"Only when they tell me what they want. My wife's family offered to buy her grandmother's house after she died. Everyone had sensible reasons. The market was good, the place was old, the repairs were expensive. It's the house Noah and I live in now."
He rarely spoke about Sarah without first preparing himself. The words had come out naturally, and for a second he felt exposed, as if he'd left a gate open on a property he had spent years keeping closed. Catherine's expression changed; she looked at him with surprise and something much gentler. She opened her mouth, then waited, allowing him to choose whether to continue.
"It has a leaking gutter I keep meaning to fix," he said. "The kitchen floor creaks in three places. Noah knows where the creaks are, and he tries to step between them when he's sneaking out for a snack. It's a whole life, not just a building."
"I understand," Catherine said.
Daniel believed she did, but her phone rang before either could say more. He glanced at the screen he could see from where he stood: an email notification with the name of a law firm in the heading. Catherine silenced it, then checked the time. The motion had become an instinct; Daniel wondered whether she could ever stop looking at a device without hearing a phantom vibration.
His own phone rang a moment later with a message from Noah's school. A water main had broken nearby, and afternoon classes were being dismissed early. Daniel read the notice twice to confirm the pickup arrangements and began packing the tools he could not safely leave exposed. Catherine stepped aside.
"Go get your son," she said. "The concrete needs time anyway."
"I'll come back after lunch. The mesh still needs to be fastened."
"You don't have to finish today."
"I said I would. About two hours."
She nodded, but he noticed her attention drift toward the house. When she turned away, the question of custody was still written plainly in her face. Daniel hoped she would tell Lily before an attorney's language did it for her.
Noah was waiting outside school on his backpack, discussing something with a classmate so seriously that he almost missed his father's truck. He climbed in, fastened his seatbelt, and asked immediately whether they were returning to the fence job. Daniel said they were after lunch, and Noah asked whether Lily would be there. His father's answer was deliberately neutral: probably.
"Good," Noah said. "I found a mistake in her fraction worksheet."
"You were arguing about decimal equivalents yesterday."
"That's how I found it."
"Are you sure you want to start a friendship by correcting every mistake somebody makes?"
Noah thought about that for a moment. "I'd want somebody to tell me if I was wrong."
"Fair enough. But sometimes people want a sandwich first."