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“Together,” I said, sharper than I intended.

“Together, publicly, hanging things.” Owen’s gaze didn’t move. “The last time this street saw the two of you in the same frame you were taking each other apart at a council table. Let them see the other thing. I don’t much care whether it’s true yet.”

Jenna, my holiday clerk, took over the register at two forty-five. By three, the block was in full operation. Frank had a crew running lights along the hardware store facade. His directions came from three decades of muscle memory and the conviction that nobody else would ever do it correctly. Pearl was placing the volunteers’ cocoa-and-coffee stations by the traffic patterns instead of the electrical outlets, which is why we argue every year. Eight high schoolers hung the same old wreaths from the lampposts. Their wire frames had been bent so many times that four no longer sat flat. Those went on the north side, where it showed least.

Every single person on that street watched us arrive together.

“They’re staring,” I said.

“Let them.” Griffin handed me a coil of extension cord and went straight at Frank, who had a lamppost bracket in one hand and no intention whatsoever of making it easy.

“Your father lapped the joint on the stage instead of butting it,” Griffin said. “Do you know why?”

“Because he was slow.”

“Because the pine here moves four percent across the grain in a wet December, and a butt joint would have opened by the second season.” Griffin set down the wreath he was carrying. “It’s a better detail than the one I’d have drawn. I copied it. I want you to know I copied it, and not from a book.”

Frank turned the bracket once in his hand before he spoke. “He’d have liked knowing somebody noticed.” Then he handed Griffin the bracket, and that was the whole ceremony.

The work wore out my arms. I hung lights, adjusted them, and hung them again when Frank said they caught the light wrong above the transom. I repositioned two tent anchors for the wind that came through the gap between the pharmacy and the corner unit. By five, my hands were raw from rope and hardware, and they smelled like pine sap and copper. For whole minutes at a time, I stopped thinking about Victor Crane’s visit and why Griffin had kept the call from me.

Around four, I ended up on the ladder next to Colette Brennan, who owned the flower shop and could pass up clips without pausing her report.

“Well, I liked him,” she said.

“Liked who?”

“The San Francisco man. Yesterday.” She handed up two clips. “He came into the flower shop and asked what I do with the poinsettias that don’t sell, and I told him, and he wrote it down. Wrote it down, Nora. Twenty-two years and no one’s asked me that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I give them to the care home on the twenty-seventh and take the loss.” She squinted up at me. “He called it the best advertising on the street. I think that was a compliment.”

Frank steadied the ladder below us. “He knew who painted my grandfather’s sign. I didn’t.”

“Well, now you do,” Colette said.

Frank grunted. He did not sound pleased. I understood the feeling.

At dusk, Griffin found me sitting on the rebuilt portable stage beneath the community center’s covered loading bay, my back against the beam he’d cut. “You look exhausted.”

“The satisfying kind.” I made room for him. “Frank’s crew works fast. I’d steal half of them if I could make payroll.”

“Don’t say that near Frank. He counts his crew before and after every job.”

Griffin sat beside me. The loading bay opened toward Main Street, where the lights we’d spent all afternoon hanging had begun to glow. Gold and red washed across one side of his face. His shoulders were lower than they had been that morning, but he kept glancing toward the crew as though he expected another problem. “I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “Partnership. Building something with somebody instead of building it for a closing date. I’ve spent twelve years moving wherever the next project took me. Nine towns. Nine furnished rentals.” He turned his hand over and studied the healed blister. “My winter things are still in a box in the car. That box has followed me from trunk to trunk, and I still haven’t carried it inside here. It’s been in the car since I arrived on November fourth.”

“What’s in it?”

“A coat that’s better than this one. Gloves. A hat my mother sent to an address I had in 2011, forwarded through four addresses.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Every year I think, I’ll get it out when I know how long I’m staying.”

“And?”

“And I’ve been cold since I arrived in a town where I own six buildings.”

I didn’t know what to say to all of it, but I could solve one problem. I took his hand and covered his cold knuckles with mine. “Bring the box inside tonight. You’re allowed to wear a hat before you know where you’ll die.”

His gaze dropped to our hands, then lifted to my face. Griffin leaned in and kissed me.