Page 58

The bear grows quickly once the frame is right. I do not need to think about every crossing before my hands make it. Tom follows my directions without questioning why I want one piece instead of another.

After a while, he says, “You know, Shannon told me what happened Friday night, and I still wasn’t prepared for any of this.”

I look at him. “Me?”

“All of it.”

He gestures toward me, the bear, and the pile of willow.

“But mostly you.”

“Afraid?”

Tom thinks before answering. “Surprised.”

“That is different.”

“Very.”

I like that Tom answers the question I asked instead of reassuring me with something easier. A car passes on the road, and I follow the sound until it disappears. The road is still the one part of this conversation I cannot stop thinking about.

Tom notices. “You want to go into town.”

“Yes.”

Shannon looks up from the shorter lengths of willow she has been sorting near the folding table. “Rachel said you two talked about it.”

I look at the bear. It will go to the Harvest Festival when it is done. People will stand around it, touch it, photograph it, and know who made it. The road will carry the thing I built into a place I am not yet supposed to go.

“The bear goes there,” I say.

Tom follows my gaze toward the front of the property. “Seems reasonable you’d want to see where your work ends up.”

Shannon sets down a bundle. “Wanting to go isn’t the problem.” I wait, and she continues. “People are going to react. Some will be curious. Some will be scared. Some will do stupid things because they’re curious or scared.”

Tom nods toward the road. “And most of them will have phones.”

I know phones now. Pictures can stay inside them and move from one to another. I look down at my hands and imagine strangers seeing them before they hear my voice.

“Some will be afraid,” I say.

“Yes,” Shannon says. “Some.”

I put down the willow I’ve been holding. I can understand waiting when Rachel needs time before I enter her house. I can understand waiting when there is something I do not know enough to choose. This feels different.

“I do not want to stay here because people might be afraid.” Neither of them answers right away, so I look in the direction of the road again. Cars use it every day. Rachel leaves on it and comes back. Shannon and Laura and Blair and Janet arrive on it. Tom brought the willow on it. Nothing about the road itself belongs to them more than it belongs to me.

“I do not want the road to belong to everyone except me.”

Shannon’s face changes. She looks ready to argue, but some of it fades before she answers. “No. It shouldn’t.”

Tom rests one hand on the frame of the bear. “That doesn’t mean we drive you into the middle of Hollis Springs this afternoon and hope everybody behaves.”

“I know.”

I am not asking them to take me now. I am asking when I can go. “When?”

Shannon looks toward the house as if Rachel might somehow answer from work. Then she looks back at me. “Tonight. When Rachel gets home, we’ll all talk about how to do this.”