the city council hasn’t had much of a shake-up in the last few decades, either. They’re a perfectly useful governing body if you’re looking to get potential money for a potential bridge potentially approved in some potential future business quarter, but for in-the-moment crisis management, they’re not what Will would call super helpful.
Casey, on the other hand,iswhat Will would call super helpful. He’s so helpful, on such a broad swath of topics, that Will can hardly begin to catalogue them all. He watches in amazement as Casey handles damaged sump pumps andblown-out fences and flooded basements and broken windows, an old woman’s car stuck deep in the persistent mud. Will helps, silencing Catherine Rose’s late-afternoon-to-evening calls (painfully brief, always, as though she’s been reconsidering her lunch message and determined the issue was volume of words—“Will! Catherine! Please return! Thanks!”). Or, at least, Will tries to help. Generally, whoever has called for Casey figures out pretty quickly that Will’s the person managing the grocery situation, and the entire rest of the visit for him becomes either about accepting a donation of food from their freezer, which is lovely, or about explaining to them that he can’t possibly be bribed into giving them special grocery treatment, which is annoying.
It doesn’t seem to bother Casey, though—not just doing the work without Will’s help, but doing the work at all. He whistles his way through most of it, unbothered by the jobs that get him dirty, undeterred by the tasks that leave him pouring with sweat. Will has, perhaps, taken to observing some of these tasks a little more closely than is appropriate, although not exactly on purpose. It’s just…difficult, isn’t it, to look away from a man with Casey’s devastatingly muscled body while he’s giving that body a workout. Will keeps finding himself drifting away in a haze while he watches Casey do things like tossing around heavy pieces of storm debris as though they weigh nothing. Worse, he’s almost always, when he catches himself at it, in the middle of some horrible thought like,Wish I was that sack of leaves and branches he just threw over his shoulder, orGod, he should leave the logs for the beavers to sort out and toss me around instead.
One afternoon, Will happens to catch sight of Casey out the window of the bakery while he’s covering Daphne’s break. Casey’s in the parking lot, wearing work jeans and a thin, dirty white tank top, one of his ever-present flannels tied around his waist. He appears to be in the early stages of replacing thesection of fence that was damaged by lightning strike, and regretting his previous thoroughness in driving the fenceposts down. As he struggles, attempting to yank the damaged wood from the ground, visibly grunting and cursing even though Will can’t hear him from in here, Will loses track of what he’s supposed to be doing; the bakery’s empty, anyway, and doesn’t, for the moment, feel important. Casey’s muscles flex and strain as he attempts to pull the post from the earth, one of his calloused hands wedged in each of the empty fencepost slots, and Will watches the growing sweat stain on his tank top with a hunger that surprises even him, lost to the flow of time.
This is unfortunate because, after several minutes, Daphne returns, and clears her throat. At this point, the flow of time not only resumes, but viciously punishes Will for trying to pause it by dropping him right into one of the most embarrassing moments of his life, which seems about right. It’s not even that Daphnesaysanything; she doesn’t. But her face speaks wildly entertained volumes that make Will want to live the rest of his life in an underground cave, safe from the dangerous eyes of other people.
Regardless of the work he’s doing, or who he’s doing it for, Casey will never accept payment; he’ll barely, Will notices with increasing concern and no small amount of desperately buried attraction, acceptthanks. He smiles and laughs with everyone, always remembering their pets’ names and where the last time they saw one another was and, if they’re regulars at the market, their favorite kind of apple. It’s honestly remarkable. Will’s known some of these people since literally the day he was born, and he doesn’t have half the rapport with them that Casey does, even if there’s an odd, off note thrumming through it sometimes that Will can’t quite identify.
Will knows about people, how they move separately and how they move together. He knows the way only an observer can know, the knowledge sharpened with the remove of thescientist. He’s been lonely, and that’s been difficult, but it’s been educational, too. It’s allowed him a perspective that he has, until now, appreciated as unique and useful.
Casey breaks this perspective. Casey, just by existing and acting like this, takes this perspective, spits on it, and throws it out an upper-story window.
The problem is that he’s so…nice, Will thinks. Not to Will, necessarily—the two of them have achieved, in these last few days, a détente Will would describe as “pleasantly neutral”—but to everyone else, he’s too nice. People aren’tnicelike this, not real people, who walk around in the world interacting with others. Who has the time, or the energy, or the inclination, or the will, to be that nice? To help every neighbor who asks; to really listen when someone comes in and complains about something stupid at the market; to head out at least a few nights a week to solve for some issue and not, if Will’s any judge of the creaks and groans of this old house, return until late?
It’s too much for one person, that’s all, or at least for one person based on Will’s understanding of people prior to meeting a certain flannel-loving reckless driver. It makes it hard to imagine Casey’s a real human being as opposed to a robot invented at Bill’s request, even though Will is all too intimately aware, sharing houseroom with him, that he’s an honest-to-God flesh-and-blood man. A flesh-and-blood man who is sometimes wandering around in a towel after a shower; a flesh-and-blood man who hums to himself in the mornings while he’s getting ready, the sound filtering down to Will’s bedroom from the attic; a flesh-and-blood man who never seems to find time to eat dinner, not that Will is paying attention to that.
Paying attention or not, Will finds himself puzzling at that last piece on Sunday evening, a week and a day after the incident that wiped the bridge out. The estimated one week of repair is now being reported as two, and Will, sitting at the kitchen table, should be thinking about that. He should bemaking a new plan, or, at very least, dinner, not thinking aboutCasey’sdinner. He should be calling Selma, something he has put off for so long now that she must surely be apoplectic.
