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Theo’s gaze dropped to take in his cozy plaid pajamas, then he smirked up at his grandfather. “Today is pajama day at the shop, Grandpa.”

“Oh, yeah? Who declared that new holiday?”

“Me,” Theo said with a shrug.

Ben’s lips twitched, but he couldn’t quite turn his amusement into a full smile. He just sighed and waved the boy over to help him into his warm parka and winter boots. He pulled on his own coat, the thick material settling over his shoulders like a familiar suit of armor, and he stepped out into the cold morning air, determined to leave the burnt toast, ringing phone, and heavy memories behind him on the kitchen counter.

The yard between the saltbox house and the timber woodshop that sat on the same Harbor Lane property was dusted with white frost, the grass stiff and crunching under Ben’s boots. Theo moved beside him, his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his parka, his breath blooming in pale white clouds against the cold salty air. Cranberry Harbor stretched out beyond the low stone wall at the edge of the property, its gray water rippling under the winter wind.

Ben pushed open the heavy oak shop door, the iron hinges letting out a familiar, low groan. The air inside held the rich, comforting scent of dry cedar, pine resin, machine oil, and cold woodsmoke.

For years, this shop had been Ben’s world. His grandfather had built the timber frame in the nineteen forties, and every beam bore the marks of broadaxes and hand saws. In here, surrounded by his hand tools and timber stacks, Ben felt grounded. When the rest of his life felt foreign or confusing, shaping a piece of oak or fitting a plank to a boat frame gave his mind something to focus on other than the emptiness left behind by his late wife.

Theo went straight to his usual spot near the stove, pulling off his mittens and laying them on the workbench. Ben moved to the cast-iron potbelly stove in the corner and opened the small iron door. He raked through the ashes with a poker, exposing a cluster of glowing red embers from the night before. He stacked dry pine shavings and two small blocks of cedar over the coals, blowing gently until a bright yellow flame licked up through the wood. Within minutes, the iron sides radiated a deep, steady heat, and the stovepipe gave its familiar, pleasant rumble.

“You can use the pine offcuts from the dory project,” Ben said, gesturing toward a wooden box near the joiner’s bench. “There’s plenty of clean blocks in there.”

Theo nodded and reached into the crate to pull out several rectangular blocks of white pine. He carried them to a low wooden stool beside Ben’s main workbench, sat down, and arranged them into neat rows. He didn’t ask for toys or games. He simply stacked the wood, building imaginary piers, dock pilings, and harbor walls, entirely absorbed in his own world.

Ben pulled his shop apron over his head and tied the straps behind his back. Near the center of the shop sat an eighteen-foot wooden dory mounted on heavy wooden horses. The boat belonged to an elderly fisherman down at the south marina, and its starboard hull needed three new cedar planks after it struck a submerged rock during a November storm. Ben had already removed the damaged timber, exposing the frame’s curved oak ribs.

He reached for his brass measuring tape and marked the length on a fresh board of clear white cedar. He selected a hand saw from the rack on the wall, the steel blade gleaming under the shop’s overhead lamps. He set his thumb against the cut line and pulled the saw back to score the wood. The rhythmic, steady rasp of steel slicing through cedar filled the room, sending thin curls of fragrant sawdust tumbling down onto the floorboards.

When the plank was cut to length, Ben set his saw back in its rack and moved to the solid workbench along the north wall. He needed a wood rasp to bevel the outer edge so the timber would fit flush against the dory’s gunwale. He pulled open the middle drawer beneath the bench top, where he kept his specialty rasps and carving chisels.

The drawer slid open on its wooden runners with a dry scrape. Near the back corner, resting behind a box of brass wood screws, sat a small bundle wrapped in gray flannel. The fabric was dusty, a thin layer of fine pine flour settling into the wool fibers.

Ben’s hand paused over the drawer. His fingers hesitated, hovering an inch above the fabric. He hadn’t opened this drawer in months, deliberately avoiding the corner where the flannel bundle lay. But standing here with the scent of cedar heavy in the room, his thumb brushed the edge of the soft cloth.

He lifted the bundle carefully, feeling its light weight in his palm. He unrolled the gray flannel, revealing an unfinished wood carving. It was a red cardinal carved from a block of aromatic red cedar, its rounded body fully shaped, its head tilted slightly upward as if listening to a song. The bird’s tail feathers and beak were smoothed to a satin finish, but its left wing remained rough and blocky, the chisel marks still sharp where he’d stopped work.

He’d started carving it last November, during the long weeks when Ruth’s illness had kept her confined to the armchair in their living room. She’d loved the red cardinals that visited the bird feeder near the garden fence every winter, often calling Ben to the window to watch them against the snow. He’d planned to finish the carving as a surprise for her Christmas present, spending an hour every night in the shop while she rested upstairs in the house.

When her condition worsened mid-December, and the ambulance had taken her to the hospital in Boston, Ben had set the chisel down right in the middle of shaping that left wing. He’d wrapped the cedar bird in the gray flannel, placed it in the back of the drawer, and hadn’t touched a carving tool since.

Ben held the cedar bird in his hand, his thumb tracing the smooth curve of its head. The wood was warm to the touch, holding the rich, sweet scent of red cedar. A sharp ache tightened behind his ribs, so deep and sudden it made his breath catch in his throat.

He could almost hear Ruth’s gentle laugh, could almost see the way her hazel eyes lit up when the red birds landed on the frost-dusted fence rail.

He looked over at Theo, who was carefully balancing a pine block on top of a makeshift wooden pier. The boy’s profile was so remarkably like Ruth’s that it nearly made Ben’s heart break all over again. Nearly a year had passed, but sitting in this lonely shop, the loss felt as fresh as the day they’d buried her in the churchyard on the hill.

Ben swallowed hard, his jaw clenching as he forced the lump down in his throat. He placed the unfinished cardinal back onto the cloth, folding the edges neatly over the carved cedar bird until it was completely covered. He set the bundle back into the dark corner of the drawer, sliding it shut until the latch clicked into place.

He picked up the wood rasp from the top rack, turning back toward the dory frame. He pressed the tool against the cedar plank, pushing the rasp forward with long, firm strokes. White wood dust flew from the timber, coating his knuckles, but as the steel rasped against the wood, Ben couldn’t shake the persistent reality that hiding things in dark drawers didn’t make the memory disappear.

The wood rasp gave a final, clean stroke against the cedar plank, sending a dusting of pale shaving curls down onto the workbench. Ben set the tool in its wooden rack, taking a rag to wipe the pine flour from his knuckles. The potbelly stove in the corner creaked as the wood burned down to steady coals, radiating a deep, dry heat that pushed the harbor chill back toward the shop door.

Across the room, Theo was still busy with his pine blocks. He’d constructed an elaborate harbor layout across the stool, placing short wooden pegs along the edges to mark where boats tied up at the docks. His small fingers moved with precision, setting each block parallel to the next.

“Look at this,” Theo said without looking up from his pine pier. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah, you did great,” Ben replied, reaching for a bottle of wood glue on the upper shelf.

Only a second later, Theo suddenly asked, “When are we getting the green box out of the attic?”

Ben’s hand paused on the glass jar of glue. He looked over at his grandson, the warmth in the room suddenly feeling weighted around his shoulders. “Which green box?”

“The big one with the brass handles,” Theo said, setting a pine block down on his imaginary dock. “The one with the glass stars and the wooden sleigh. We always used to bring it down the Saturday after Thanksgiving, before we got the tree from the lot by the church.”