he said. Then he went to find the tape measure because he'd said what he had to say. Catherine watched him go. When she turned back, she was looking at Daniel differently, and both of them knew it, and neither of them named it. He loaded the last of his tools at 5:30.
She came down the steps as he was pulling the tarp over the bed. "Thank you," she said. "For today. I'm not finished. I wasn't talking about the fence."
He drove out through the gate at 6:00. Noah was asleep against the window before they hit the county road. At the light on Fairhill, Daniel's eyes went to the keys hanging from the column. Three of them, house, truck, and a third one older than both, worn smooth at the grip that hadn't opened anything in 4 years.
He came back at 6:28 the next morning, two minutes early, because he had never in his life understood the point of being on time exactly. Catherine was at the kitchen window with a cup in her hand. By the time he had the tailgate down, she was crossing the grass with a second one, and she handed it over without asking anything, and it was black, no sugar. He had drunk it that way in front of her exactly once the afternoon before standing by the truck.
Thank you, Daniel said. It's coffee. It's the right coffee. She almost smiled at that and then didn't and went back toward the house. Through the open kitchen window, he could hear the tail end of something that had started before he arrived.
"You were up at 4:00," Lily said. "I heard you on the stairs. You went down and then you came back up and then you went down again." her mother's voice flattening the way it had on the phone. I had work.
You always have work. That's not what that was. Lily, I don't need you to make everything look okay. The girl's voice cracked a little on the last word and then steadied. I need you to tell me what's true.
Catherine had no answer for that at all. Lily came out the back door 10 minutes later and sat on the step with her knees up and Daniel kept working and let her sit. He was pulling the second rotted post when she spoke. "She's not going to tell me." "Probably not today."
Why? She thinks I'm a baby. No. He rolled the post out of the hole and set it in the grass beside the other one. Grown people don't hide things because they don't trust you.
They hide things because they haven't figured out how to carry them yet. And they don't want to hand you something they can't hold themselves. Lily considered that that's dumb. "It is. Worrying alone is always heavier than worrying with somebody."
That's just true. But she'll get there. The girl stayed on the step another minute and then went in. An hour later, mixing concrete by the truck, Daniel heard Catherine's voice through the same window, and it was not the voice she used on the phone with attorneys.