Page 36 of Her Wicker Guardian

My next breath catches somewhere high in my chest, and for a second all I hear is the way he said it. Two words he seems to have been holding onto since I left.

“Yes. Rachel came back.”

His almost-smile appears, and warmth slips through me before I can decide what to do with it.

I walk toward him. He doesn’t close the rest of the distance. He lets me do that. “Did you have an exciting afternoon?”

“Rachel back.”

“I’m sensing a theme.”

Shannon appears in the workshop doorway carrying the old iPad. “You should know he’s been waiting for that particular development.”

“How bad was it?”

“Not bad. We worked on words. Someone came by, but nobody saw him.”

Locke points toward the road. “People.”

“Yeah,” I say. “There are a lot of them.”

The words sit differently now that Locke is standing here listening to us talk about a world that doesn’t know he exists. Sooner or later, people are going to see him. I have no idea what happens after that.

Shannon taps the workshop door. “Also, this.”

I push it open. It doesn’t scrape. I close it, then try again.

Still smooth.

“Locke fixed it,” Shannon says with a smile.

I crouch beside the lower hinge. The stripped screw is holding now, packed with a sliver of fresh wood. Dad had noticed the problem when he was here but had bigger things to deal with first.

I look up at Locke. Nobody asked him to fix it. He saw something wrong and knew what it needed.

“You did this?”

Locke comes closer and points. “Door. Wrong.”

“Yeah. It was wrong.”

His expression brightens.

Shannon leans against the frame. “He knew exactly what to do. I handed him the screwdriver. That was about the extent of my contribution.”

I straighten and watch Locke run his fingers over the edge of the door. He doesn’t test the repair again or look to Shannon or me for approval. With wood, he moves as if uncertainty isn’t part of the equation.

Whatever else he woke up without, this is something he already knows.

“That’s… useful.”

Shannon snorts. “You sound disappointed.”

“I’m adjusting.”

“To having a sentient handyman?”

“To everything.”