After they said good night, Daniel stood at the sink a long time, watching the yellow flowers by the window. He did not feel guilty about being happy, but he felt something close to grief beside it, as though letting one new light into his life might somehow dim an older one. He took down a photograph of Sarah holding five-year-old Noah at the county fair and studied it. She had been laughing at something outside the frame, and her joy was so complete that he could almost hear it.
"I wish you could see him now," he whispered. He set the photograph back and went to bed. For the first time in weeks, he slept without waking at two to calculate the money left in his checking account.
Wednesday arrived with the ordinary satisfaction of a debt finally paid. The contractor who had owed Daniel four hundred dollars for more than a month sent a check by courier after receiving a third, formally worded request. There was no apology and no explanation, only the amount due and a note identifying the invoice. Daniel deposited it at the bank on his lunch break, bought fresh fruit on the way home, and took Noah out for hamburgers that evening without turning the occasion into a lecture about persistence.
"Did somebody pay you?" Noah asked, dipping a fry into ketchup.
"Somebody paid what they owed."
"Did you have to ask three times?"
"More than three."
"People should just do what they promised."
"Yes," Daniel said. "But if they don't, the answer isn't always to shout. Sometimes it's to keep the records and make the next request harder to ignore."
Noah considered that, then announced that he would use the same strategy to recover a pencil his friend had borrowed. Daniel had to explain that formal notices were probably excessive for a pencil, even an excellent mechanical pencil. The conversation ended with Noah deciding to ask for it politely one more time. Daniel counted that as a victory.
Thursday brought a larger job in Whitfield Hollow. A property manager said she had heard good things about the fence Catherine Hail had hired him to repair and wanted an estimate for an aging wooden gate and two sections of privacy fencing. Daniel arrived with the same notebook and camera, inspected the posts and hinges, and explained which problems were structural and which could be solved by replacing hardware. His estimate was detailed and lower than another contractor's, but he did not apologize for it.
"I heard you don't run the bill up while a customer is deciding," the manager said.
"That's true."
"People notice that."
He shrugged. "I notice when somebody does it to me."
She hired him on the spot. Daniel called Marcus Bell afterward to thank him for the original referral, and his friend laughed when he heard where the new job was. "What did you do out there, Dan? Save a life?"
"Repaired a fence."
"Uh-huh. That's what the invoice says."
"That's what happened."
"A fence job doesn't usually get a man three calls asking whether he takes new clients, and one of those calls came from a woman who doesn't usually bother to tell people she's pleased."