“Hm,” he said, giving her a narrow-eyed glance that spoke more than words could have.
Garrett waved off her offer of tea or coffee while he unpacked his tools and assessed Eleanor’s new oven, which had been delivered the day prior.
“This looks pretty straightforward to hook up,” he said, craning his neck to look at all the back panels. “But I’m going to be extra careful. Always good to be cautious when you’re working with gas.”
“That’s part of why I was too nervous to do it myself,” she confessed.
He gave her a pointed look. “Yeah, you don’t get to touch the gas.” His tone was stern, but Eleanor detected a playfulness beneath it. “That comes way after you manage to get the water working.”
“I would have figured it out eventually!” she protested.
“Hm.”
“I would have!”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, well, you said nothing very loudly,” she accused, working hard to smother a laugh.
For a while, Eleanor puttered on her laptop while Garrett worked. There were a million and one things to do when it came to getting a business up and running, she had learned, but the one she found the most fun was selecting which books she would stock in her little shop. Eventually, she found her focus drifting to the man deftly tightening bolts and checking connections.
“How’d you get so good at all of this?” she asked him.
“At ovens?”
She shook her head, although he was looking at his work, not at her. “Not just ovens. All the odds and ends stuff. You seem to know how to make it all go just right.”
“When my hands aren’t busy,” he said dryly, “I’m going to need you to say that again so that I can record it and send it to my parents. It’ll remind them that there actuallywasa point to me taking apart everything when I was a child.”
Eleanor covered a smile. “I note that you said, ‘taking apart’ but not ‘putting back together,’” she observed.
He shot her a faux affronted look. “Well, Itried,” he insisted. “And I got good at it… eventually. But that part’s a lot harder, isn’t it?”
She laughed.
“Yeah, yeah,” he teased. “Laugh it up. I was that kid. The one who needed to know how everything worked.”
“And look where it’s gotten you now,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Badgered by everybody who doesn’t know a hammer from their right elbow.”
“You’re not badgering. I like helping you,” he said gruffly. Then, seemingly embarrassed by this little slip of kindness, he asked, “If you weren’t the take-stuff-apart type, what did you want to be when you were a kid? Bookstore owner?”
Her laugh was a little sadder, this time around. “Oh, no,” she said. “I was the kid who wanted to be a mom. I had about a million dollies, and I had to take care of each of them just so.”
“Well, that dream came true.”
“It did,” she confirmed, trying not to sound melancholy. “I’m just being a total mom, thinking about how big my son has gotten and all that stuff. He and I were just on the phone and he’s so mature and…” She cut herself off. “Sorry, I’m boring you.”
“You’re not,” he said. “My sisters have kids, and they talk about the same kind of stuff. Parenting sounds real hard. It seems like you did a good job, though.”
“Thanks,” she said, feeling a warmth in her chest at the praise. “I suppose it’s weird to feel like I have empty nest syndrome when I’m in a new house, but part of me is adjusting to a form of motherhood that’s… less constant than what it was. Although I won’t miss constantly driving back and forth to soccer practice and play dates,” she added with feeling. “Or all the times he forgot this or that at home and I had to rush it off to school!”
“See? Silver linings. And now you’re doing something new.”
“Yeah,” she said, mostly to herself. It was intriguing, how Garrett’s straightforward way of saying things seemed to resonate so clearly with her. When he said it, it seemed so simple. She was doing something new, and that was in no way a conflict with what she’d been doing before.
He stood and checked all the knobs on the new stove, clicking each one to life and then extinguishing it.
“Stove’s good,” he said when he was finished. “How’s the sink holding up?”
