2. Jake
JAKE
I've fixed forty broken things since Emily died, and none of them stayed fixed. I try not to think about that while I'm holding a fence post and staring at my new neighbor's front door.
The post had split clean through at the base, the kind of rot you don't see until you're three feet under it with a shovel. I'd meant to replace it in spring. I'd meant to do a lot of things in spring.
I set the new post in the hole and tamped the dirt down around it harder than it needed, the way I did most jobs lately. Emily used to say I fixed things like I was arguing with them. I never had a good answer for that, mostly because she was right.
It was easier than the alternative, which was sitting still long enough to feel the size of the house without her in it. A fence post didn't ask questions. It just needed to be plumb and packed, left alone to hold weight it never chose to carry.
Light spilled out of the cottage next door, gold against the dark yard, and I told myself I wasn't watching it. I was finishing a fence post. The two things just happened to face the same direction.
The evening had gone soft around the edges the way it does in early summer, blue light settling into the grass, the kids' voices still carrying faintly from somewhere near the apple tree even though I'd sent Noah in an hour ago. The little girl next door hadn't gone in yet.
Through the window I could see Aria moving around her kitchen, unpacking a box of mismatched mugs while the little girl chattered at her feet. She said something I couldn't hear and laughed, head tipping back, one hand braced on the counter.
Something in me went very still. I knew that laugh. I knew that exact tilt of her head, and it hit me like a beam coming loose from a header nobody had checked, all that weight dropping at once.
That's not possible, I thought. Six years is a long time, and grief does strange things to a man's memory. I set the hammer down anyway, because my hands had started shaking and that wasn't part of the plan.
I thought about the way she'd talked back to me all afternoon, quick and unbothered, like she'd already decided I wasn't worth being intimidated by. I used to know someone who talked like that. I hadn't let myself think about her in years.
I picked the hammer back up. Whatever this was could wait until I had two working brain cells to spare, and right now I had exactly one, and it was busy handling a six-year-old's bath time.
For about half a second I thought about walking over there anyway, offering to help unload the rest of the truck, being a decent neighbor about it. Then I remembered I'd already fallen on her once today, more or less, and decided decent could wait until tomorrow.
I could still hear boxes scraping across her porch floor when I climbed the stairs, some old instinct in me wanting to go finish the job properly instead of leaving her to it alone. I ignored the instinct. It had gotten me into worse trouble before.
Noah was already in the tub when I got upstairs, submarine and all, staring at the ceiling like it owed him an explanation. He did that sometimes, stared at things like they might eventually start talking.
"Hey, bud." I crouched by the tub and picked up the washcloth before he could protest, though protesting hadn't really been his style in a while. "Did you have a good day?"
Noah didn't answer, not out loud, but he pointed at the wall like it might tell me something I needed to know.
I followed his finger to nothing in particular, just tile and grout I kept meaning to reseal, and decided to take it as a yes.
"Mine was something else," I said, "but I'll take it."
He scrubbed at his own elbow with the kind of focus most people save for actual emergencies, and I let him, because some things a kid needs to do for himself even when he's six and the thing is his elbow.
"You met the new neighbors," I said, keeping it light, testing the water the way you test a board before you put your full weight on it. "Lily seems like a lot."
Noah's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile, and he nodded once, firm, like he was confirming a fact for the record.
"Yeah," I said. "That's what I thought too."
"Can you believe that sprinkler?" I said, mostly to myself, working shampoo through his hair.
"It nearly took out an innocent woman on her first day. I should sue myself."
Noah blinked up at me, water dripping off his eyelashes, unimpressed by the joke in the specific way only a six-year-old can manage.
"Tough crowd," I said.
I got him into pajamas and combed his hair back from his forehead, which he tolerated for exactly as long as it took, not one second longer.
Once he was settled, Noah did what he always did before bed, which was find his sketchbook and disappear into it like the rest of the house had stopped existing.
I sat on the floor across from him and folded the laundry I'd been ignoring for two days, mostly so he wouldn't feel like anyone was watching him draw.
After a while he turned the sketchbook around and held it up, which was Noah's version of knocking on a door.
It was a dinosaur, green and enormous, standing on top of a house that had definitely seen better days.
"Is he eating it?" I asked, keeping my voice easy.
Noah nodded, solemn, like this was a serious piece of reporting and not a drawing of a dinosaur eating a house.
