Page 186 of The Best Shot

“Well, that’s hardly my fault.”

He gave her a look. “Move along, Ava.”

She caught my eye, waiting for backup.

Two anchors were already sunk into the plaster beneath a pencil mark. He’d done that before anybody got here.

I shrugged. Whatever it was, he’d get to it.

Ava sniffed, regal in her offense. “The ingratitude is astounding.”

Somehow, a system emerged.

Hale had made paper templates of every frame, which I’d made fun of him for on Thursday and was grateful for by ten o’clock Saturday. Nico held the next frame in place while Grant called out measurements. Tabby had picked her place and moved on. She was in the hallway with one of Hale’s old books open in her hands, completely useless to the rest of us.

Carter had appointed himself keeper of the stud finder and would not be relieved of the post.

“There’s one here,” Carter said.

“There’s not.”

“It beeped.”

Hale glanced over. “Because you’re over a nail plate.”

Carter looked at the wall. Then at the stud finder. “It knows that?”

“No. I know that.”

“Then what’s the point of this thing?”

Hale grinned. “Mostly keeping you occupied.”

Carter set down the useless device and walked away. “Laugh it up. I’m going to remember this come audit week.”

I stopped helping around the sixth frame and watched them go up.

Ava, head tipped back, laughing with paint on her wrist.

Tabby in the bookstore doorway, one hand pressed to her mouth like she had just heard the best secret of her life.

Annie barefoot on this porch, hair wild, middle finger raised at whoever had made her laugh.

Nico and Grant under the hood of the Chevelle, wearing identical expressions of insulted competence.

Harry at the chess table with his hand hovering over a bishop, sun on the side of his face.

Hale from behind at the edge of the field, one hand on his hip, the other holding a coffee mug he had forgotten to drink from.

“Left,” Ava called. “Your other left, Grant.”

“You want to come do it?”

“I’m supervising.”

Somewhere around the eleventh frame, Ava produced the magazine.

“Now,” she said, thumbing through the pages. “Let’s see what the automotive world has to say about our own Hale Henry.”