Chapter 24: The Paper Ring

In April the fence between the two cottages got a new gate.

Conway hung it himself on a Saturday morning, in a pair of work gloves with the fingers worn through.

I sat on my mother's back step with a mug of coffee and watched him do it.

The cottage had a new roof now, and new windows, and a coat of white paint.

The kitchen still smelled of lemon soap.

I had not let anyone change that.

"Level?" he called.

"Leaning."

"It is not leaning."

"A little to the left."

He stepped back, squinted and shifted the post a quarter inch.

"Now?"

"Perfect," I said, and he grinned at me.

On the other side of the gate, his mother's cottage had a porch swing she had asked for.

Its kitchen window opened without sticking now.

She had moved in on Tuesday.

She was standing in the doorway with a plate of cookies, wearing an apron over her blue dress.

"You two," she said, "are the slowest gate-hangers in the county."

"Yes, ma'am," Conway said.

She walked down the path and handed me the plate over the fence, the way she had when I was seven.

I took one.

It tasted exactly the same.

Tobias's second envelope had come in March, like the first.

It held a money order for the cousin and a plain card that said, "Another one."

I had been back on the ward since November, and I felt nothing at all about Harcourts anymore.

"Do you want the money order sent back?" Conway asked.

"Keep cashing them for the cousin," I said. "He's earned the last one."

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