"I knew she was working," Lily said. "I didn't think she was trying to get away from me." She looked at Daniel as though daring him to make the conversation sentimental. "It just stopped feeling like a place I was part of." He took a sip of water and considered his answer carefully, conscious that the girl had volunteered something private and would remember what he did with it.
"Nine is old enough to do more things for yourself," he said. "It doesn't mean you're old enough to stop wanting somebody to check in." Lily looked at the porch steps and rubbed a thumb along the edge of her notebook. "That's exactly what I tried to tell her," she said. The quiet afterward was not awkward, and Daniel did not disturb it by asking more.
At one-fifteen he heard Catherine through the open kitchen window. He could not make out the words at first, only the shift in her voice from managerial precision into the thin steadiness of a person receiving unwelcome news. Then came a clear sentence: "I understand the board's position." A pause followed, so long that Daniel could hear the pump of his hose working in the grass.
"No," she said at last, "I understand what you're asking me to sign. That isn't the same as agreeing with it." The call ended shortly afterward. Daniel continued preparing the footing, refusing to make her private crisis into something he was entitled to overhear merely because the window had been left open.
Fifteen minutes later Catherine emerged from the kitchen and crossed the yard without seeing him. Her phone was no longer in her hand, which Daniel noticed because he had not seen her without it until then. She walked to the broken section of fence and stopped at the edge of a fresh hole, arms folded so tightly that the sleeves of her blazer creased. For nearly two minutes she stood there looking at the ground as if deciding whether to step toward something or away from it.
Daniel checked the angle of the next post. He could have managed it alone with additional braces, but the braces were still in the truck and Catherine was standing nearby doing nothing except trying not to let her face reveal what she felt. "Would you hold this for half a minute?" he asked. "I've got the footing where it needs to be, but I could use another pair of hands."
She stared at him. "I'm not dressed for construction." "You don't need to dig," he said. "Just hold it straight while I check the level." She looked down at her shoes, then at the post, and finally stepped onto the grass as if crossing into an unfamiliar country.
Her hands closed around the timber with surprising strength. Daniel adjusted the footing and read the bubble in his level while she held still, silent and intensely committed to doing a good job. "A quarter inch toward me," he said, showing her with his own hand. She moved the post carefully and waited until he told her it was right.
"Now hold there." They stayed in that arrangement for half a minute while he tightened the brace. When he released the post, it remained upright without help. Catherine let go and studied the gray dust marking the heels of her hands, almost smiling at the absurdity of the sight.