on a garage roof. Noah's rain jacket hung from the chair nearest the door because the coat hook was loose and Daniel had spent three weeks promising himself he would fix it. A small vase on the windowsill held two artificial yellow flowers that his late wife, Sarah, had bought at a roadside sale shortly before she got sick. He had never moved them, even after the petals began to fade.
"Dad?"
Noah appeared in the doorway wearing pajama pants and one sock, his dark hair flattened on one side and sticking straight up on the other. At nine, he had his mother's wide, attentive eyes and Daniel's habit of stopping in the middle of a sentence to examine a problem. He noticed the towel before he noticed breakfast, and his expression turned instantly suspicious. "You burned your hand."
"Good morning to you, too," Daniel said.
"You're using the dish towel. You only use that when you don't want me to see something."
Daniel opened the cupboard with his good hand and took out a plate. "It's a little burn, Noah. It will be fine."
"A little burn is still a burn." Noah climbed onto his chair, regarded the scrambled eggs on the stove, and then looked back at his father. "You would tell me to put cold water on it."
"Which is exactly what I did."
"For long enough?"
Daniel looked at him with a mixture of love and surrender. "Eat your breakfast, Professor Mercer."
Noah did, though not before checking whether the first-aid kit was still in its usual drawer. Daniel watched him from the stove and felt that complicated pressure behind his ribs, the kind that came whenever he remembered how much this ordinary little boy trusted him to make the day manageable. Four years earlier, when Sarah died, Noah had been five and had asked whether mothers could come back if someone repaired the thing that was wrong inside them. Daniel had spent a long time choosing his answer. He still thought about it whenever his son reached for him in the dark.
Money was tight again, but Daniel did not tell Noah that. September had been slow for Mercer Repairs, with two commercial clients delaying payment and a home renovation canceled after the owner discovered problems with her financing. The house where Daniel and Noah lived was small, old, and paid for, which mattered more than its market value. Everything else had to be stretched: truck repairs, school shoes, medical copays, and the annual property taxes Daniel never allowed himself to forget. He had a notebook in his glove compartment in which every number had its own line, because a number written down could be dealt with more calmly than a number circling his head at two in the morning.
He had once worked as a maintenance supervisor for a regional construction company. The salary had been dependable, the benefits predictable, and the hours mostly fixed until Sarah became ill and her appointments began multiplying. After her death, an insurance dispute swallowed four months of Daniel's life, and the company