“Kragen,” I say, “it’s Honey. I have some good news about your timeline.”
A beat. “Yeah?”
“A client just moved back in the queue. If you want the slot, I can start your instrument in the next week or two instead of six to eight.”
The silence on his end is the kind that means he’s actually taking something in. “That’s… wow. Yeah. Absolutely.” And then, “What happened to the other client?”
“Couldn’t decide between an elk and a wolf.”
He laughs—short and genuine. “I hope she figures it out.”
“She will. They always do.” I’m already reaching for a pencil. “I’ll be in touch when I have a confirmed start date.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” he says. A pause, and then, quieter, like he’s saying it more to himself than to me: “I’ve been thinking about that instrument.”
I stop reaching for the pencil.
“That’s… good,” I say. “That’s the idea.”
Neither of us hangs up right away.
“I’ll wait to hear from you,” he says finally.
After I hang up, I stand in the workshop, looking at his file. Custom templates. New neck ratio calculations. Wood selection for the top. I’ll want to go through my full stock carefully, find something with the right grain for a wider instrument.
Plain commission. Just the structural work.
I open a fresh page of notes and start the calculations. Outside the workshop window, the morning keeps going as if nothing has shifted. The crow up the hill complains at full volume. Somewhere down the hill, the creek is running.
I’m three pages into the calculations before I catch myself humming.
I stop.
I have no idea what I was humming.
I go back to the numbers.
Chapter Seven
Honey
He shows up four days later with two cups of coffee and no real reason to be here.
I hear the car on the gravel and raise my attention from the bench. Through the west window I watch him unfold himself out of the sedan and duck to retrieve something from the passenger side, two paper cups, held carefully, and I have enough time to take off my work apron and hang it on the hook before he reaches the door.
I open it before he knocks.
He holds up one of the cups like an explanation.
“I was driving past a coffee place,” he says.
“There’s no coffee place on this road.”
“There’s one about four miles that way.” He nods back toward the county road. “I took the long way.”
I take the cup because it would be strange not to, and because I’ve been drinking the same pot of coffee since seven this morning and it’s now close to noon. He ducks through the doorframe and comes in, and the workshop does what it did the first time, the space seeming to recalibrate around someone it wasn’t built for.
He looks around without touching anything. His gaze goes to the piece on the bench, the quilt-pattern commission, and then to the repair piece at the far end: the inherited dulcimer, waiting for me to decide whether the final varnish coat has cured enough to call it done.
