Chapter 9: The Same Hand

Nolan's POV

The morning after the pickup line, Lana came in at eight with her face gone gray.

Twice before ten I saw her stop mid-seam and stare at nothing.

I did not ask. Her daughter did.

"Mommy, are you counting again?" Junie said.

"Yes," Lana said. "Keep sorting."

Lana Althouse had been in my back room for six days, and I still had not heard her ask for anything.

She came in at eight, after the school drop-off, and left at two to get her daughter.

In between she cut, pinned and stitched eleven pirate coats back to health.

The coats had been in the costume loft for nine years, and nobody had touched them.

On Tuesday she put a new lining in the fourth one before I finished my coffee.

I told her so.

"It's only a lining," she said.

"It's the first lining that has ever fit that coat."

She did not smile, but she stopped for a second with the needle in the air.

That was the closest she had come.

Her daughter did homework at the end of the cutting table on the days when school let out early.

Junie had decided she was in charge of the buttons.

She sorted them into egg cartons by size, and she called me Mr. Pins.

On Thursday afternoon I came back from the loft with an armload of velvet and found the two of them bent over the same coat.

Lana was talking in a low voice, and Junie was listening with her chin on her fist.