A sharp pang of guilt distracts him, and he pauses the entire train of thought to send Selma another apology gift. There have been…several, in the days since he learned he would be trapped indefinitely here on the farm. It’s not that he thinks he can buy her affection; he knows Selma doesn’t work like that. If her affections could be bought, her parents would have managed years ago. But if she knows Will’s alive, and thinking about her, and sorry for going ghost mode, and just in that place where he’s basically bricking it and turtling up and unable to have an honest conversation without absolutely freaking out, she’ll understand. Will hopes she’ll understand, anyway. Their friendship has only survived this long because she very generously has before.
He sends her a pair of leather Chicago Cubs driving gloves, with the note, “Because I’m sure I’m driving you crazy. Sorry, for that and the pun. Love you.”
Guilt semi-assuaged, his thoughts return, as they tend to lately, to Casey. This time it’s not a particularly wholesome turn, and he jumps, hoping he’s not blushing, when Casey slouches through the door as if summoned. “Oh! You’re back. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Hey,” Casey says. His voice is lower than usual, a tired, drawn quality to it. He drops into the chair across from Will heavily, puts his elbows on the table, and rests his head in his hands. Some inner part of Will twitches—June had the unfortunate habit of delivering a hard, unforgiving flick to the back of any elbow that she happened to see on this table—but he doesn’t comment as Casey adds, “I’m surprised you’re here already. I thought that thing at the cider mill would’ve taken you hours.”
“What, the contracts issue?” Will says, his eyebrows going up. “No, I was done with it an hour ago.”
Ruefully, Casey snorts. “Of course you were. Would’ve takenmehours, anyway.”
“I mean…” Will says, in what he hopes are generous tones. Casey seems to be in a dark headspace; that’s not like him, and Will stares for a second, warring with conflicting internal impulses. Half of him is screaming that it’s never a good idea to stay at this table, in this house, with someone in this mood, but the other half wants to do somethinginsane, like reach out and squeeze Casey’s shoulder.
Better he find something to do with his hands. Will stands, and starts puttering around the kitchen as he says, “In your defense, I’m pretty sure I was the last person who sorted that filing cabinet, so I had a leg up. My labels were still in there and everything—my teen handwriting, I have to say, probably didn’t help anyone else who tried to use it very much.” Deciding he might as well solve one of his own problems, Will starts rummaging around in the cabinets for likely-looking things to eat as he continues, “I redid it so it’s easier to navigate, and I did find that Bradley contract you were looking for—stuck between two files with something that smelled like maple syrup, horribly enough. Still legible, though, and that guy who called is full of it, like you thought. He sold Bill all that equipment flat out, no rental agreement. Probably figured he could squeeze a few more dollars out of the place, since the old man was famous for losing track of the paperwork.”
Casey mutters something colorful under his breath, but then, lifting his head briefly to make eye contact with Will, says, “That’s great, actually. Thanks. You leave it?—”
“In your office at the market? Yeah,” Will says easily. He doesn’t have to be easy about it—he could point out that, really that it’s Will’s office, because it’s Will’s market, because it’s Will’s farm, but there’s no point. Casey knows all that, and it would be rubbing salt in the wound to point it out. Anyway, Will doesn’t want to. This tentative peace they’ve managed tocobble together is…strange, certainly, but nice. It wouldn’t be worth it, to go upsetting the equilibrium over something that, at least to Will and at least right now, doesn’t matter very much at all.
“Thanks,” Casey says again, with real feeling, and drops his head back into his hands. “One less thing to deal with; thank you.”
“It’s…really fine,” Will says, eyeing Casey’s bent head in mild concern that he would, if Casey were to look up and catch him at it, have to pretend was disdain, or perhaps smelling something odd. Selecting a few things from the cabinet and moving on to the fridge, he adds, “Uh, not to be weird, or whatever, but…are you like…good?”
Casey laughs, short and bitter. “Define ‘good.’”
“Well, that’s not a promising answer,” Will remarks, mostly to himself. “But, sure, you asked, fair enough: adjective, at least in this instance, meaning favorable or positive. Are you currently feeling favorable or positive?” When Casey snorts, but doesn’t respond, Will grabs several items from the fridge as he adds, “It can also mean morally correct, if you’d rather answer that question. I can’t imagine you would, but it’s there for you as an option.”
“Isanyonemorally correct, really?” Casey asks, sounding a little bleak. “Do you think there’s such a thing? Or are we all doing our best and not getting there, most of the time?”
For several long moments, as he finds and removes a pan from the cupboard next to the fridge, Will tries to think of something to say other than what he is thinking, which is,Yeesh.
“Yeesh,” says Will eventually, not feeling great about it. “Did someone like break your spirit on the way back from—uh—where—well, wherever you were, anyway.” God, Will had almost asked Caseywhere he was, as though he has any right to know; sharing houseroom with the man is playing tricks on Will, and that’s all there is to it.
He focuses, because it’s high time he did, on making dinner. He’s lucky that there was a natural disaster, and that he and Casey teamed up with Meredith. If he’d tried to do this even a few days ago, the contents of the fridge as Casey kept it would have left him with a choice between a variety of gross frozen dinners and a spoonful of questionable mustard. But, as it is, they were sent, like everyone else in town, a bag full of staples and supplies and, because they’d both filled out their dietary needs and preferences through Will’s hastily constructed little electronic system, Will knows there’s nothing in that Casey can’t or won’t eat.
