Page 35

“For a school bracket situation. It’s five-eighths.”

“Right.” Jake looked at the bolt again, apparently reconciling this. Then he looked at Allison with the open friendliness that was simply his factory setting. “These panels are incredible, are these for the festival? The kids are doing something for the festival?”

“Painting them,” Allison said. “One per class.”

“That’s such a good idea.” He said it with complete sincerity, the way he said most things. “Can I help? Set them up or whatever, on the day?”

“That would be great, actually.”

“Perfect.” He was already backing toward the door, bolt in hand, satisfied. “Five-eighths,” he said to Shane, like confirming a thing he’d been told. “Thanks, man.”

He was gone.

The workshop was quiet again.

Shane picked up the tape measure. He set it down. He picked up the pencil and made a mark on a piece of scrap wood that didn’t require a mark.

“Five-eighths,” Allison said, after a moment.

“Yes,” Shane said.

“You knew that very fast.”

“Common size for school bracket applications.”

“Is it?”

He looked at her then, and there was something in it, not quite the beginning of a smile, more the territory around a smile, the place where a smile lived in a person who didn’t use them casually, and he looked away again before she could be sure she’d seen it.

“Yes,” he said.

She stacked the last panel.

* * *

She paid for the panels at the front counter (Doug rang them up with the efficiency of someone who had better things to do and was choosing to do this with equal care anyway) and Shane had come out of the workshop by then and was behind the counter doing something with an order form, and she was aware of him the way she’d been aware of him for three weeks, which was more than was strictly proportional.

“Thank you,” she said, to Shane, because he’d done the work.

He nodded. The same nod. She was beginning to read its variations. This one meant acknowledged, no further response required, which was different from the street nod, which had been I see you, and different from the aisle nod, which had been something she still hadn’t fully decoded.

She picked up the panels (Doug had wrapped them together, manageable) and went to the door.

“Ms. Hayes,” Shane said.

She turned.

He was looking at the order form. “The mounting hardware for the panels. You’ll need it. Aisle two, left side, bottom shelf. Eye hooks, the small ones.”

She hadn’t thought about mounting hardware.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“Mm,” he said, which was approximately nothing, but she was beginning to understand that his approximately nothing carried more than other people’s full sentences.

She got the eye hooks. She came back to the counter to pay for them and he was still on the order form and they didn’t say anything else and she left, and the bell rang, and the afternoon was bright and cool and smelled like approaching fall.

* * *