“Tuesday. Garden club. Or is it mah-jongg day? I never remember. We hardly ever do what we planned to do, anyway. Usually we just try to have something to do while we gossip,” she said. She followed John to the side of the house where the tree would be planted and asked him questions the whole time he dug. Had he led the ski patrol again last winter? Did the nursery do much business winters? What softball team would he be on this summer so she could watch for one of his games? Did he still have that condo for rent at Purgatory? Not just questions. Also statements. The yard needed to be resodded. She was thinking of moving the piano upstairs. Leigh, her daughter, would be arriving soon.

The shovel paused in midair.

“My daughter, Leigh. Surely you’ve met her on one of her visits. She was here for two or three months the summer Cal died. She spent another whole summer here a few years…ah, five years ago, I guess. Maybe you met her then.”

“I…ah, might’ve. Yeah. Maybe.”

“Oh, you’d remember, John. She’s very striking. Rather unforgettable, actually.”

Yes. Unforgettable. Completely. His brow began to bead with sweat. The temperature was fifty-two degrees, and there was still snow here and there in crevices around yards, at the edges of driveways, sidewalks, but he was sweating. His heart rate had been about one-ten from digging; the mention of Leigh Wainscott Brackon had caused it to shoot to two-sixty.

“You never mention her,” he said.

“Don’t I? Oh, nonsense, you just haven’t been paying attention. I hardly talk about anything else.”

But not to him. They didn’t move in the same social circles, have mutual friends, or seek common amusements. Their only common trait was that they were equally well-known in town, for entirely different reasons. Everyone knew John McElroy because he was in charge of the volunteer ski patrol and A-Number-One Mr. Fix-it, and everyone knew Jess Wainscott because she belonged to every club, charity and social group in Durango. One of the town matrons and the town’s best handyman. And although they liked each other fine, they weren’t exactly friends.

Every time Jess called him out on a chore, he hung on her every word. Leigh never came into the conversation; it wasn’t as though he would have missed it. The few times he had done indoor jobs, he had scanned the place for pictures, and there was only an old one—Leigh in her twenties. The same picture that had been there when he cleaned Jess’s chimney, put up her new chandelier, unplugged the kitchen drain. It seemed to move around a lot, but there was never a new one. “Does she ski?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.