In the middle of an afternoon strategy meeting, however, she caught herself watching a junior analyst arrange the chairs after the participants left. The woman straightened a loose cushion, checked that one leg of the conference table wasn't scratching the floor, and removed a discarded coffee cup before anyone asked her to. Victoria had worked with her for two years without learning her name. She made a note to ask Ethan, then felt embarrassed that she needed to.
Daniel, meanwhile, had returned to the oak table. A replacement clamp had solved the problem that had sent him downtown, and he was using a thin brush to work glue into the repaired seam. His hands moved automatically, though his mind wandered once toward the mansion and the woman's expression when she found the ring. He had been surprised by the force of her relief, then ashamed of being surprised. Wealthy people lost loved ones, too; no financial accomplishment made that part of living easier.
He had not told Alice Pruitt about the wallet. Alice lived two houses away and had the rare ability to know something was troubling him without insisting that he explain it immediately. At seventy-four, she had survived a marriage, a widowhood, the departure of her children to other states, and enough winters in the old neighborhood to know which rooflines needed checking before a storm. She appeared at the workshop door carrying a tin of peach preserves and found Daniel studying a joint that was already perfect.
"If you stare at it any harder, it'll come apart from embarrassment," she said.
He smiled. "Morning, Alice."
"I've brought you something for breakfast. It's nearly noon, but I refuse to encourage the idea that a sandwich over a workbench counts as lunch."
Daniel took the tin, promised to eat something substantial, and asked about the rocking chair she wanted repaired. It had belonged to her husband, Walter, who used to sit on the porch during thunderstorms to listen to the rain. The front rocker had developed a split, and Alice had been keeping the chair indoors for fear that one more season would finish it. Daniel had told her he could fix it when the schoolteacher's table was done.
"You don't have to put my chair ahead of paying customers," she reminded him.
"I know. I'm not doing that. I'm just telling you I'll fix it."
Alice watched him set the preserves beside his thermos. "One day you're going to let somebody do something for you without making them fight about it."
"You brought me preserves."
"And you immediately asked about my chair. That's precisely my point."
He laughed, but the observation stayed with him after she left. Giving help was comfortable because he understood what it required of him. Receiving help was harder. In the years of Claire's illness, he had learned to fear offers that arrived with unspoken expectations, and after her death he had learned to protect himself by needing as little as possible from anyone.