But she didn’t stop him.

Because she didn’t want to interrupt him.

Because he seemed so peaceful.

And he was. Because he liked fixing things for people more than anything in the world.

So Glory stayed where she was.

And watched this man named East do what he said he could do.

3

Ginette passed the old Gallagher homestead and thought about how sad her mom had gotten when East decided to stop growing potatoes on his farm.

And then she thought about how her mom had been talking a lot lately about how so much of northern Maine was full of things that were once something—but weren’t anymore. And that the forest was slowly taking them back.

Things like the ghost locomotives up at Eagle Lake.

And the general store in Dyer Brook.

And the abandoned trucks and farm equipment that can be found all over the northern Maine woods.

And farms—like the Gallaghers’.

As she walked, Ginette wondered if she and Pete were one of the things that had once been something—but now weren’t.

And she realized that maybe they were.

Because, while they were sitting together on the bench in their newly named love, Pete had said that he and Ginette weren’t close to each other at all—that they were actually about as far away from each other as they could possibly have been.

And now Ginette was getting even farther away from Pete with every step she took.

And that made her feel a kind of loneliness she had never felt before.

It was 7:55 when Ginette reached St. Mary’s, a small white Catholic church a quarter of a mile down the road from East’s house. St. Mary’s didn’t have its own pastor, so Father Tom from Sacred Heart in Caribou went to Almost to say mass once a week—on Saturday evenings at six o’clock.

There was usually a supper or a social hour after mass at St. Mary’s, and then Father Tom would look in on whoever needed looking in on.

And then he’d head back to Caribou so he would be available for Sunday morning services at Sacred Heart.

Father Tom had called Chad Buzza on the night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen, like he usually did. Chad worked part-time for St. Mary’s. He maintained the building and the grounds and the small cemetery behind the church. Father Tom was calling to make sure Chad had plowed the parking lot and that the church was prepped for Clair Gudreau’s funeral the next morning and for mass in the evening.

Chad told Father Tom he had everything under control.

And then Father Tom asked him why he wasn’t out doing something fun on a Friday night, and Chad said he had gone out to dinner with a girl earlier, and Father Tom said, “Good for you,” and then Chad realized he was going to have to go to confession, because he hadn’t gone to dinner with a girl. He was supposed to have gone to dinner with a girl. But she had decided she didn’t want to go to dinner with him at the last minute. So he didn’t go to dinner with her. And, instead, went to the Moose Paddy and got a burger for himself and a turkey club sandwich and a corn chowder for his mom. His mom was surprised to see him home so soon. And Chad said that his date had to cancel at the last minute because there had been an emergency—nothing too serious—and his mom said she was sorry but that she was happy to have him around for dinner and happier about her turkey club and corn chowder.