His ex's mother called him at 7:15 on a Wednesday morning and asked him to fix her fence. Not a contractor, not a neighbor. Him, the man her daughter had walked away from 18 months ago. Daniel Cho showed up anyway because that's what you do. He spent two days pulling rotten posts, pouring new concrete, setting everything straight.
And when the last gate latch finally caught clean, Margaret Ellison stood in her backyard, looked him dead in the eye, and said it like she'd been holding it the whole time. Finish it and I'll make it worth your while. So, what exactly was she offering? The first thing Daniel Ch noticed about Margaret Ellison's yard was that the fence had been broken for a while. Not just damaged, intentionally ignored.
Half the slats were rotten at the base. Two posts had heaved so far out of the ground they'd gone past leaning and straight into abstract art. He crouched down near the worst section and pressed his thumb against the wood where it met the soil. It gave like wet cardboard. He pressed harder and his thumb sinking up to the first knuckle before he stopped.
Whoever had let this go had done so on purpose or hadn't looked at it in 3 years. Either way, it wasn't a quick afternoon job. He heard the back door open behind him. He didn't turn around yet. He pulled his thumb out of the wood and wiped it on his jeans and looked down the length of the fence line, counting the bad sections.
Three posts that needed to come fully out and be reset. At least seven slats he wouldn't even try to save. The rest he could reinforce with some sistering boards if she wanted to keep costs down. But the honest answer was that this fence was going to need most of what he had in the truck and a run to the hardware store on top of it. Mr. Cho.
Her voice came from maybe 15 ft behind him. I was starting to think you'd changed your mind. Just getting a feel for what I'm dealing with. Daniel said. He was still crouching.
And he stood then and turned. She was closer than he expected, standing on the grass in a gray dress, short sleeves, fitted, the kind of fabric that moved right, arms folded across her chest, one hand lifted near her chin, slippers on, pale ones, which meant she'd come out quickly. She was studying him with the same patience he'd just given the fence post. Careful, not committing to anything yet. Margaret Ellison was 53 years old and still carried herself like someone who expected rooms to adjust to her arrival.
She had Britney's jawline. That was the first thing he registered. And then he pushed it away because he had no business cataloging the resemblances. He was here to fix a fence. That was the whole thing.
Your fence is in pretty rough shape, Mrs. Ellison, he said. I'm aware, she said. That's why I called you. I mean, worse than rough. A few of these posts, the footings are rotted all the way through.
This isn't patchwork. I'm going to have to pull them and reset them with new concrete. She didn't flinch. How long? Most of the day and I'll probably need to make a store run for materials a beat.
She looked at the fence then back at him. That's fine. I'm not going anywhere. That was the part that should have felt like a simple answer and didn't. Here's the thing you need to understand about Daniel Cho and the Ellison family because the history between them runs in a direction most people wouldn't expect.
Daniel had dated Britney Ellison for almost 2 years. Long enough to meet the parents at Thanksgiving. Long enough to sit in the same backyard at a dinner party the following summer, complimenting Margaret on the tomatoes she'd grown along the south wall and meaning it long enough that when Britney ended it 18 months ago now, the word that best described what came after was clean. No blowup, no betrayal, just Britney sitting across from him at the kitchen table of their shared apartment in the calm, already decided voice she used when she thought something all the way through, saying she didn't think they wanted the same things anymore. She was right.
He knew she was right before she finished the sentence. He'd been raising Maya for 6 years by that point, mostly alone after Maya's mom left when Mia was two. And what he wanted was small and close range, a good school district, Saturday morning pancakes, a fence that kept the dog in the yard. Britney wanted things that required a passport, and a different version of him. Neither of those was wrong.
They were just pointed away from each other. They split without ugliness, which Daniel considered one of his few clean wins in a decade that hadn't offered many. And then Margaret's husband, Richard, had passed that January. And Daniel sent a card because you did that. And she'd sent a handwritten thank you note back.
And that was the last he'd heard from the Ellison family until 7:15 on a Wednesday morning when Margaret called his cell like no time had passed. He'd said yes without asking why. Partly because of Richard. Partly because when a woman who's been widowed 2 years calls and says she needs help with something structural, you don't ask for a justification. You show up.
You went back to his truck and pulled his tools, drill, reciprocating saw, pry bar, tape measure, and laid them in the grass at the worst section. Margaret went inside. He heard the door and then it was just him and the low sound of birds and a lawn mower working two or three streets over and he let himself settle into the work the way he always did. The part of the job where the thinking slowed down and the hands took over. He started at the first bad post, got the pry bar under the base of the surrounding slats and worked them loose, setting them aside in a stack.
The nails were rusted through in most spots. He was 40 minutes in, crouched down, working the reciprocating saw through a section of buried rot when he heard the back door again. He shut the saw off. She was standing at the edge of the patio with two mugs. He stood up and pulled his gloves off and crossed the yard to take one.
It was heavy ceramic, the good kind, with a national park on it he'd never visited. "Thank you," he said. "Do you still take it black?" he stopped. Just a half second because that meant she remembered from one of maybe three or four times they'd been in the same house together across a dinner table and she'd noticed how he took his coffee and kept it. "Yeah," he said, still black, she didn't sit.
She stayed standing, holding her mug with both hands, looking at the section he'd been working. The removed slats were stacked in the grass. The old post was half exposed, the footing crumbling where he'd started clearing around it. "Worse than you thought?" she asked. About what I thought, he said.
These footings are what's going to eat the time. Digging them out, mixing new concrete, waiting for it to set. She nodded. Then, without looking at him, she said, "Britney's moving to Portland." He took a sip of coffee. It was very good ground fresh.
He could tell. Not a pod machine. I heard something like that. He said, "Good opportunity. A great one.