"Good," I said. "Houses have it coming sometimes."
That got the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, but close enough that I counted it anyway.
I tucked him in and sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, the way I did every night, not because he needed it anymore but because I did.
"That girl next door never runs out of things to say," I said. "You liked her? Lily, I mean."
Noah's eyes went to the window, toward the cottage, and something in his face opened up in a way I hadn't seen in longer than I wanted to admit.
He nodded again, faster this time.
"Yeah," I said. "Me too. Good thing you don't scare easy."
I turned off the lamp and left the door cracked the way he liked it, light spilling into the hallway in one thin gold line.
There was a photo on the hall table I passed every night without looking at, mostly because I didn't need to. Emily, laughing at something off camera, Noah a squirming bundle in her arms. I looked at it now anyway, and it didn't answer any questions either.
"Sorry," I told the photo, quiet, feeling foolish about it the second the word left my mouth. I wasn't even sure what I was apologizing for yet, only that it felt like something I owed her regardless.
Downstairs, the house did the thing it always did once Noah was asleep, which was get too quiet too fast. I poured two fingers of something amber I didn't really want and didn't drink either, just held the glass and let the ice do the work for me.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Carol, checking in the way she did most nights now, a habit neither of us had ever actually agreed to out loud.
Noah eat dinner okay? she texted.
Green beans and half a hot dog, I typed back. Standard negotiations.
Good, she wrote. Give him a kiss for me.
Will do, I typed, and meant it, then set the phone down before she could ask anything else, because Carol had a talent for hearing what I wasn't saying even through a screen.
I remembered the sprinkler timer then, the one I'd promised Aria I'd fix, and figured a broken irrigation system was as good an excuse as any to be outside instead of alone with my own head.
I found the control box bolted to the side of the shed and popped it open by flashlight, more out of habit than need, since I already knew what I'd find.
Somebody had wired zone three straight through without a delay, which explained the ambush.
From the shed I had a clear line to her kitchen window, close enough to see she'd started on a second box, the porch light throwing her shadow long across the grass. I made myself finish the wiring instead of watching. It took more effort than a sprinkler timer had any right to.
I fixed it in under ten minutes, standing there in the dark with a screwdriver between my teeth, and felt exactly as unsettled walking back to the house as I had walking out of it.
I took the glass out to the porch instead of going in, because the house felt smaller than usual and I wanted the sky. The garden sat between the two cottages in the dark, the apple tree a black shape against a navy sky, and somewhere past the gate a light was still burning in her kitchen.
I told myself I wasn't looking at that either. It was a poor lie even by my standards.
There was a summer once, a different porch, a different kind of light, a woman with a camera who used to laugh exactly like that, head tipping back like the joke was too good to keep to herself. I hadn't thought about that summer in years. I'd made sure of it.
I remembered the smell of lake water and cut grass, the particular way she used to say my name like she was trying it out for the first time every single time. I remembered thinking, back then, foolish and sure of myself, that I had all the time in the world to figure out what to do about it.
Now I was standing in my own yard with a glass I wasn't drinking, thinking about it anyway, and that felt like a door creaking open somewhere I'd nailed shut a long time ago.
I'd nailed it shut on purpose. Losing people wasn't something I planned on doing twice, and a door I'd built with my own two hands seemed like the safest place to keep a memory like that.
It didn't mean anything, I decided, mostly because I needed it to be true. Plenty of women laughed like that. Plenty of women had dark hair and a habit of talking back to men who deserved it.
I finished the drink I hadn't wanted in the first place and went inside, locking the door behind me like locking a door had ever solved anything.
Noah's room was quiet when I checked it, the way it always was, the thin line of hallway light falling across his blanket. I stood in the doorway longer than I needed to, watching him breathe, letting that be enough to steady me.
It wasn't enough.
Whatever this turned out to be, whoever she turned out to be, Noah had already decided he liked the girl next door, and that scared me more than any of the rest of it. Kids didn't come back from losing people the way adults pretended to. I knew that better than most.
I lay in bed a long time after that, staring at a ceiling that had no more answers than Noah's usually did, running the math I didn't want to run: six years, one summer, a laugh I'd have known anywhere, even now, even half asleep, even wrong.
It's not her, I told the dark. It can't be her. The dark didn't agree.