"You know the festival committee is understaffed this year. Barb Rennie broke her wrist and she was running the vendor logistics."
"Mom."
"I'm just saying there's a morning briefing at nine and they could use someone with event experience."
The briefing is at nine. I am at the briefing at nine. I tell myself this is because I have nothing better to do and because I understand logistics and because five days in Silver Ridge is easier if I'm busy. I don't examine the other reason. I'm too professional for that.
The festival grounds feel different in the morning — purposeful, the whole field organized into quadrants, each crew knowing its zone. I can see the framework of the competition platforms going up on the east end, the log-rolling tank on the north. Vendor tents are going up on the west, and the committee's folding table is set up at the main entrance with four volunteers who look relieved to see someone who owns a clipboard.
The committee chair, a woman named Donna with a high-visibility vest and a harried expression, takes me in and immediately assigns me the vendor check-in coordination, which is exactly what I would have assigned myself and which is also, I notice, directly adjacent to the east end of the grounds where the competition platforms are being built.
I spend the first hour being useful. I know how to talk to vendors and how to troubleshoot spacing conflicts and how to make the flow of foot traffic work before people have started walking it. Donna stops looking harried by ten o'clock. She starts looking like she might cry with relief.
I'm at the vendor grid doing space allocations when I hear him.
He's at the barrier with a tape measure. Alone — his crew is on the target mounts on the far side. He measures, notes something on the lumber in pencil, straightens.
We see each other at the same time.
"Vendor coordination," I say, by way of explanation.
"Right." He tucks the pencil behind his ear.
"There's an overlap issue at the northwest corner. The space I've been allocated for the food vendors conflicts with your spectator access by about two meters."
"Food vendors can move two meters west."
"That creates a traffic flow problem on the main path."
"What does the grid say?"
I show him the paper. He studies it. He's close enough that I can see the sun lines around his eyes, the way his forearms look against the lumber, the silver starting to come in at his beard. He smells like sawdust and clean sweat and something wood-smoke adjacent that takes me straight back to being twenty-three.
I take a step back.
"If we shift the barrier north by one meter and the food vendors east by one," I say, "we solve both problems."
"North shifts me into the warm-up zone."
"Only the corner."
"Can't do it. Safety margin."
"Then east on the food vendors and accept the traffic choke point at peak attendance."
He looks at me. "There's a third option," he explains. “The spectator access can run behind the platform instead of beside it. Adds about fifteen meters to the walk."
I look at the layout. He's right. I missed it. I write it down and don't say anything about missing it, and he doesn't make anything of that either. We stand there for a moment working through the revised grid and it's almost normal, almost manageable, the kind of professional problem-solving that has nothing to do with the fact that I used to know the sound of his breathing when he slept.
Then he asks, "How long are you staying?"
"Saturday. I leave Saturday morning."
He nods once.
"You've been gone a long time.”.
The tone of it is careful. Nothing in it that I can point to. But I feel it land. It’s not an accusation exactly, but as something that has weight, that has been sitting somewhere for ten years waiting.
