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* * *

The groceries for the Pattersons showed up on their porch on Wednesday morning before six thirty.

Carol Patterson was sixty-seven and had broken her hip in July and was still moving carefully, still getting used to the walker, still embarrassed about both things. Her husband Bill called the hardware store sometimes for things he could fix himself if he had the right part, which Shane sent over without charging for the delivery because there was no reason to charge for five minutes in a truck.

He’d started leaving groceries after he noticed, in late July, that the Pattersons’ car hadn’t moved from the driveway in eleven days.

He bought what seemed practical (nothing elaborate, just the staples, the things that ran out) and left them on the porch before anyone was up to see. He didn’t tell Carol. He didn’t tell Bill. He didn’t think about whether they knew it was him, because the point wasn’t the knowing.

The point was the groceries.

* * *

He was at The Brook by three in the afternoon that same Wednesday, which was unusual for him (he generally only came in the morning) but he needed to talk to Nora about the booth structure for the harvest festival, which was six weeks out and which Nora coordinated with the efficiency of a person who had been running a small town’s most important event for longer than Shane had been alive.

The café was doing its midafternoon business, a few tables occupied, the quieter hum of a place between rushes, and Nora was behind the counter where she always was, the coffee machine running behind her, her attention moving over the room with the steady comprehensive awareness that he’d never been able to fully explain to anyone who didn’t know her.

He sat at the counter and she set coffee in front of him without being asked and he pulled out the notebook he’d been using for the festival booth measurements and they worked through it, Nora pointing out two things he’d miscalculated and being right about both of them, which was normal.

Rick Brennan came in while they were finishing.

Rick Brennan always came in. The man had an almost structural relationship with The Brook in the afternoons. He showed up the way the sun went down, reliably and without requiring a reason. He sat two stools down and accepted his coffee and told Nora about a display issue he’d sorted out at the market that she hadn’t asked about, and then he said, to no one in particular, which was how Rick said most things he meant for one person to hear:

“That new teacher sat with Rory for a full hour on her second day.”

Nora refilled Shane’s cup without responding.

“Actually listened,” Rick continued. “You know how long it usually takes people to start looking for an exit when Rory gets going.”

Shane wrote something in his notebook that didn’t need writing.

“My granddaughter,” said a woman at the nearest table, Paulette Marsh, Helen’s mother, who came in every Wednesday afternoon and always sat at the same table. “Sophie. The new art teacher said hello to her by name on the very first day, like she’d known her for years.” She paused. “Her mother still calls her Sophia. Nobody else has in ages.”

Shane made a note about the east booth dimensions.

“She’s good with the kids,” Molly said, appearing from somewhere with a cloth and beginning to wipe down the far end of the counter. “You can tell. Some people are good at kids and some people are good at teaching and some people are good at both. She’s the third kind.”

There was a general murmur of agreement from several directions, which suggested this was not a new topic of conversation in The Brook.

Shane closed his notebook.

He thought about paint on a left hand. About brown eyes gone wide. About nine apologies delivered with the genuine horror of someone who actually meant them.

He thought about a cinnamon roll wrapped in parchment, waiting next to his travel mug.

He had eaten the other half of it standing at the counter of the hardware store after Doug had gone to the storeroom and he’d had a moment alone and he hadn’t been able to explain why, exactly, but it had been the best thing he’d eaten in recent memory and that was almost certainly Joseph’s doing and had nothing to do with anything else at all.

“She settled into the Lakeview Lane cottage?” he asked Nora, in the casual tone of someone who had simply thought of a practical question.

Nora looked at him with her steady eyes that had been looking at him since he was a child. “She has,” she said. “Seems to suit her.”

“Good,” he said.

He paid for his coffee. He took his notebook. He left.

Molly watched him go.

Nora refilled the coffee of the woman at table four and said nothing, which was, as always, the loudest thing in the room.