Richard looked toward the kitchen window, where Lily had reappeared. "Has she hired you for anything besides the fence?"
Daniel closed the toolbox. "I'm finished for today, Mr. Hail. If Catherine needs more work, she can call me herself."
For a moment Richard looked as though he might press further. Then he turned away, walked back to his Mercedes, and left. Daniel locked the new gate, checked it once, and climbed into his truck. He had done his job. It was enough, he told himself, though the thought did not fully explain the curious relief he felt at Catherine's words.
That afternoon, at 1:47, Catherine called while Daniel was collecting materials from a supplier. He stepped aside from a busy aisle of fasteners and answered. Her voice came through brighter than it had been for days, carrying energy that sounded almost unfamiliar after the exhaustion of the first visits.
"James Whitmore agreed to meet me Tuesday morning," she said. "Eight o'clock. He told me he'd been waiting for me to call."
"That's good news."
"He said he had questions about the board's proposal, and nobody had asked him for an opinion. Then he asked if I could bring the original projections we used when he invested."
"Do you have them?"
"Every page. I saved them because I remember being scared to send them to him eleven years ago. It was the first time I'd asked somebody outside my family to believe the company could exist."
"Then take them. Show him what it became."
"I've been pulling together the records all morning. Revenue, client retention, employee growth, the contracts the board wants to cut. I looked at the whole picture for the first time in months, and I remembered why I started the company."
Daniel smiled into the phone. "That's usually what happens when you stop staring at the damaged post and look at the rest of the fence."
"Do you do that on purpose?"
"What?"
"Say things that apply to more than one problem."
"Occupational hazard."
Her laughter was small but real. Then silence settled, and Daniel waited without trying to fill it. He had become aware that she sometimes called with a practical question and remained on the line because she wanted a little while in which she did not have to manage anyone's expectations.
"Lily asked whether Noah was coming back," Catherine said.
"He asked about her math. I think he's still trying to prove a point."
"She admitted yesterday that he was right about one of the fractions. It took her a remarkably long time to say the words."
"Sounds familiar."
"It does, doesn't it?" Catherine paused. "I told her I didn't know when she'd see you both again. I think I wanted to say yes."
Daniel leaned against a shelf of hardware, feeling the warm fluorescent light of the store around him. "I like spending time with both of you," he said. "But I don't want this to move faster than any of us understands."
"Neither do I."