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“No.”

Laura laughs. “No?”

“Put mine back.”

“Your Hu?”

“Yes.”

The deep voices fill the car again. Much better.

Locke’s workshop sits beyond Rachel’s cottage, and I smell it before we reach the open door. Sawdust. Cut wood. Damp plant fiber. Metal warmed by the day.

Locke is standing at a workbench with a cabinet door laid flat in front of him. He tells Laura that Rachel is working at the Blue Plate diner, so Laura wanders over to inspect the things on the shelves along one wall.

The workshop makes sense even though most of what Locke does here does not. Tools have permanent places. Pieces of wood are stacked by size. Finished work occupies one side and unfinished work another. Nothing is where it happens to have landed.

My paintbrushes are currently distributed across three rooms in Laura’s house. I prefer my system.

Near the back wall, long green willow rods soak in a wide container. I pull one partway out and bend it between my fingers.

“What do you do with these?”

“Baskets. Furniture. Repairs.”

Something in the last word catches me. I turn back to him and notice the slightly different weave high in the center of his chest, newer willow worked through the older strands.

“That?”

Locke looks down at the repaired place and touches it with two fingers. “Yes.”

I move closer. “What happened?”

“Rachel’s ex-husband hit me.”

“He broke the weave?”

“Some of it.”

“With his hand?”

“His fist.”

After Locke gives me permission, I put my fingers against the repaired section. The newer strands yield differently beneath my touch. They’re smoother than the older willow around them, but just as warm. When I press lightly, resistance comes back through the weave in the same way it does anywhere else on him.

The repair isn’t lying over the damage. It has become part of his body.

A human fist did enough damage that pieces of him had to be replaced. My hand stays there a moment longer before I take it away.

“How?”

Locke shows me. Not by opening himself again. He takes several soaked rods from the container and demonstrates how they bend around an existing structure, crossing under one strand and over another, tightening without breaking. His hands move quickly enough that I make him repeat the first part.

“You know where it belongs before you do it.”

“Yes.”

“How?”