Chapter 1 #2
He looks at me sideways, like he's filing something away somewhere, and doesn't push further. I find, walking beside him in the April sun, that I am in absolutely no hurry to get where we're going, which is unusual for me. I am, generally, in a great hurry to get everywhere. It's easier that way.
"So," he says, kicking a stone off the drive with the toe of his boot. "What's the deal with the sandals? Preacher's daughter uniform, or personal choice?"
"They're comfortable."
"Comfortable's a word people use when they've given up on interesting."
"I have not given up on interesting, thank you very much."
"Prove it."
"I fold origami cranes during long sermons," I say, before I've thought better of it. "I have a drawer full of them. Nobody knows."
He stops walking entirely. Stares at me like I've just handed him a winning lottery ticket.
"You fold paper birds during your own father's sermons."
"It helps me focus. Don't look so delighted, it's not that impressive."
"It's extremely impressive. It's the single most interesting thing I've learned about a person all month." He starts walking again, shaking his head, grinning like he can't quite believe his luck. "Ruth Calloway. Secret bird-folder. Look at you."
"You say that like it's a scandal."
"In this town? Might as well be."
We reach the shelter, a squat brick building with a genuinely alarming water stain spreading across the ceiling of the east wing, and Gabriel whistles low when he sees it.
"That's not a leak," he says. "That's a personal decision the roof made to give up."
"Can you fix it?"
"Preacher's daughter, I can fix anything with a hammer and enough spite." He climbs partway up the outside ladder, testing a rung, and calls down without looking at me. "You gonna hold the ladder, or you just gonna stand there judging my technique?"
"I wasn't judging your technique."
"You were absolutely judging my technique. I could feel it. Preacher's kids have a very specific judging energy."
"I don't have a judging energy."
"You've got a judging energy, a clipboard energy, and apparently a secret bird-folding energy. That's three energies in one woman. Very efficient."
I hold the ladder, mostly to keep from laughing, and he climbs the rest of the way up, testing boards, calling down measurements I dutifully write on my clipboard even though I understand maybe half of what he's telling me.
"You could just tell your crew this on Saturday," I say. "You don't need me writing it down."
"Sure I don't."
"Then why—"
"Because it's a nice afternoon," he says, simply, looking down at me from the roofline with an expression I can't quite name, "and I like the company. That an acceptable answer, or you need me to write it on the clipboard too?"
I don't have a response for that. I write down another measurement instead, and if my handwriting comes out a little unsteady, that's between me and the clipboard.
We walk back to the clubhouse afterward in the long gold light, and he tells me, unprompted, about the first roof he ever fixed — a group home in another county, a supervisor who taught him just enough carpentry to be useful and just little enough to keep control of the tools, and how he'd liked it, the fixing, the making something whole that had been broken.
"First thing in my whole life I was ever actually good at," he says. "Nobody had to tell me twice. I just liked knowing exactly where a thing was broken and exactly how to make it not broken anymore."
"That's not nothing."
"No," he agrees, glancing at me. "I don't suppose it is."
By the time we reach the gravel drive, the sun's gone low and orange behind the tree line, and Diesel's already hollering something about dinner from the clubhouse porch, and I realize, with a small jolt, that I've stayed far longer than any errand for the church has ever required.
"I should go," I say. "My father—"
"Will be wondering where you are. I know." He doesn't try to stop me, though something in his face looks like he might want to. "Saturday, then. We'll bring the whole crew, fix that roof properly."
"Saturday."
"Try not to judge our technique too hard."
"No promises, Mercer."
He grins at that — grins like I've said something genuinely funny instead of just mildly clever — and I drive home with the windows down and the radio off, replaying the whole strange, unhurried afternoon, and I do not, for once, think about Sunday's announcements or the charity drive or anything at all that isn't a black-haired man on a roof, telling me about the first thing he was ever good at.
Saturday, the Iron Thorn descends on the shelter roof in force — six men, two women, a cooler of soda, and enough easy, profane joking to make Mrs. Petraki clutch her cardigan the entire morning like it might protect her from the language drifting down off the roofline.
