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“Your grandfather,” Harold had said, looking at Roy’s sign above the door, “spent the better part of a year being useful to your grandmother before he said a single word that mattered. I always thought that was the longest year of his life.”

Shane had said nothing.

“Roy told me once,” Harold had continued, examining a level he had no reason to be examining, “that the hardest part wasn’t saying it. The hardest part was deciding he was allowed to want it.”

He’d put the level back on the shelf.

“Good level,” he’d said. “I’ll take it.”

He had bought a level he already had.

Shane sat at his fishing spot on the north shore of Clearwater Lake and thought about Roy, who had spent a year being useful before he’d said a single word that mattered. He thought about a woman with paint on her left hand who had left a cinnamon roll next to his forgotten travel mug without leaving her name. He thought about Ms. Hayes said in his own voice in a quiet aisle, landing differently than he’d expected it to.

He thought about Harold’s level, sitting on a shelf at the hardware store that already had three levels on it.

The lake was perfectly still.

He looked at it.

Absolutely not, he thought, for what he was beginning to suspect was not the last time.

The lake, as it had been doing lately, did not agree.

He sat for another hour.

He didn’t catch anything.

He didn’t particularly mind.

Chapter 9

Paint and Sawdust

The project had been Lauren’s idea, technically, in the sense that Lauren had said “what if the kids painted something for the festival” during one of their lunch breaks and Allison had said “yes” before she’d thought through the logistics, which was how most of her best decisions happened.

The logistics, once she thought through them, were straightforward enough: she wanted panels, four feet by three feet, one for each homeroom, painted with something that meant Merrybrook to the kids who’d lived here their whole lives and the kids who hadn’t and the kids who were still figuring out the difference. She had the paint. She had the kids. She needed the panels.

Shane cuts panels, Doug had said. Cleaner than doing it yourself.

She stood outside Colter Hardware on a Thursday afternoon and did not think about the last time she’d been inside or the narrow aisle or the almost touch or the way he’d said Ms. Hayes in a voice that had done something unexpected to her composure. She was here for panels. This was a practical errand.

She went in.

* * *

Doug was at the counter, which was where Doug always was, and looked up with the expression of a man who had been expecting her.

“Panel cutting,” he said.

“How did you...”

“You’re doing a project with the kids for the festival. You needed panels last time and didn’t ask. It was only a matter of time.” He was already coming around the counter. “Shane’s in the workshop. Back through there.” He pointed to a door at the rear of the store she hadn’t noticed before, heavy, slightly ajar, a thin line of sawdust light coming through the gap. “He does the cuts himself. More precise.”

“I don’t want to interrupt...”

“You won’t,” Doug said, in the tone of someone who had already decided this. “Go ahead.”

She went.