The word home made her glance toward the hallway. Somewhere beyond the kitchen a door closed, followed by the quick steps of a child trying to move silently. Catherine said she would be on calls until lunch and that he should contact her assistant if he needed supplies. He told her he would work outside and let the household get on with its day.
When she was gone, Daniel stood a moment beside the drawing on the refrigerator. It showed two banks of a river joined by a bridge colored green, with a tiny person standing at each end. Beneath it a child's careful handwriting said, "The important part is that everybody gets across." Daniel read it twice and thought about Noah's craft-stick bridge, then went out to repair the fence.
By eleven-forty, Daniel had lifted the three compromised posts and begun preparing the new footings. The sun had moved over the roofline, warming the gravel beneath his boots and pulling the smell of damp earth from the exposed holes. He had laid the rotten timber aside where the homeowner could see it, not because he expected an argument but because customers deserved to understand what they were paying to replace. The old boards looked surprisingly sound from above, which made the decay beneath them feel almost dishonest.
He was checking depth on the third hole when a girl appeared around the side of the house. She wore a blue sweatshirt, sneakers with one lace tucked badly into the tongue, and an expression that combined curiosity with the sort of caution children learn around adults who are always busy. She stood just outside the area he had marked off with orange cones. "You took out three posts," she said, as if he were being evaluated for a science competition.
"I did," he answered. "One was broken, but the other two were letting go underground." She leaned forward to inspect the discarded wood and asked how he knew without cutting it open. Daniel pointed to the pale ring near the base and explained how moisture collected where wood met soil, especially when concrete held water instead of draining it away. "You can test that one," he offered. "It isn't sharp, and I'll keep it steady."
She pressed her palm to the post, expecting resistance, and the softened fibers yielded with a faint crunch. Her eyes widened in genuine pleasure at the discovery. "It looked completely fine," she said. "That's what made it dangerous," Daniel replied. "Things can look solid from far away. You have to test the part nobody sees."
The girl stayed crouched beside the wood, turning the idea over. "And sometimes things look broken when they're not?" she asked. Daniel told her that the mesh had been twisted but the neighboring anchors were sound, so he was saving what still worked. She touched a straight section of fencing and nodded as though he had confirmed a suspicion unrelated to construction. "I'm Lily," she said eventually.