It's been going for years. He took the post the rest of the way out and laid it in the grass. But don't be too quick to throw out something that looks broken either. Mostly it's about finding the right place to fix. Lily turned that over.
Then she asked something that had nothing to do with fencing. How long does a fence take? "Three days for..." "So you'll be here four days." She said it the way a person says a number they've decided to hold on to and then she went back inside before he could answer.
The call came at three and Daniel heard the shape of it before he heard a word. Catherine had stepped out onto the back terrace with her phone and her voice started level and stayed level and that was somehow worse. He caught pieces on the wind. New direction, not a reflection on you. The board feels.
He caught one more piece, later quieter, when she'd stopped pretending she was negotiating and started doing math out loud. That her stock was worth a great deal of money that no one would buy from her today. That the house was already pledged against the last funding round. That the attorneys were eating what cash she had left at a rate she could measure in weeks. $40 million on paper, and she was counting weeks.
She ended the call, walked to the corner of the yard, and stood there without moving. Daniel didn't ask. He picked up a post, carried it to the hole he just dug, and called across the grass. I need a hand for about 2 minutes, Catherine turned. I'm not dressed for that.
You don't have to dig. You just have to hold it. She came down onto the grass in her good shoes, and she took the post in both hands, and Daniel crouched and set his level against it, and told her left, and then a little back, and then stop. He packed the base while she held. It took closer to 5 minutes than two, and neither one of them mentioned it.
"That's plumb," he said finally. Catherine let go. There was gray concrete dust across both her palms, and she looked at it for a long moment as if she couldn't work out how it had gotten there. At 4:30, Noah climbed out of the truck and went straight to the fence the way another kid would go to a television. He walked the line, looked at the new mesh rolled on the grass, and crouched at the north end where the old posts lay with their black soft ends pointing at the sky.
Catherine had come out with a folder under her arm and stopped when she saw him. "That's my son," Daniel said. "Noah." The boy stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at her and then at the two ruined posts and then back at her. "My dad digs deeper than where the truck hit."