"Put that down," he shouted. "That was my pops." Isaac set the tool down immediately. He didn't argue, didn't laugh at the boy, didn't try to win him over. "Sorry, bud.
I didn't know." A few days later, he needed that exact chisel. He walked over to where Sam was playing by the garden. Sam, that chisel of your pops is a good one. Best one around for this kind of wood.
Could I borrow it? I promise I'll take care of it. The boy looked at him sideways. Okay, he said finally. But you put it back where it goes.
Write exactly where it goes, Isaac said. From then on, the boy started hanging around the work. He'd sit on an upturned crate and watch, firing off question after question. How come this board cracked and that one didn't? Because this one dried crooked.
Wood has to rest before it can turn into something else. Isaac showed him how to hold the sandpaper and how to run his hand along the grain to feel where it was still rough. And Sam, who had barely said a word in months, started talking again. Isaac's little girl was getting pink in the cheeks, gaining weight, sleeping better. He decided she would be named Rose after her mother.
Maggie didn't understand it. You're going to give her your wife's name. Isn't it hard hearing it all the time? I don't want my daughter growing up in a house where her mother's name can't be said out loud," he answered. "She's going to know who Rose was.
She's going to know she was real, that she was good, that she laughed at everything." It was one of the first times he had talked about his wife. Then he picked the sandpaper back up, and the scratching filled the yard again, but that answer stayed with Maggie all day. She thought about the way she never said Travis's name in front of the boys, about the way Sam had stopped asking. The house was changing in front of everyone.
The roof was nearly done. The porch stopped sinking. The fence stood straight again, and without quite realizing it, Maggie began to tell the time of day by the sound of the tools outside. When the hammering stopped, she'd glance out the window just to make sure everything was all right. One sunny afternoon, she carried a picture of lemonade out to the porch.
Isaac drank a glass in one swallow. She took a little too long going back inside. "You're real good at this," she said a little awkwardly. Fixing things is what I know how to do. He said, "It's hard work, but it's easier than a lot of things in life."
The weeks went by. Maggie's help with little Rose wasn't needed so much anymore. Isaac had the feedings figured out, and his in-laws, Rose's parents, finally made the drive down from Kentucky to meet their granddaughter. They were a softspoken old couple who stayed at a motel in town. The grandmother would hold the baby and cry quietly, whispering her daughter's name.
"You were an angel to my son-in-law," the old woman said, gripping Maggie's hand tight. "The Lord put you two in each other's path at a time like this." Maggie turned red and changed the subject. Rose's parents were too old to raise a baby, and her sister's house was already full. In the end, the only one who was going to raise that little girl was Isaac.