"Jack! Perfect timing!" Mrs. Conley appeared from behind a display of ceramic angels in the general storelike she'd been lying in wait. Which she possibly had. "I need a strong pair of hands."
"Mrs. Conley, I'm just here for?—"
"The church hall stage has a wobble. Father Duncan nearly fell during his homily last Sunday. It was dramatic — not the good kind of dramatic, the lawsuit kind. Ed was supposed to fix it but Ed has done something to his back, don't ask me what because the man refuses to see a doctor, very stubborn, very male?—"
"I'm really just picking up?—"
"It'll take twenty minutes. Thirty at most. I'll make you a sandwich."
This was how Mrs. Conley operated. She didn't ask. She stated her need, assumed your compliance, and offered food as compensation before you'd agreed to anything. Saying no required more energy than Jack had today.
"Fine. Twenty minutes."
"How WONDERFUL!" She clapped her hands together with enough force to startle Father Duncan, who was reading a newspaper in the corner and clearly had not been consulted about any of this.
The church hall stage didn't wobble. It swayed. The cross braces underneath had come loose — not rotted, just poorly installed in the first place.Whoever had built this thing had used finishing nails where they needed lag bolts, which was like putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm.
"This is going to take longer than twenty minutes," Jack called up to Mrs. Conley, who was hovering near the stage like a foreman.
"Take all the time you need, dear. I'll make two sandwiches."
Don Patterson wandered in around the twenty-minute mark, drawn by some invisible signal that a man was working on something nearby. He watched Jack from a folding chair, offering commentary.
"My nephew Gary would've used screws for that."
"Screws would strip out. The wood's too soft."
"Gary would disagree."
"Gary would be wrong."
Don considered this, decided he liked it, and moved on to a story about how Joan's brother had once tried to build a deck using only a hammer and determination. The deck lasted three months.
Mrs. Conley brought the sandwiches. Ham and swiss on white bread, mustard on one side, mayo on the other. She'd also brought sweet tea, a slice of pie "from yesterday, still perfectlyfine, don't listen to anyone who says otherwise," and a ziplock bag of cookies for Clara.
"For Clara's young man" would have been more accurate, since the cookies were clearly a bribe, but Jack took them with a thank-you and didn't push it.
"How IS Clara?" Mrs. Conley asked, settling into the chair beside Don with the air of someone who'd been waiting for this opening. "She looked so happy the other day. Ed said he hasn't seen her smile like that in years. Since before—well." She waved her hand, editing herself. "Since before."
"She's good," Jack said, tightening a lag bolt. "She's been busy with her art."
"Oh, the drawings! I've always said she's so talented. Ida showed me some of her work once — the little comic with the sailor? Beautiful. I didn't understand most of it, but the pictures were beautiful."
Jack smiled despite himself. Mrs. Conley, summarizing Tidal Lock as "the little comic with the sailor." Clara would die.
"She IS talented," he said. Meant it.
"She takes after Ida, you know. Ida was a wonderful painter before the arthritis. Landscapes, mostly. There's one hanging in the church entrance — that big one of the harbor at sunset? That's Ida's." Mrs.Conley leaned closer, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial level that was still audible from across the room. "Between us, I think the art is what saved her. After that terrible man. She stopped doing everything — stopped coming to town, stopped eating properly, Tim had to bring her food — but she never stopped drawing. I told Ida, I said, 'The drawing is a good sign. People who are drawing are still fighting.'"
Jack's hands slowed on the bolt.
People who are drawing are still fighting.
Mrs. Conley, for all her overbearing nosiness and inability to read a room, had just accidentally said the truest thing he'd heard all week.
The drive back to the lighthouse was long.
Not in distance — twenty minutes, same as always. Long in Jack's head. The truck rattled down the coastal road with Mrs. Conley's cookies on the passenger seat and his dad's anniversary sitting on his chest like something he couldn't cough up.
