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The store was larger than it looked from outside, the front opened into a main floor with tall shelving units running front to back, hardware sorted with a thoroughness that suggested genuine organizational conviction. A rack of work gloves near the door. A display of seasonal items. She could see the beginning of what would probably be a full autumn section, pumpkins painted on a hand-lettered sign that hadn’t been filled in yet. At the far end, a counter.

Behind the counter, a man in his early fifties with the look of someone who knew where everything in the store was and had strong feelings about where it should be. He looked up when she came in.

“Help you find something?” he said.

“I have a list,” she said, and held it up.

He looked at the list from across the store with the evaluating squint of a person who assessed lists professionally. “Hardware or craft supplies?”

“Both, I think.”

“Aisle three for the hardware. I’ll come with you for the rest.” He came around the counter. “Doug Dawson. I’ve been meaning to introduce myself, you’re in Lauren Davis’s classroom next door during her prep period on Wednesdays.”

“I didn’t know that,” Allison said.

“Lauren mentioned it. Said you were reorganizing.” He started toward aisle three with the purposeful stride of a man on familiar terrain. “Lauren reorganizes things when she’s nervous. You settling in all right?”

“Getting there.”

“Three weeks is about when it starts feeling real,” he said. “Two weeks is still feeling like a trip. Three weeks, you start to think maybe you live here.”

She thought about this as she followed him. “That’s exactly right,” she said.

“Most things about Merrybrook are,” he said, not immodestly, just as a statement of general fact.

She liked him immediately.

* * *

She found the picture hooks and the sandpaper and two of the three wire sizes she needed. The third, Doug informed her, was on the second shelf of aisle seven, which was where Shane had reorganized the wire section two months ago and where it made considerably more logical sense than where it had been before, a position Doug conveyed with the air of someone who had not agreed with the previous arrangement and was still processing the improvement.

She was in aisle seven looking for the wire when she heard the back door.

She knew it was him before she turned around. She wasn’t sure how, something in the quality of the sound or the way the air in the store shifted slightly, which was not a rational thing to notice and she noted it and set it aside. She found the wire. She turned.

He was coming from the back of the store with something in his hands (she couldn’t quite see what, lumber of some kind, a length of something) and he saw her at approximately the same moment she turned, and there was a half second in which neither of them moved.

“Ms. Hayes,” he said.

It was the first time he’d said her name. She was aware of this in a way that was disproportionate to the event, which was just a man saying a name, which was a thing that happened constantly and meant nothing.

“Mr. Colter,” she said.

Something moved across his face that might have been the beginning of something and then wasn’t. “Looking for something specific?”

“Wire. I found it.” She held up the spool. “I’m helping with the festival decorations. I needed supplies.”

He nodded once, the same nod as before. “We have most things.”

“I’m finding that.”

A pause. The store was quiet around them. She could hear Doug somewhere in the back, the sound of boxes being moved.

“The ribbon,” she said, because she still needed ribbon and it wasn’t on the list she’d given Doug and she needed to say something practical or she was going to start noticing the way he was standing, which she was already doing. “Do you carry it?”

“Aisle two,” he said. “Left side, middle shelf.”

“Thank you.”