Jake Morrison had spent most of his adult life fixing things that other people had already given up on.
Engines.
Transmissions.
Furnaces.
Snowblowers.
Old motorcycles.
A washing machine that his neighbor insisted was haunted.
He could hear a failing bearing before most mechanics noticed anything wrong. He could smell a leaking coolant hose from ten feet away. He could look at a twenty-year-old truck making a sound like a coffee grinder full of nails and tell the owner whether it would survive the winter.
People were easier to break.
Much harder to repair.
Jake had learned that part slowly.
At thirty-five, he lived with his eight-year-old daughter, Molly, in a small two-bedroom house outside Pine Hollow, Vermont, where snow piled against the porch railing every December and everybody knew which truck belonged to which family before seeing the driver.
He owned Morrison Auto & Repair, a modest garage off Route 14 with two service bays, one hydraulic lift, and a coffee machine that had been threatening to die for three years.
The garage made enough money.
Not much more.
Jake liked it that way.
Enough paid the mortgage.
Enough kept Molly in winter boots she outgrew every six months.
Enough bought groceries, school supplies, birthday presents, and the occasional Friday-night pizza.
Enough meant he did not have to work for anybody else.
That mattered to him.
His wife, Rachel, had died five years earlier.
Not suddenly.
Jake sometimes thought sudden would have been easier.
There would have been shock.
Anger.
A single horrible day.
Instead there had been fourteen months of appointments, treatments, hope, test results, waiting rooms, whispered conversations after Molly fell asleep, and the slow rearranging of life around the knowledge that love did not always get the ending it deserved.
Rachel had been thirty-two.
Molly had been three.
Jake had been thirty.
For the first two years after Rachel died, people treated Jake as though widowhood were a temporary illness.
His mother brought casseroles.
His sister called every night.
Women from church offered babysitting.
Men at the garage avoided complaining about their wives around him.
Then enough time passed that other people slowly resumed living.
Jake did too.
Sort of.
He worked.
Raised Molly.
Fixed houses.
Changed tires.
Attended school concerts.
Learned how to braid hair badly enough that Molly eventually taught herself.
He became good at functioning.
That was not the same as becoming good at living.
His sister Emily knew the difference.
Unfortunately, Emily believed knowledge created authority.
So three weeks before Christmas, she walked into Jake's garage carrying a paper cup of coffee and announced that she had arranged a blind date.
Jake was beneath a Subaru at the time.
"No."
Emily leaned against the lift.
"You don't even know who."
"Still no."
"She's beautiful."
"That seems unfair to her."
"She's thirty-two."
"Good for her."
"Smart."
"Also good."
"Single."
Jake slid out from under the car.
Grease streaked one cheek.
"No."
Emily handed him the coffee.
He took it.
That was mistake number one.
Mistake number two was listening.
Emily smiled.
"Her name is Sophia."
Jake stared.
"That's it?"
"What do you want, her tax returns?"
"Why would this woman agree to meet me?"
Emily's smile widened.
"Because her friend knows me."
"That sentence inspires confidence."
"Her friend Claire teaches with me."
"Okay."
"Sophia moved back to Vermont recently."
"From?"
"Boston."
Jake groaned.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You just decided you hate Boston?"
"I don't hate Boston."
"You looked like you hate Boston."
"I hate people who move from Boston and tell us Vermont doesn't have enough sushi."
Emily laughed.
"She grew up here."
Jake took a drink.
Coffee was good.
That irritated him.
Emily continued.
"She works in commercial design."
"Meaning?"
"I don't know. Expensive buildings."
"Great."
"She owns boots."
Jake stared.
"What?"
"You always complain city people wear ridiculous shoes in snow."
"That's because they do."
"She owns appropriate footwear."
"Now I'm interested."
Emily slapped his arm.
Jake smiled despite himself.
Then shook his head.
"No."
Emily became quieter.
"Jake."
He looked away.
She used that voice rarely.
He hated it.
"You haven't gone on a real date in two years."
"I went out with Hannah."
"Three coffees."
"One dinner."
"You left before dessert because Molly texted that the dog threw up."
"The dog threw up."
"Molly later admitted she spilled tomato soup."
Jake frowned.
"I did not know that."
Emily smiled.
"She didn't like Hannah."
Jake almost laughed.
"Good instincts."
"That's not the point."