Gabriel spends most of the visit up on the roof, hammering steadily, and I notice — I shouldn't notice, but I notice — that when my father's truck pulls into the lot around noon to check on the work, Gabriel doesn't come down. Not once. Not until the truck has pulled back out.
"Avoiding someone?" I ask, once he's finally climbed down, dusty and sweating, grabbing a soda from the cooler.
"Preachers make me nervous," he says. "Feels like they can see straight through to the parts I'd rather keep private."
"My father's not that perceptive," I say. "Trust me."
"No?"
"He didn't notice I've been up until two in the morning three nights this week."
I don't know why I tell him that. It slips out, unguarded, the way nothing ever slips out of me, and I regret it the moment it's in the air between us.
"Doing what?" he asks, and there's no teasing in it now, just genuine curiosity, like the answer actually matters to him and not just as gossip.
I open my mouth to deflect, to say sermon prep, the same easy lie I gave my father at breakfast, and something about the way he's looking at me — like he's already decided whatever I say is going to be interesting, no matter what — makes the lie stick in my throat.
"Nothing," I say instead, which isn't the truth either, but it's closer than the lie was.
He studies me for a long moment, and I have the distinct, unsettling sense that he knows exactly how much of a lie that was too.
"Nothing," he repeats, like he's trying the word on for size. "All right, Ruth Calloway. Keep your nothing."
But he's smiling when he says it, like it's a puzzle he's decided to enjoy, not solve today.
And walking back to my car that afternoon, clipboard empty, roof half-finished, I realize I'm smiling too — the kind of smile that has absolutely nothing to do with charity drives or Sunday announcements, and everything to do with a black-haired man who asked me a real question and actually waited for the answer.
"Same time Tuesday?" he calls after me, from up on the ladder.
"For the roof?"
"Sure. For the roof."
I don't ask what else it might be for. I already know I'm going to show up Tuesday either way.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, someone looked at me and saw more than the pastor's daughter. He saw me, badly folded paper cranes and secret two-a.m. paintings and all.
Before I leave the site Saturday, Harper catches me by the cooler, sizing me up with the frank, friendly curiosity of a woman used to reading people fast.
"You're the reverend's girl," she says. Not unkindly.
"Ruth. Please."
"Harper." She hands me a soda without asking if I want one, which I appreciate more than I expect to. "Saint's been in a strange mood all week. Good strange. You know anything about that?"
"I couldn't say."
"Uh-huh." Harper's smile says she doesn't believe me for one second, and isn't going to push it, which somehow makes it worse. "Well. Nice change, whatever it is. Boy's usually all grin and no substance. Pleasant enough to be around. Just not much underneath most days."
"I don't think that's true," I say, before I can stop myself.
Harper's eyebrows go up, slow and knowing. "No," she says. "I don't suppose you do."
I busy myself with the soda can, face warm, and Harper laughs — not unkindly, just amused — and wanders off toward the cooler to needle somebody else, leaving me with the distinct, unsettling sensation of having been quietly, thoroughly seen.
Nadia finds me a few minutes later, perched on an overturned bucket, sunglasses pushed up into dark hair, watching me with open, unabashed interest.
"You're prettier than church usually lets on," she says.
"Excuse me?"
"Church clothes. Designed to hide you. Very effective. I've seen you at the Founders' Day parade every year for a decade and never once clocked that jawline."
"I don't — thank you? I think?"
"Take it as a compliment. I don't give many." Nadia tilts her head toward the roofline, where Gabriel's hammering steadily, shirt sticking to his back in the heat. "He's been watching you the whole time you were talking to Harper. Just so you know. In case that's information you wanted."
"I didn't ask for that information."
"I'm giving it to you anyway. Free of charge, like the roof.
" She grins, sharp and delighted, and hops off her bucket to go heckle Diesel about something involving a ladder and his center of gravity, and I sit there in the April sun with a soda going warm in my hand, distinctly aware of the exact spot on my back where a pair of eyes might currently be resting.
I don't look up to check. I want to. That's the part that unsettles me most, driving home that evening with dust on my sandals and an unfamiliar lightness in my chest — not the fact that he might be watching, but how much I want him to be.
I have no idea what to do with that yet. I'm not entirely sure I want to know.