Part 2
Grant moved his jacket from the chair opposite him.
Nora saw him do it. She nodded once and returned to the counter, where a customer was trying to order three different drinks without remembering who wanted which.
Flint lowered his head again.
“You could’ve warned me,” Grant murmured.
The dog exhaled against the floor.
Nora’s break took longer than she’d expected. Grant watched her finish a tray, change the receipt roll, and put a clean spoon beside the customer who’d been calling for one. She finally untied her apron and approached with a mug of her own.
She stood beside the empty chair until Grant nudged it out with his foot.
“Thanks.”
He waited while she sat. She turned the mug by its handle, then stopped herself.
“I’ve got about twelve questions, and none of them seem like the right first one.”
“You can go with whether I want more coffee.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Terrible place to start.”
He smiled. She looked at him a little more steadily.
“You’re still serving?”
“Yeah.”
“Same work?”
“More responsibility. Same organization.”
She nodded, accepting the limit without pressing against it.
He asked how long she’d been in Dunley.
“Long enough that I give directions using businesses that closed before I got here.”
“That sounds official.”
“I’m nearly qualified to complain about parking.”
Outside, a car rolled through a puddle deep enough to send water over the curb. Nora looked at his damp jacket.
“Was the weather what brought you?”
“A friend said this was a good place to disappear for a few days.”
“He left out the part where everybody notices a strange truck.”
Grant told her about the leave, the recommendation, and the small place he’d rented near the lake. He didn’t make the trip sound more purposeful than it had been.
Nora listened with both hands around her mug.
“You look older,” she said.
“I was hoping for distinguished.”
“I’m still gathering evidence.”
“That bad?”
“You used to require less evidence.”
There it was, the dry patience he remembered. He could almost see her leaning against the bakery’s rear door, waiting for him to admit that the repair he’d described as simple had gone wrong.
“What?” she asked.
“Your mother once watched me work for twenty minutes before telling me I’d installed a bracket upside down.”
“She wanted to see how long it would take you.”
“That’s what she said.”
Nora laughed, then took a drink.
They found a way to talk without trying to account for every missing year. She asked about Flint’s age. Grant told her five, and that the dog’s grave expression was mostly for new acquaintances.
“So this is his company face.”
“His manners are better than mine.”
“That wouldn’t have taken much training.”
He accepted that with a tilt of his cup.
She remembered how much he’d complained about the bakery coffee. He reminded her that Vivian had once left the pot on so long the handle was the only part he trusted.
“Mom said you were delicate.”
“Your mother thought an oven mitt was an admission of weakness.”
“She also knew you weren’t supposed to pry things open with a screwdriver.”
“We’re back to the cabinet.”
“It was a very good cabinet before you arrived.”
Grant was still smiling when he saw the boy through the open rear doorway. A worksheet lay before him. He wrote a few words, erased them, then leaned back to look toward Nora.
Grant’s smile went.
Nora caught it.
“Everything okay?”
“Just taking it in.”
She followed his glance toward the room, not quite far enough to understand.
“It’s usually quieter between lunch and school letting out.”
“Bad timing on my part.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
Before he could answer, the boy appeared beside the table. He stopped well short of Flint and looked first at the dog, then at Grant.
Nora checked the clock.
“Please tell me you’ve finished something.”
“Math.”
“And reading?”
“I’m letting the math settle.”
“That’s a new one.”
The boy barely heard her. “Aunt Nora, is it okay if I ask?”
Grant’s hand went still on the cup.
Aunt.
Nora nodded toward him. “He’s the one you need to ask.”
“Can I touch your dog?”
“First, tell me your name.”
“Owen Delaney.”
Grant looked at Nora.
“Tess’s son,” she said. “He’s lived with me for four years.”
She said it gently, but there was a finality in the sentence that told Grant not to ask about her sister in front of the boy.
He turned back to Owen.
“You did the important part already. You asked instead of walking up.”
Owen straightened a little.
“Now keep your hand down where he can see it. Let him come to you. Don’t put your face in his.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good. Saves me a speech.”
Grant gave Flint a quiet release. The shepherd got up, approached Owen, and investigated his hand, cuff, and shoes in that order.
Owen barely breathed.
“He can smell lunch,” Grant said.
“It was chicken.”
“That explains the attention.”
Nora covered a smile with her mug.
Owen touched Flint’s shoulder as directed. After a few seconds, the dog turned and returned to Grant’s chair.
“Let him go,” Grant said.
Owen pulled his hand back. “Was that bad?”
“No. He’s finished.”
“So he gets to decide?”
“About being petted? Absolutely.”
Owen considered that, looking rather pleased with the arrangement.
“Can he help with homework?”
“He’s qualified to sleep beside it.”
“That’s still help.”
“Try reading beside yours,” Nora said.
Owen looked at her. “You were waiting for that.”
“All afternoon.”
He went back to his worksheet, taking one last look at Flint before disappearing through the doorway.
Grant watched him go.
“He’s eleven?”
“Until he’s negotiating. Then he’s forty.”
“Sounds useful.”
“You’re welcome to borrow him during the next parent conference.”
Her break had run over. A group crowded beneath the awning, and the young woman at the counter caught Nora’s eye.
Nora stood. Grant began to rise, then checked himself when she smiled down at him.
“Your mom got that one to stick.”
“She was persistent.”
“You’ll be around?”
“Until Thursday next week.”
She calculated it without looking at a calendar.
“Nine full days after today.”
“More or less.”
Nora drew her apron strings around her waist. “Then I suppose you’ll need coffee again.”
He returned the following morning after walking Flint along the edge of town. The morning after that, he drove to the lake first. By the time he came back, the breakfast tables were being cleared and Nora had a cup waiting near the register.
Nothing about it became official. He didn’t ask her to spend every free hour with him. She didn’t try to turn his leave into an answer to a question neither had yet asked.
They talked when the work allowed it. Owen’s schoolwork slowed dramatically whenever Flint was in the room.
One morning Nora caught Grant looking at a scrape across his knuckles.
“Still using your hands as test equipment?”
“Only when the proper tool’s inconvenient.”
“You came into the bakery once with tape wrapped around your thumb.”
“It was a good repair.”
“It was electrical tape.”
“It stayed on.”
She pointed him toward the little box of bandages beneath the counter.
At Dorven, his hands had almost always been nicked. He’d worked whatever hours the owner would give him, then run after closing or found an open lane at the pool. In his apartment above a laundry, the pipes rattled whenever the washers filled. His possessions fit in a few rooms. The notebook in which he recorded swim times mattered more to him than most of the furniture.
The Navy had been a possibility he didn’t discuss until it began becoming real. Nora knew he was interested. She hadn’t known every appointment, every test, every step toward leaving.
She’d been busy with classes and the bakery. She liked physical therapy because somebody’s improvement could be as small and important as getting out of a chair without help. Vivian approved because, as she put it, people were unlikely to stop needing their knees.
They’d both had plans. Neither had expected the other’s to vanish.
Grant was remembering a dawn visit to the bakery when Nora said, “Mom had started getting sick around then.”
He looked up.
“We thought she needed a few days off.”
Someone called Nora from the register. She took his empty cup with her, and he let the conversation rest.
It returned during a walk beside the lake. Nora had finished early and had time before collecting Owen from his after-school program. She kept her hands inside her sleeves against the wind. Flint nosed through a patch of grass ahead of them.
Nora watched the dog for a while before speaking.
“We took Mom to Boise,” she said. “Tess and I. It was the night before you left…”
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