that she was so competent. She had reacted to the chaos of the birth, and to Colleen’s fear, with the perfect mixture of detachment and compassion. Briskness leavened with dry humor. She seemed like the kind of person to whom you could say, “I had a son who died,” and she wouldn’t overreact. Usually people responded one of two ways. They made him feel like he was drowning in an avalanche of pity. They brought their casseroles and asked their hushed-but-entitled questions, as if they had a right to know what was in his soul. Or, worse, they stood there with their intact families and their not-dead children and told him that God worked in mysterious ways, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was often this close to punching their lights out.
But not Dr. Walsh. She just looked at him like a dead kid was a thing that happened—a sad thing, but a thing—and asked, “What was your son’s name?”
Not “How did he die?” Or “How old was he?” Those were the things people seemed to want to know. The salacious details. The things that would allow them to answer their real question: “How tragic is this, actually?”
“What was your son’s name?” though. That was a real question. Who was this person you had but now don’t have? It was a question about Jude rather than the circumstances of his death.
“Oh, I have a question for you guys.”
He jerked his head up. Was she including him in “you guys”?
“So I’m living in Southbank Pines. In Harold Burgess’s house.”
Sawyer glanced at Jake. “Yeah. How’s that working out?”
“Fine, except the major draw was supposed to be a deck out back. I’ve spent the last several years living on the twentieth floor of a high-rise, and I was really excited about a deck. But it turns out that what I actually have is a vaguely deck-shaped collection of rotten wood that disintegrated when I tried to stand on it. I know it’s just a rental, and it should be Harold’s responsibility, but I’m going to be here for two years, so I’m ready to throw some money at the problem. Jake said you guys have a carpentry business. Any chance I can hire you?”
“Of course,” Sawyer said quickly. Jake tried not to roll his eyes. They didn’t do decks. They did fine carpentry. As in bookshelves. One-of-a-kind pieces of furniture. Canoes for rich people with more money than sense. “But no charge.”
“You can’t not charge me!”
“Consider it a welcome-to-town gift.”
She started to protest, but Eve chimed in. “Sawyer and Jake are basically this town’s fairy godfathers. Sawyer in a professional capacity, of course, but Jake is always fixing stuff or building stuff.”
“Yeah,” Maya agreed. “Like, if you ever need the back of a wardrobe surgically removed, Jake’s your man.”
Well, busted. He figured he had the time and he had the skills. And he hated seeing a job that needed doing sit undone.
Which was how he found himself signed up to build a deck for Nora Walsh, aka Dr. Hon, aka the pixie doctor.
It occurred to him that he sure had a lot of names for someone he barely knew.
As she unlocked her car, Nora’s head was spinning. So many new faces and names. So much talking. Well, except for Jake. The interesting thing was that everyone accommodated his silence. It was like they expected it, like it didn’t register as out of the ordinary. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d just always been that way.
This head spinning was not necessarily a bad thing, though. Nora felt…not happy exactly, but hopeful. Like maybe she’d turned a corner. This week she’d made huge progress on the clinic, gotten most of the important furniture into her new place, and finished things by hanging out at a bar with a bunch of people who seemed like they might become friends.
And she’d discovered that Law and his smoky oven made the best pizza she had ever tasted. Even Maya, who clearly was not a fan of Law’s, agreed, judging by how she’d kept stealing pieces off Nora’s plate and making secret little moaning noises when Law wasn’t looking.
Nora thought back to last weekend, after her haircut, when she’d been hit with a wave of loneliness.
What was loneliness, really? She didn’t mind being alone. She often enjoyed it, in fact, and sometimes craved it. And if the alternative to loneliness was the kind of sublimation of the self she’d gradually done the last few years, eating sushi instead of