3. Grace
three
Grace
My mother doesn't mention Owen at breakfast. I drink two cups and eat toast and think about how much I love her and how much she would enjoy knowing that Owen walking out of that diner has been living in my brain since eight o'clock last night.
"You know the festival committee is understaffed this year. Barb Rennie broke her wrist and she was running the vendor logistics."
"Mom."
"I'm just saying there's a morning briefing at nine and they could use someone with event experience."
The briefing is at nine. I am at the briefing at nine. I tell myself this is because I have nothing better to do and because I understand logistics and because five days in Silver Ridge is easier if I'm busy. I don't examine the other reason. I'm too professional for that.
The festival grounds feel different in the morning — purposeful, the whole field organized into quadrants, each crew knowing its zone.
I can see the framework of the competition platforms going up on the east end, the log-rolling tank on the north.
Vendor tents are going up on the west, and the committee's folding table is set up at the main entrance with four volunteers who look relieved to see someone who owns a clipboard.
The committee chair, a woman named Donna with a high-visibility vest and a harried expression, takes me in and immediately assigns me the vendor check-in coordination, which is exactly what I would have assigned myself and which is also, I notice, directly adjacent to the east end of the grounds where the competition platforms are being built.
I spend the first hour being useful. I know how to talk to vendors and how to troubleshoot spacing conflicts and how to make the flow of foot traffic work before people have started walking it. Donna stops looking harried by ten o'clock. She starts looking like she might cry with relief.
I'm at the vendor grid doing space allocations when I hear him.
He's at the barrier with a tape measure. Alone — his crew is on the target mounts on the far side. He measures, notes something on the lumber in pencil, straightens.
We see each other at the same time.
"Vendor coordination," I say, by way of explanation.
"Right." He tucks the pencil behind his ear.
"There's an overlap issue at the northwest corner. The space I've been allocated for the food vendors conflicts with your spectator access by about two meters."
"Food vendors can move two meters west."
"That creates a traffic flow problem on the main path."
"What does the grid say?"
I show him the paper. He studies it. He's close enough that I can see the sun lines around his eyes, the way his forearms look against the lumber, the silver starting to come in at his beard.
He smells like sawdust and clean sweat and something wood-smoke adjacent that takes me straight back to being twenty-three.
I take a step back.
"If we shift the barrier north by one meter and the food vendors east by one," I say, "we solve both problems."
"North shifts me into the warm-up zone."
"Only the corner."
"Can't do it. Safety margin."
"Then east on the food vendors and accept the traffic choke point at peak attendance."
He looks at me. "There's a third option," he explains. “The spectator access can run behind the platform instead of beside it. Adds about fifteen meters to the walk."
I look at the layout. He's right. I missed it.
I write it down and don't say anything about missing it, and he doesn't make anything of that either.
We stand there for a moment working through the revised grid and it's almost normal, almost manageable, the kind of professional problem-solving that has nothing to do with the fact that I used to know the sound of his breathing when he slept.
Then he asks, "How long are you staying?"
"Saturday. I leave Saturday morning."
He nods once.
"You've been gone a long time.”.
The tone of it is careful. Nothing in it that I can point to. But I feel it land. It’s not an accusation exactly, but as something that has weight, that has been sitting somewhere for ten years waiting.
"I know.”
"Festival's in better shape than when you left. Expanded the competition events. New chainsaw carving stage. We get people coming from Kamloops now, Kelowna."
"That's good," I say, and then — I'm not sure why, tiredness or the August heat or the specific exhaustion of two days of being on guard — "You sound like a press release."
He goes quiet. "You sound like someone who left.”
I look at him.
"I mean that."
"I know you mean it."
He doesn't let it go. That's the thing about Owen — he never pushed, but when he had something, he held it. "You built a whole life to prove you made the right call," he continues. "And you've been away long enough that you don't have to ask yourself if you did."
"Don't," I say. My clipboard is very tight in my hands. "Don't do the thing where you're reasonable. I can't have that conversation here."
"Where can you have it?"
Nowhere. Everywhere. Not on a festival grounds with Donna twenty meters away and half the town walking past. Not with ten years packed into four days and a Saturday morning departure flight.
"Tell me where your barrier ends and I'll note it on the grid," I change the subject.
His jaw tightens. He walks me to the perimeter of the barrier in silence, calling out measurements that I write down, and his voice is exactly flat and professional and I hate it more than I would have hated the argument. We're done in six minutes. He goes back to his crew. I go back to my table.
I write up the revised layout with completely steady hands and give it to Donna who is very pleased with my organization skills. Then, I take my clipboard and stand at the edge of the grounds for a moment looking at the mountains going white at the top where the snow never fully melts.
You built a whole life to prove you made the right call.
The thing I haven't let myself notice until right this minute is that he doesn't sound wrong.