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“I’ve got the Hendersons’-”

“Oh, pish posh. You have Marcus and Tommy who can take care of it if it’s urgent, but I’m sure it’ll keep as long as it takes to have a lobster roll and some iced tea.” She’s looking at the hand I still haven’t lifted off the desk. “I want to hear about the office. And the window. And that.”

“That was a customer.”

“Mm,” she says.

She drives us into town then struts along the sidewalk on the way to the restaurant, greeting everyone like she’s running for mayor. She taught two-thirds of the town’s residents in fourth grade, and she remembers every one of them.

Once we’re seated, she orders for the table without asking. She very firmly parked Vanessa across from her and me next to Vanessa, and the interrogation starts before the water hits the glasses.

“So. Where’d he find you?”

“He didn’t. Marcus called the agency, and he tried to send me back.”

“He would. Doesn’t have the sense God gave a gnat.”

“He was convinced I wouldn’t last two weeks.”

My mother sets down her water, rolling her eyes.

“He should be counting his lucky stars.”

I eat my roll and let them carry on in that vein, pretending I can’t hear a word they’re saying. Every so often Vanessa’s knee comes within an inch of mine under the table and stays there, and I spend the back half of the meal thinking about nothing but that inch, hard under a napkin with my mother sitting across from me asking about the window.

Eventually my mother sits back with her coffee and her face changes, and I know where she’s headed before she opens her mouth.

“You should’ve seen this place when his father had it.”

“Mom.”

“I’m telling a nice story.”

“You’re not.”

“My husband could sell you a boat you didn’t want and have you thanking him.” She’s talking to Vanessa now, only Vanessa. “This whole marina was his. Aiden grew up under those lifts. Out on that water in every kind of weather since he was barely a teenager.”

“She doesn’t need the tour.”

“And then we had the storm.”

My mother’s voice drops out of the fond register into the other one, the careful one she uses when talking about that disaster, and I look at my water glass because I know this story from the inside and I don’t need it read aloud over lunch.

“Three years ago now. A nor’easter parked itself right on top of us for two days.” The corners of her mouth turn down. “Took the east dock into the water. Took half the roof off the workshop. Ray had been gone a year by then, so all of it landed on Aiden. He was only… what were you? Twenty-nine?”

“I was fine.”

“He was not fine.”

“The insurance company,” my mother says, “is where the real damage was done.”

“Mom. She gets it.”

“Eighteen months they made him wait. They’d ask for a form, he’d send the form, they’d lose the form. Every single time, Aiden thought this is the one, this is the letter that fixes it.”

Vanessa’s hands are strangling each other in her lap.

“Then the last letter came. Very polite. It meant no.”