Victoria looked from the block to the tools arranged nearby. "I'm fairly sure the company has experts for that." Daniel smiled. "Then tonight you can be a beginner."
He taught her how to mark the grain, secure the wood in a clamp, and move a plane gently along its surface without tearing the fibers. She pressed too hard at first, trying to control the tool with the same determination she used in meetings. The blade caught and left a shallow gouge. Daniel showed her how to adjust her hands, slow down, and allow the tool to follow the shape already present. The second stroke came off as a thin pale ribbon that curled against her sleeve.
"That's better," he said. Victoria stared at the shaving as if it were something she had invented. "It felt easier when I stopped forcing it." Daniel nodded.
"A lot of people spend years learning that. Some never do." She looked at him sharply, suspecting he had meant something beyond woodworking, but he had already turned back to his own task.
Over the next month their visits became a small, carefully protected rhythm. Sometimes she watched him work while answering only the most urgent messages on her phone. Other evenings she helped sand chair legs or carried boxes from a customer's truck, discovering muscles her gym trainer had never managed to challenge. On days when Daniel needed uninterrupted concentration, he told her plainly, and she learned not to take his refusal as a personal rejection. At first that lesson troubled her more than she admitted.
Victoria had become accustomed to asking for something and having it happen. Calendars rearranged, drivers redirected, reservations secured, problems solved before she encountered them. When Daniel told her that a client needed a dining table finished and he would see her the following week, she felt an absurd flare of disappointment. She almost offered to pay for the delayed work or hire someone to complete it. Then she remembered the look on his face when he refused the reward and recognized that the offer would make his time seem like something she could purchase.
She chose a simpler response. "Good luck with the table," she said. "I hope the customer loves it." Daniel thanked her and returned to his clamps. Victoria went home and spent the unexpected evening reading a novel Eleanor had given her years before. Halfway through, she noticed that she was enjoying the quiet rather than trying to defeat it.
One Saturday Daniel invited her to the neighborhood market. They walked along the narrow streets with reusable shopping bags, past a florist, a secondhand record store, and a little grocery that sold tomatoes in wooden crates. Victoria stopped beside the vegetables and asked Daniel why he examined