"I already am," Lily answered. "I just didn't know what I was scared of."
Daniel resumed his work, the wire drawing taut beneath his gloves. He remembered Noah asking a month after Sarah's funeral whether the house would disappear because his mother no longer lived there. Daniel had been explaining household budgets to a child for months before he realized the boy was asking whether anything safe would remain. He had answered the question as directly as he knew how. The house would stay, and so would he.
When Lily came outside, her face was blotchy with the effort of not crying. She carried her notebook but did not open it, and she looked at Daniel as though she expected him to have heard far more than he should. He did not ask how the conversation had ended. He set down the pliers and waited.
"She told you yesterday," Lily said.
"A little. She didn't tell me what to think."
"She didn't tell me until I made her."
"Parents don't always know the right time."
"That doesn't make it fair."
"No," Daniel agreed. "It doesn't."
Lily looked at the replacement posts, their tops squared neatly and their bases surrounded by fresh earth. "Is she going to lose her company?"
"I don't know. People are trying to make a decision, and she has time to answer them."
"She's scared. She thinks that means she's failing."
"Sometimes people who work very hard forget that being scared doesn't cancel the work they've already done."
Lily sat on the back step, pulled one knee beneath her chin, and examined him with unguarded concentration. "Did you ever lose something you worked for?"
He considered giving her a simple answer. Children sometimes needed simplicity, but Lily had made it clear that she was tired of being protected by half-truths. He could tell her enough without turning his own life into another burden for her to carry.
"Yes," he said. "More than one thing. I lost a steady job. My family had medical bills. And my wife died four years ago."
"Noah's mother?"
He nodded.
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
"Does he miss her all the time?"
Daniel looked toward the house, remembering the way Noah's hand had rested in his at the funeral. "He misses her differently now. Sometimes he asks me what she would have said about something. Sometimes he doesn't mention her for weeks, and then he'll find a photograph and want the whole story behind it. I try not to tell him what he should feel."
Lily thought about that for a while. "Mom says Dad loves me. I think he does. But he calls me on the days written on a calendar, like an appointment."
"Then maybe he needs to learn how to call on an ordinary day."
"Can you make somebody learn that?"
"No. But you can tell him what it feels like when he doesn't."