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“That one is free. The expensive compliment is that I would like to buy the block.” He smiled. “Not today. I’m told I have to wait until after January fifteenth.”

She didn’t look at me. Nora had asked me to tell her bad news the day I received it. Crane had called five days ago, and his assistant had told Nora about it. I had not. “January fifteenth,” she said.

“Give or take.” Crane angled himself toward both of us. “This morning, I watched Frank Donnelly clean gutters on a building he doesn’t own. The festival’s public page shows the same people hanging lights, setting up booths, and raising money every year. That unpaid work keeps this street alive, but no bank puts it on a loan application. I’ve spent nineteen years trying to solve that problem.”

“And when you can’t put a town on a balance sheet,” Nora said, “you build something you can.”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “That’s what I do. I sleep well, and I won’t pretend otherwise on your sidewalk.” He nodded toward the window. “Four inches off-center. I’ll remember that.”

“Janet asked me for twenty minutes when she called Thursday.”

“Then Janet was optimistic.”

Nora checked her phone. Apparently, she had started timing him when she stepped outside. “You’ve used six.” Her voice went level, the same voice she used at council meetings. “Come look at the basement beam beneath my shop, Mr. Crane. It is the part nobody photographs.”

Crane went inside. Nora held the door for him, then kept one hand on it when I approached.

“Nora.”

“Not now,” she said pleasantly, because Crane could hear us. “The rebuilt festival stage still needs your inspection.”

She released the door. I caught it before it closed and followed them inside.

I ignored the stage and went downstairs with them. Jenna stayed upstairs with a customer.

Crane stood beneath the beam supporting the shop floor and looked from the east wall to the party wall. He found the sag, moved a foot and a half to his left, and checked where the beam met the stone. “How long have the stockroom shelves been against the west wall?” he asked.

“Since Adele owned the store,” Nora said. “Sometime in the nineties.”

“Move them. Taking the weight off that corner won’t repair the footing, but it may keep the movement from getting worse before the work starts.”

He thanked her for her time and looked around the basement. “This is tidier than the basement under my kitchen.”

“Should I be worried about your kitchen?” Nora asked.

“Everyone should.”

Nora laughed once, then pressed her lips together.

I said nothing.

By four, Crane had visited Donnelly Hardware, Callahan’s Books, and Sweet Provisions.

At Donnelly Hardware, Frank showed him the painted sign his grandfather had commissioned in 1947 and explained that the sign painter had accepted stove parts as payment.

“Did the stove work?” Crane asked.

“Until 1968. Then my father converted it to gas and lost an eyebrow.”

“Only one?”

“If he’d lost both, he might have learned something.”

Crane asked whether the stove still existed. Frank’s arms uncrossed.

At Callahan’s Books, Ivy sold Crane a first edition. She came out from behind the counter to hand it to him, shook his hand, and told him to come back. That was nearly a parade by Ivy’s standards.

Sweet Provisions, Pearl’s bakery, was our last stop. Pearl sold Crane a cocoa and six croissants. While she rang up the order, he asked how she kept the bakery steps from icing over. “Frank refills the bucket of sand every November while insisting my steps aren’t his responsibility,” she said. “Two scoops of sand, one scoop of fine gravel, and one argument.”