Page 83 of Her Wicker Guardian

His attention stays on my face. “Do you want all these people talking to you?”

I hesitate. “Not all of them,” I say.

“Then you can say no.”

I almost tell him it isn’t that simple, but I stop before I say it.

Cars keep slowing on the road. Locke works. I sit near him and let my phone buzz without answering it.

Eventually, I turn the phone over and check only the names I care about. Laura asks whether she should come after work. Janet offers groceries, bottled water, extra towels, and orange traffic cones, which is so thoroughly Janet that I laugh despite myself.

Janet: I’m serious about the cones. People drive like idiots when they’re looking at something.

Rachel: I know you’re serious. Stay home for now.

She sends a thumbs-up and, thirty seconds later, a picture of six reflective orange cones stacked in her garage.

I’m still chuckling when Tom’s truck turns into the drive.

Locke recognizes the engine first. “Tom.”

He sets down the willow and walks toward the side of the bear as Tom comes around the cottage.

“You okay?” he asks Locke.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Tom looks at the bear. “Need me?”

Locke points toward one shoulder. “That side.”

Tom goes straight to it.

That’s all. No questions about the picture, no discussion of what people might do. Within a minute, Tom is holding a length of willow while Locke adjusts the angle, and something inside me unclenches.

I sit back in one of the folding chairs and watch them work while my phone keeps filling with proof that Hollis Springs has nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than treat this as the story of the decade. In a way, I guess it is.

Tom asks whether Locke wants another support under the shoulder. Locke says no. Tom says okay. The world could be falling apart at the end of my driveway, and these two would still finish the bear first.

A horn sounds on the road. Then another. Tom’s head comes up. Locke stops working.

“I’ll check,” Tom says.

“I’ve got it.”

He looks at me, then nods and stays where he is.

I walk around the cottage. Two cars are pulled onto the shoulder. A third creeps past them, crossing partly into the opposite lane because they’ve narrowed the road. A man is standing beside a pickup with his phone pointed toward my property. A woman several yards away is craning her neck toward my cottage.

I stop near the edge of my yard. “You can’t park there.”

The man lowers his phone. “We just want to see him.”

“This isn’t a zoo.”

“We’re not on your property.”