If it works for you, it works. She folded the dish towel over the oven handle. And Daniel, he told her twice now to use his first name, and she'd used it maybe once and gone back to Mr. Cho. But something about this moment had shifted the register. He noticed, "I meant what I said on the phone Wednesday morning." She said, "Finish the job and I'll make it worth your while." He'd taken that at 7:15 to mean a good tip.
He took it to mean a good tip now, too, because that was the reasonable reading and he was a reasonable person. But she was looking at him with something behind it, something that sat slightly outside the clean boundaries of a business transaction. And he was glad that Maya reappeared in the kitchen doorway at that exact moment, dragging the green blanket behind her. "That blanket stays here," he said. "She said I could borrow it," Maya said.
He looked at Margaret. She lifted one shoulder. Bring it back. Saturday, he drove home, got Maya bathed and into pajamas and in bed by 7:30, read her two pages of her book before she went under. He sat at the kitchen table with a beer he barely touched, and thought about fence posts propped against a garage wall with hardware store price tags still on them.
He thought about it and told himself to stop. He was mostly successful. He went to bed at 10:00. Saturday came in cold and clear. The kind of November morning where the sky is an almost aggressive blue and the light is bright without being warm, like a bulb with no heat behind it.
Maya woke fully recovered. The fast bounce back she always had burned hot. Went down hard. Came all the way back in 36 hours like nothing had happened. She was in the back seat with the green blanket folded on her lap when he pulled into Margaret's driveway at 8:45, talking about a girl in her class named Priya, who had apparently committed a social offense of sufficient magnitude that Daniel still hadn't understood the full nature of it after 4 minutes of detailed explanation.
She just took it, he said. Just took it, Maya confirmed without asking. And then said it was hers. What did you do? Told Mrs. Callaway.
And Mrs. Callaway said, "Use your words first." Maya's tone indicated what she thought of this advice. That's generally good advice. I already used my words. My words didn't work. That's why I told Mrs. Callaway.
He looked at her in the mirror. You're a reasonable person, Maya. I know, she said, unbuckling before he'd fully stopped. Margaret opened the front door before they reached the porch. She was dressed, composed, no version of her that suggested she'd been caught in the middle of anything.
She looked down at Maya and something in her face did the thing it had done through the study window opened up. Got warmer. Lost the measuring quality. Stomach all the way. Better?
She asked. All the way? Maya said. She held up the folded blanket. I brought it back.
It smells like our dryer now. Our dryer smells like the thing dad buys at the grocery store. The blue bottle. I'll survive, Margaret said. Taking it.
She looked at Daniel over Maya's head. Coffee's on. The gate job took him two and a half hours, running long, because once he pulled the old anchor off, he found what he'd suspected the bracket had been set in cheap mix that hadn't been properly tamped and it had shifted over the years by a full half in, which was why every latch ever installed on this gate had eventually failed. It wasn't the latch. It was never the latch.
He cleared out the bad concrete, cut a slightly wider pocket, mixed a proper batch, set the new anchor dead plum, and braced it to cure. While he waited on the concrete, he sat on the patio steps with his coffee and watched Maya, who had positioned herself cross-legged in the grass near the new fence section with a small spiral notebook and was drawing what appeared to be a cardographic rendering of the entire backyard. She narrated under her breath while she drew. He could hear it, but not make out the words, just the cadence of it. The way she talked herself through the shape of things.
Margaret came out and took the other patio chair. She had her coffee. She watched Maya for a moment without saying anything. She narrates while she draws. Daniel said says it helps her remember what goes where.
Smart method. Margaret said she watched Maya turn a page and start a new section. She's been at that for 40 minutes. She gets into things. He said when she decides something's worth her attention, that's it.
She gets that from somewhere. Margaret said. He looked at her. She was looking at the yard. Can I ask you something?
She said. Go ahead. When I called you Wednesday morning. Did you think it was strange? He turned the mug in his hands.
A little. Yeah, but you came. You needed work done. She turned then and looked at him the way she did direct. No softening around it.
I know a dozen people who could have fixed that fence, Daniel. People I've used before. People with better equipment. People who don't have a complicated history with my family. I didn't think of it as complicated, he said.
How did you think of it? He considered that. Outside the gate, a car went past slowly. Tires on the cold street. I thought of it as someone who needed help asking someone she thought she could trust.
He said, "That's a simple thing." She held his gaze for a moment and then looked back at the yard. "Richard liked you," she said. He told me so after that first Thanksgiving. He said, "And this is exact. I remember it." He said that man knows how to be in a room without taking it over.