He didn’t answer right away. But he didn’t shut down either.
“Go ahead.”
“Mrs. Parker said she was a teacher. That she loved books.” Kate hesitated slightly. “She talked about you a lot.”
Something crossed his face quickly, like a cloud shadow.
“What did she say?”
“That you could fix anything. That even as a kid, if you started something, you finished it.” Kate looked at him steadily. “Mrs. Parker told me Eleanor said that not long before she died.”
Alex set the water bottle down on the step beside him. Looked out at the field.
“We had a fight a year and a half before she died,” he said. His voice was even, but Kate already knew how to hear what lived underneath an even voice. “Over nothing, really. She said I’d become a stranger. I said I had work. She asked when I was coming. I promised Christmas. Then I kept moving it.” He stopped. “When she died, I was in the city in a meeting. I got here after the funeral.”
Kate didn’t say, “I understand,” and she didn’t say, “It wasn’t your fault.” He was grateful to her for that. Both would have been false.
“Is that why you want to sell the house?” she asked.
He turned toward her.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because some people get rid of what hurts to look at. That’s not judgment,” she added immediately. “I understand it. I’ve done it too.”
Alex was quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Honestly. I thought I did. I came here with a decision already made. Now I’m not sure.”
Somewhere off to the side a door slammed, and a minute later Lily came flying into the yard with a hand pie in each hand.
“I brought these!” she announced. “Mrs. Parker said hot ones have to be eaten right away.”
She handed one to each of them. Alex took his. It was cabbage filling, hot, dusted lightly with flour. He bit into it and suddenly remembered. His mother used to make these exactly the same way. Same dough. Same filling. Sundays, when he was a boy. He’d come in from outside and she’d be at the stove and the whole house would smell like this.
He chewed in silence, trying not to think about how many Sundays he had missed.
“Good?” Lily asked.
“Good,” he said.
“I made one myself,” she informed him. “Well, almost. Mrs. Parker helped a little. This one.” She pointed to the pie in Kate’s hand. “It has lots of cabbage because I like cabbage.”
At noon the mechanic arrived from the auto shop, earlier than promised. He worked on the battery for about forty minutes, replaced it, and the car started on the first try. Then he left.
Alex stood by the car with the keys in his hand. Technically he could leave right then. He looked at the house. At the fence he had repaired. At Lily sitting on the porch explaining something to Rabbit Peter.
He slipped the keys into his pocket and walked back toward the house. He’d leave tomorrow. One more day wouldn’t decide anything.
Sunday evening settled over the town slowly and quietly. Alex sat on the porch with a mug of tea Kate had brought him. She had set it beside him without comment and gone back inside. He hadn’t thanked her right away, and by the time he thought to, she was already in the kitchen. So the thanks remained owed.
Lily was quiet all evening. Alex noticed it before Kate did. The little girl sat in the room, not running around, not chattering about the rabbit, not trailing after anyone. She barely touched her dinner. Poked at her oatmeal with a spoon and pushed it away.
“Lily, three bites at least,” Kate said.
“Don’t want it. My head hurts.”
Kate stood, put her hand to her daughter’s forehead, and her face changed. Alex saw the change. That second when a mother understands something is wrong and everything inside her narrows to a point.
“Let’s get you to bed,” she said calmly.
She tucked Lily in, then came back to the kitchen for the thermometer. Alex stayed where he was. Kate took Lily’s temperature, standing in the doorway of the room, then looked at the reading. From the way she held the thermometer, Alex understood before she spoke…
