Part 6
By spring, the house was on the market. Evan packed his clothes first and left the kitchen until last, unable to decide what to do with things that had never belonged to Lily but still made him think of her. He put the chipped blue bowl she had used for Boone into a box marked KITCHEN and carried that box to the truck himself.
He bought a smaller place two counties west, near Meadow Creek. A tin roof covered the porch, and fenced pasture sloped toward a creek where Boone could stand in water no deeper than his ankles and watch minnows. There was room to walk without entering woods. For the first week Evan kept expecting someone to explain what was wrong with the arrangement.
He brought a sticking gate hinge home from the feed-and-seed store where he repaired equipment. Work had given him a reason to leave the new house each morning, but answering a customer could still cost him the concentration he needed for the rest of the day. The owner had found him staring at an engine he knew how to fix and offered to take over the counter. Evan let him. He was learning to say when he needed a few minutes, instead of picking up a wrench and waiting for the other person to leave. That afternoon he took the hinge with him, laid it beside the drill on the porch, and went to call Boone out of the creek.
It was that difficulty at work that had finally got him to the support group three towns over. He had gone twice, saying almost nothing, and stayed because nobody insisted on an explanation when the coffee reached him. On the seat of the truck, the meeting notice had become creased under his lunch container. He smoothed it against the dashboard and checked Thursday’s time. At the last meeting he had admitted that he sometimes rehearsed a simple answer until the person who had asked was gone; another man had nodded, and they had sat without filling the pause. Evan folded the paper and left it where he would see it when he drove to work in the morning.
Boone came slowly up from the creek and shook water over the porch steps. Evan set a bowl beside the post, then sat down to work the hinge back and forth. In the month since the move, he had sometimes left the hall light burning all night; other mornings, this small stretch of pasture had let him finish his coffee before the memories came. Today the hinge began to move, and he reached for a rag.
A truck turned into the drive before he had wiped his hands. Boone stood up, ears forward, and Evan set the hinge down beside the drill. Then he recognized Frank Dawson behind the windshield.
Frank got out holding a paper bag from the diner. He stopped beside his door when Boone came down the steps, but the dog only sniffed his trousers and stood looking at him. Evan wiped his hands against his jeans and walked to the edge of the porch.
“Ben gave me the address,” Frank said. “After he checked with you.”
Evan had told Ben it was all right without expecting Frank to use it. Now he could see the man deciding whether to come closer. Frank lifted the bag a little, as if its contents might explain the trip better than he could.
“Ruth made an apple pie. She wanted you to have some.”
Lily used to eat cold pie straight from the pan after midnight, barefoot in Evan’s kitchen. Once, caught with the fork halfway to her mouth, she had asked if he planned to arrest her for it. The memory arrived so clearly that he looked past Frank at the truck, needing a moment before he could take the bag.
“Tell her thank you.”
“I will.” Frank watched Boone come back up the steps and settle near Evan’s shoes. “That dog always was stubborn.”
“He still is.”
They stood with the bag between them until Evan set it on the porch rail. Frank said they had put a bench by the lake for Lily, near the path where she used to ride her bike. Ruth went there on Sundays when the weather allowed. Sometimes he went with her; sometimes she asked to go alone.
“You can come,” Frank said. “If you want to. You don’t have to tell us ahead.”
Evan could picture the lake well enough. He could also picture arriving and finding Ruth there, having to cross the space between her grief and his with everyone in town able to watch. Frank waited, rubbing a thumb over the seam of his cap.
“I’ll think about it,” Evan said.
“All right.” Frank stepped back toward the stairs. He had made the offer without asking Evan to make it easier for him, and Evan found he did not want him to drive all that way home yet.
“There’s coffee,” Evan said. “If you’ve got time.”
Frank took his hand off the porch post. Evan went inside before either of them could turn the invitation into something larger, found two mugs, and cut the pie. Ruth had wrapped a plastic knife and napkins in the bag. He stood looking at that small precaution, then carried everything out.
They sat in chairs a few feet apart, Boone stretched across Evan’s feet. Frank asked about the hinge beside the drill, and Evan showed him where it had been binding; then they spoke about the drive. When the trial came up, Frank lost his place halfway through a sentence, and Evan let him begin again without offering the ending he thought the man wanted.
After a while Frank told him about Lily at six, taking three peaches from a roadside stand while Frank paid for corn. She had hidden them under her jacket, then confessed halfway home, before he knew anything was missing. She cried so hard he turned around and drove back.
“Wouldn’t let me do the talking,” he said. “Marched right up with two peaches and money for the one she’d eaten.”
Evan laughed quietly, recognizing the squared shoulders, the insistence on settling an account herself. Frank looked down at his mug, and the corner of his mouth moved. For a few minutes they could talk about something Lily had done that neither a detective nor a jury had ever needed to hear.
When Frank left, Evan carried the dishes inside and saved the remaining pie. The sun had lowered across the pasture, catching the creek between the grass stems. Boone came up from the yard and climbed the steps carefully, then lowered himself beside Evan’s chair with a long sigh.
Evan reached down and rubbed the notch in his ear. There were calls he had not returned, apologies he was still unable to answer, another meeting on Thursday that he meant to attend. For now he could feel Boone leaning into his hand, warm and solid against his leg.
“You got me here,” he told him softly.
Boone’s tail moved once against the boards. Evan kept his hand in the thick fur while the porch cooled and the first stars appeared over the pasture. When the dog shifted closer, he moved his chair enough to make room and stayed.