The yellow steel tape slipped from Marcy’s hand and snapped back into its case with a sharp metallic crack. She winced, dropping her right shoulder and pulling her arm against her ribs.
“Let me take that end,” I said, reaching for the hook.
“It is just a little stiff,” she said. Her voice had a thin, breathless quality, like she was running out of air before she reached the end of the sentence.
I picked up a flat carpenter pencil from the bench and rolled it between my thumb and index finger. On the corner of the tool rack sat my brass fifteen-year Marine service pin, its anchor tarnished dark from the damp Ohio autumn.
“You do not get a stiff shoulder from reading picture books to four-year-olds, Marcy,” I said.
“We had to move the heavy storage bins in the gym room yesterday,” she said, adjusting the thick wool scarf around her neck.
The shop heater was already humming, sending dry heat through the rafters, but she had not unbuttoned her winter coat.
You look at people differently when you spent fifteen years teaching young men how to survive a fight. You see the small adjustments they make to hide a weakness, the way they weight one foot over the other, the slight hitch when they reach for a tool.
“A twelve-foot cabinet needs three hinges, not two,” I said, marking the wood with my utility knife. “If you do not support the middle, the door will sag under its own weight within six months.”
“Dustin says we need to buy a newer car before winter,” she said, looking out the frost-rimed window.
I stopped my knife on the pencil line. “Your sedan runs fine.”
“He says the transmission is going to slip on the highway,” she said.
A car horn sounded out on the street, and she started, her hand moving instantly to her throat to tighten the knot of her scarf.
“That is him,” she said, turning toward the door. “I will be back to help with the inventory tomorrow.”
