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"I've been busy."

"You were busy in April and in June. It's October." She gives my shoulder a hard poke with one thumb. I bite back a noise. "Hiked up to your ear like a goat. I'd fix it with my bare hands if I didn't have to be at the pie table."

"He's been lifting with the right," Carolina says.

Margaret's head turns. "Has he."

"The left trails. He tucks the elbow, and there's a knot just behind the joint. Probably an old strain that's never been properly rehabbed."

"That's exactly what I told him."

"It sounds like it needs a proper scapular program. And probably some manual work first, to release the capsule."

Margaret studies her. It's the look of one professional measuring another. "You're a therapist."

"Outpatient ortho. I've been practicing three years."

"Licensed?"

"In two states."

"Is she," Margaret says, to me. "Where on earth did you find her?"

"Cider line."

"Naturally." She turns back to Carolina. The braid swings. "Come and see me before you leave town, dear. I've got something I want to ask you."

"I'd like that," Carolina says, and sounds surprised that she means it.

Margaret nods once, pats my shoulder, which hurts, and goes.

At the pie table Mae lifts one eyebrow at me so far it nearly leaves her face.

I look at the sky.

The donut line takes twenty minutes. Faith eats half a donut and abandons the rest to Carolina, who finishes it without comment and licks sugar off her thumb. It's the first thing I've watched her do all day that I can't look at directly.

We're standing near the kettle corn wagon, passing a paper cup of cider back and forth, when Faith tugs hard at my sleeve.

"Daddy."

"Mm?"

"That man is staring at Carolina."

I don't turn my head. I look at the reflection in the side of the wagon. There he is behind us, thirty feet off. A heavyset man in a brown canvas cap and a work jacket with the collar turned up. He has a paper cup in one hand and he isn't drinking from it. He's watching Carolina with his jaw working. When he sees me watching him back, his eyes slide sideways. He turns and shoulders away through the crowd.

"Who's that?" Carolina says quietly.

"Dale Pruitt. He does odd jobs, roofs, hauling, fences. He owes the feed store money."

"Does that mean something?"

"It might not." I take out my phone and thumb a message to Kieran. Dale Pruitt on the green. Watching Carolina. Probably nothing.

The reply comes before I've put it away. Nothing is never nothing. Keep her close.

Beside me, Faith has opened her notebook and is writing in block letters. I lean down to read over her shoulder.