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Roy had built it so Shane would have somewhere to stand.

And he had been standing here for fifteen years, and somewhere in the last four months, without his noticing the exact moment, the standing had turned into a choice. Not a debt. Not a weight. A thing he would pick again, every morning, on purpose.

He knew now what he wanted to build.

It wasn’t a building.

It was standing next to him in a red coat with snow in her hair, looking up at his grandfather’s sign like it was a painting in a museum.

“The corner’s faded,” she said.

“I know. I’ve been meaning to repaint it.”

She tilted her head, studying the letters with her art teacher’s eye. He could see her measuring the strokes. The weight of the lines. The way Roy had curved the C.

He had never in his life asked anybody to help him with anything.

“Help me,” he said.

She looked at him.

“In the spring,” he said. “When it’s warm enough for the paint to cure. Roy’s letters. I’ll mark the lines. But you’re better with a brush than I’ll ever be.” He looked back up at the sign. “I want your hand on it.”

She was quiet for a long moment. When he looked down at her, her eyes were bright.

“Shane Colter,” she said softly. “Are you asking me for something?”

He thought about it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

The sun slid lower. It found the faded corner of the sign and lit it gold, just for a moment, so the old letters looked fresh, like the paint had gone on that morning.

He looked at her in that light. At the snow in her dark hair. At her face turned up toward his grandfather’s letters. At the woman who had lain in bed that morning with every reason in the world to wait, and hadn’t. Who had said it first.

The name came up in him, the way it had been coming up for weeks.

This time he didn’t hold it.

“Allie,” he said.

* * *

She stopped.

Everything stopped. The street went quiet the way her cottage had gone quiet that morning, the way the lake went still. The smoke from the chimneys seemed to hang in the air. Even the snow on the sign seemed to be listening.

She turned and looked at him.

“What did you call me?” she whispered.

He felt the heat come up the back of his neck and into his ears. He knew they were red. He had lifted a collapsing booth frame with his bare hands and strung lights at the top of a forty-foot ladder, and he was standing on Main Street on Christmas Day, and he was nervous.

“Allie,” he said again. “I can stop. If you don’t...”

“Nobody’s ever called me that.”