The kids notice him before I do. They always do. There are six of them lined up along the inside of the fence, supervising, and Logan's crouched on the other side of it, dimple out, listening to Bodhi explain something at length and nodding like it matters.
He hands Bodhi a wood scrap, sanded smooth, the way he always does, because a kid with a wood scrap is a kid with treasure. Bodhi takes it like a knighthood.
And when I step up to the fence the maple-and-cedar of him reaches me, warm and steady, and some quiet part of me I keep a firm lid on leans toward it before I haul it back. He's crouched with his sleeves shoved up and his forearms are doing something distracting in the afternoon light, all that quiet competence.
I have a brief and extremely unprofessional thought about what those hands would be like, and shelve it immediately, because I am at work, surrounded by four-year-olds, and there are limits.
“You're staring,” Lily says, appearing beside me with the snack tray.
“At the fence,” I say, with dignity.
“Mm.” She doesn't argue. She just stands there and watches with me, which is worse. Out at the fence line, Logan laughs at something Bodhi says, head tipped all the way back, the whole sound of it carrying across the yard, and his sleeves are shoved up past the elbow, and the early sun is doing something frankly irresponsible to his forearms.
“Hudson texted me,” Lily says. “He says, and I quote, 'tell her the fence has been done for a month.'“
I take the snack tray. I don't have a comeback. That's new.
“Pickup's in an hour.” She pats my shoulder, gentler than she needs to. “Then it's just you and a carpenter. Go get number two, Miss Josie.”
One down. One to go, if he says yes. And a third I don't have at all, because the third already said no and went back under his truck.
Through the glass, Logan glances up like he can feel the attention, finds me in the window, and raises one hand. NotFinn's grudging two fingers from the fire truck. The whole hand, and the whole smile underneath it.
Chapter 5
Logan
The fence doesn't need me.
I've known that since the day I started. It's a half-day job at most, a couple of rails and a wobbly post, the kind of thing I could fix before lunch and never think about again. Instead I've been at it a month. I re-set a post that was fine. I sanded the top rail smooth enough to serve dinner on.
Because the fence runs along the back of Little Hollow Preschool, and at some point every afternoon, Josie Porter crosses the window with a kid on her hip and the whole day makes sense for a second.
I'm aware of how that sounds.
Hudson's aware too. He hasn't said a word about it, which is how I know he's noticed. Hudson not commenting on something is Hudson screaming.
“Mister Logan.” Bodhi's at his post on the inside of the fence, arms hooked over the rail he is not supposed to climb. Behind him the rest of the afternoon crew lines up, six kids supervising me in a row. “Why does that one gobzzzz?”
“It's a sander. It makes the wood smooth.”
“Does it hurt the wood?”
The honest answer is no. “The wood likes it.”
Bodhi nods, satisfied, like I've cleared up something that's been weighing on him, then leans in, drops his voice, and delivers today's intelligence report. This is our arrangement. I give him a sanded scrap of pine, he gives me the news.
So far this week I've learned that the class fish is on his third secret name, that Posy can do a cartwheel “but only at home,” and that Miss Josie said a bad word on Monday when the laminator jammed, and then turned the color of a stop sign and made everyone promise not to tell.
“And did everyone promise?”
“Yes. I promised I wouldn't tell. I'm good at keeping secrets,” Bodhi says.
I make a note never to tell this child anything, and hand him his scrap of pine. He takes it in both hands and runs it back to the others, and I get maybe four more minutes of pretending to check a level before the pickup bell rings and the yard empties out, kid by kid, into the row of cars along the side street.
I should pack up. The light's going gold and I've sanded everything that can legally be sanded.
The side door opens, and Josie comes across the yard.
