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“She said, and I am quoting: I heard about our girl and the hardware store man. Finally. Tell her to come for tea after school.” Another pause. “With a heart emoji.”

“How does Margaret know.”

“Allison. This is Merrybrook.”

“It was nine thirty at night. We were on a sidewalk.”

“Rory Pike walks at nine thirty.”

She looked at the ceiling. “Of course Rory walks at nine thirty.”

“Rory apparently described it as...” Lauren paused, and Allison could hear her trying not to laugh, “...historically significant.”

“Oh my god.”

“Rory has it in the records. Probably. I wouldn’t put it past them.” Lauren let the laugh out. “Allison. How are you.”

She thought about the snow. His hand on her jaw. The warmth of him against the December cold. Allison, said like it was the most settled thing he knew.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Good. Terrified. Good.”

“Good terrified or bad terrified?”

“Good terrified. The kind where something actually happened and you’re afraid of... I don’t know. Wanting it too much. Messing it up.”

“You’re not going to mess it up.”

“I might. I’ve messed things up before.”

“You didn’t mess things up with Ryan. Ryan messed things up with Ryan. That was not your failure.” Lauren’s voice was firm in the way it was firm about things she’d decided were true and wouldn’t be argued out of. “This is different. Shane is different.”

“He kissed me before asking me to dinner,” Allison said. “Is that. I mean, is that...”

“Do you mind that he kissed you before asking you to dinner?”

She didn’t have to think about it.

“No,” she said. “I really, really don’t.”

“Then it’s not a problem.” A pause. “Allison. The man fixed your classroom window at seven in the morning. He’s been driving four extra minutes every night to go past your house. The whole town has been watching him try not to fall for you since August. He is not going to mess this up. He doesn’t do things he’s not sure about.”

She thought about this.

“He seemed sure,” she said, quietly.

“He was sure,” Lauren said. “Trust me. Go to Margaret’s for tea.” Something rustled on her end of the line, keys, a coat. “And get moving. We both have kids at eight fifteen.”

* * *

School, it turned out, was a mercy.

A room full of children did not care what had happened on Main Street at nine fifteen on a Tuesday night. The first graders needed their smocks tied. The fourth graders needed more blue than she had put out, and then more water, and then a long and serious discussion about whether a clay owl could still be an owl with only one wing. It could, they decided. It was a braver owl now.

For whole stretches of the day she forgot. Then she would look up from a table of small hands pressing leaves into paint and remember all at once, the snow and his hand on her jaw and her name in his voice, and she would have to look back down at the leaves until her face behaved.

Lauren passed her in the hallway at lunch, raised both eyebrows, and kept walking without a word, which was somehow worse than anything she could have said.

At three the last of the kids went out the door in a tumble of boots and backpacks. Allison washed the brushes and wiped down the tables and stood for a minute at the window he had sealed, looking at the frost on the glass. Then she put on her coat.