Rivet doesn't follow him.
She trots into the kitchen and sits on my foot and looks up at me with her dark steady eyes — the way she looks at Nash when she's decided something is true and is waiting for everyone else to catch up.
"It's complicated," I tell her.
She puts her chin on my knee.
Outside, the truck lights sweep across the kitchen window and disappear down the road.
I bake until midnight. It doesn't help.
four
Nash
Idon'tsleepwell.
I lie in the dark and I think about her hand on the front of my coveralls. The way she held on. I've been in a lot of houses, close quarters with a lot of people, and I have never once kissed a client in a back parlour while my dog sat on my foot and watched. I don't do things like that. I'm not built for things like that.
She saidI need—and stepped back, and I let her go because it was the right thing and I'd do it again. I haven't stopped thinking about it for twelve hours.
Wrench puts his head on my chest at four in the morning.
"I went too fast," I tell him.
He breathes on me. Patient. Unhelpful.
"She's got enough to deal with."
Rivet, at the foot of the bed, makes a small sound that might be disagreement.
"She stepped away," I say.
Neither dog has anything to say to that. I stare at the ceiling until it's light enough to get up.
I come back on Thursday because the work isn't done and because staying away would make it worse. Professional. I know how to be professional. I've been professional for fifteen years — I can walk through that door and do the job and not think about the back parlour.
She opens the door in a grey dress with her hair down and she meets my eyes for exactly one second before she steps back to let me in. I go to the library. She goes to the kitchen. We find the rhythm of the work and stay in it, and by mid-morning it almost feels like Wednesday didn't happen.
Then I reach past her for the manifold gauge and she goes still, and I go still, and we're six inches apart in the library doorway for a moment that stretches longer than it should.
"Sorry," I say.
"You're fine," she says.
I go back to the manifold. She goes back to her measurements. Rivet sits between us and looks from one face to the other like she's watching a conversation happening just below the range of human hearing.
I'm packing up mid-afternoon when I hear the car.
Silver crossover, rental clean, never been near a logging road. And the man getting out of it.
Good coat. The easy posture of someone who has never had to hurry for anything. He looks up at the house with an expression I've seen before — not appreciation, assessment. Pricing.
I go to the entrance hall.
She's already at the door. Arms folded, chin up. Not how she stands when she's cold or thinking. How she stands when she's waiting for someone to finish.
She sees me over his shoulder. Something moves across her face — quick and complicated — and goes neutral.
