The corner of his mouth twitches. Itisn’ta smile. More like a geological event than a smile, a slab of granite considering, after a thousand patient years, whether to shear off the cliff face and slide into the sea.
“I saw you wave.”
His voice is low and rough, as if hehasn’tused it in a while and is having to remember how. The sound slides into my chest and settles there.
“Are you the handyman?”I ask hopefully.
“No.” Quick. Definite.
“Are you?—”
“No.”
Okay then.
He turns slowly, the way alargeanimal turns, and starts back up his trail. I have a sudden, ridiculous urge to call after him.
“I’m Tess!”I call.“In case you missed it!”
“I heard you the first time, ma’am,”he says, without turning around.
Ma’am.
He called me ma’am likehe wasdrawing a line.
He disappears into the trees like a man who has spenta significant portionof his life learning how to vanish.I’m along on the slope with my yarn and my broken porch step and my heart doing something I haven’t given it permission to do.
“All right,”I say unsteadily to the empty trees, myperpetual smile already curling the edges of my mouth.“Okay. Okay then.”
I climb back up to the porch, avoidingthe third step.
And as I stand on the wreck of my new front porch with my dead aunt’s cabin at my back and a stranger’s two-word goodness rattling around in me like a stone in a tin cup, I realize Ihaven’tfelt this alive in five years.Not since the last time I allowed myself to want something my motherhadn’tfirst approved.
Chapter 3
Sullivan
She’s back at her cabin within an hour.
I know becauseI’mat the stupid window again, and the stupid window hasthestupid angle.
A hammer. She has a hammer.
She’s using it wrong.
Forty minutesshe’sbeen at that porch step, with a tool too small for the job, a piece of board she pried off the siding instead of measuring for, and a determination I would respect more if itweren’tconverting her into an active hazard.
The hammer drops. Bounces off her boot. Gets retrieved. Gets a small, sincere apology.
I close my eyes. The cold pane of the window is the only thing keeping me upright.
“Henry,”I say to nobody,“I’m going to need you to acknowledge how hard I’m trying.”
I have a system thatI’vemaintainedfor forty-one days. The system is simple: I do not interact with civilians. I am not equipped to handle civilian interactions. Civilians ask follow-up questions, have last names, family histories, and birthdays. Civilians get hurt. They do not understand that I am not someone you can stand next to on a hill if you want to keep enjoying life.
The system is good. The system has been working.
Iwatchher drop the hammer a second time.She bends over to pick it up, and my eyes go to herroundedass before my brain catches up.
