By Wednesday morning Nora had drawn the same pear twenty-three times and disliked it in twenty-three distinct ways.
The food company wanted warmth without nostalgia, sophistication without expense, and a suggestion of handwork that would reproduce impeccably on six kinds of packaging. Her art director, Lydia, conveyed these requests with the apologetic efficiency of a woman trying to keep a large account and a small staff alive.
“They loved your first sketches,” Lydia said through Nora’s laptop.
“Those sketches had pears in them.”
“They’re reconsidering the personality of the fruit.”
Outside, a hammer struck twice. Nora looked toward the window. Eli was repairing a porch rail at the house across the road. She had spent a surprising amount of the morning being aware of that fact.
“Give me a direction they’ll approve in writing,” she told Lydia. “I can revise the color and line. I can’t keep restarting the concept inside the original fee.”
There was a pause. Her old habit would have filled it with a concession.
“Send me the additional estimate,” Lydia said at last. “I’ll handle it.”
Nora closed the call and sat back. Negotiating a boundary always seemed to require the energy of moving furniture, even when the other person accepted it.
She carried her drawing board downstairs. The house had no settled workspace yet, and every room seemed to contain an aunt-shaped distraction. In the right-hand living room, afternoon light spilled over a patch of bare floor. Nora pulled up a chair and tried again.
This pear had a slight bend in its stem. She liked its stubbornness. She gave it a companion with a bruised-looking blush and felt the work begin to move.
At four, someone knocked on the outside door. Eli stood there holding a flat parcel.
“Delivery driver put this on my porch.”
“He saw an organized person and made a reasonable assumption.”
Eli handed it over, then noticed the paper spread across the floor. “I’m interrupting.”
“You’re saving me from having opinions about pears.”
He looked at the drawings with unhurried attention. Most people said talented before they had actually seen anything. Eli crouched near a sheet, careful not to touch it.
“This one looks like it grew on a tree,” he said. “The others look like somebody told it to stand up straight.”
Nora laughed. “That is more useful than our entire brand meeting.”
“Low bar?”
“Buried underground.”
He straightened. She noticed a strip of white paint on his forearm and a small scar beside his thumb. These were ordinary details. Her interest in them was becoming less ordinary.
“Do you draw anything that isn’t for work?” he asked.
She glanced toward a closed sketchbook. “I used to.”
“What stopped you?”
“Work. Marriage. Being good at turning everything into an assignment.”
He accepted the answer without trying to repair it. “Lake’s particularly unassigned this evening.”
“Is that an invitation?”
His expression changed just slightly, as if he had arrived at a door he had not quite intended to open. “It could be. I walk down after work sometimes. Six-thirty, if you’d like.”
“I would.”
After he left, Nora stood in the middle of the floor holding the parcel against her chest. She was forty-one, recently divorced, responsible for a complicated property and a group of increasingly characterful pears. Apparently none of that prevented a simple invitation from making her feel wonderfully foolish.
She sent the revised art at six-twelve. At six-twenty she changed her shirt. At six-twenty-four she changed back because she liked the first shirt and resented negotiating with an imaginary audience.
Eli waited by the sidewalk with a canvas grocery bag.
“Equipment?” she asked.
“Bread for me. Not the ducks. Priya has strong feelings.”
They walked down Juniper Lane beneath trees still thick with summer leaves. The town sloped toward the water in streets of modest houses, porches, and gardens that had survived differing degrees of attention. Eli pointed out a cottage whose owner collected weather vanes and a garage where a retired mechanic repaired bicycles for the cost of parts.
“Everybody has a specialty,” Nora said.
“Yours may be pears.”
“I was hoping for something broader.”
At the public landing, they sat on a bench warmed by the day. Eli opened the bag and produced two bread rolls, cheese, and a pair of napkins. He offered her one share without calling it dinner.
The lake held the pale reflection of the sky. A sailboat moved near the far shore. Nora found herself relaxing into the quiet instead of planning what she should say next.
“How long have you lived next to June?” she asked.
“Twelve years. Grew up on the north side of town. Left for a while, came back.”
“For your father?”
“Partly. Partly I like old houses better than new subdivisions. There’s room to be useful here without pretending to be a company.”
He was forty-four, she learned, and had once thought he would marry a landscape designer named Anna. They had wanted different lives and spent too long hoping affection would do the deciding for them.
“Was it terrible?” Nora asked.
“Some days. Not every day. She lives in Oregon now. Sends a card at Christmas.”
“That sounds very adult.”
“Took us a while to get there.”
Nora broke a small piece from her roll. “My ex-husband liked the idea of an artist. He had more trouble with the hours an artist works. And the variable income. And paint on the dining table.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Eventually. By then I’d become very skilled at agreeing before he asked.”
Eli turned toward her, his knee a few inches from hers. “That sounds lonely.”
It was such an accurate word that she could only nod.
A dog shook lake water over its owner at the end of the landing. They both laughed, and the pressure behind Nora’s ribs eased. Eli asked about her favorite things to draw. She told him hands, old shop signs, the backs of people waiting for buses. Things carrying stories without announcing them.
“You brought your sketchbook?”
She had, though she had not intended to use it. Now she opened it on her knee and drew the sag of a boat cover, the curve of the railing, Eli’s hand resting loosely on the bench.
“Do I have to sit still?” he asked.
“Only if you want a recognizable number of fingers.”
He looked out at the lake. She drew the side of his face instead.
Walking home, their hands brushed once. Neither turned it into an accident requiring an apology. At her gate, Eli said he had enjoyed the evening, and Nora said she had, too. The plainness of it felt unexpectedly intimate.
Then he noticed the envelope tucked between the screen door and its frame.
It bore the letterhead of a regional property company. Nora opened it beneath the porch light. Someone had heard she might be reconsidering the print shop. They were prepared to make a prompt offer for the combined site.
On the last page was a sketch of four new vacation cottages where June’s garden and the old duplex stood.
