Nora stiffened as Jonah approached, a paper grocery bag of stuff held against his chest. He set it down on the grass and put his hands on his hips, like he was ready for a confrontation. “I read that article you sent me.”

Nora looked over at Will, whose face was still in that practiced register. “Yeah?”

“I don’t see how you want to take something like pepperoni away from an old man,” he said, and Nora let out a relieved breath.

Will shook his head. “It didn’t say you couldn’t have pepperoni,” he said. “It said you should have less. And more fiber.”

“This is about my diver—” He broke off in the middle of this announcement to the full group. “What’s it called again?”

“Diverticulitis,” Will said, and then automatically looked to Nora. “It’s very mild.”

Mrs. Salas made a little fanning gesture beneath her chin. “He’s talking medicine!” she said to Marian quietly.

“It’s about my colon, Corrine,” Jonah said, annoyed.

“Are you being his doctor now?” said Marian, a note of suspicion in her voice. “Giving him medicines or something?”

“Not at all,” said Will, because now he knew you answered Marian’s questions. “We email a bit.”

He looked back to Nora, something sheepish in his eyes. That night they’d first been together, Will had told her he’d done what he had about the apartment—the longer stays, the more careful selection of tenants—for her. But Nora had a feeling he’d done it for everyone else, too, even if he hadn’t admitted that to himself. Somewhere between poetry night and cats in his apartment and taking care of Nora, he’d gotten to know her neighbors.

“Did he tell you about the woman from St. Louis?” asked Benny.

“That’s enough of that,” said Jonah, but his face might’ve gone a shade pinker as he set down his bag. “It’s a good thing you’re around, Beanpole. I found another book that belonged to your uncle.”

Once again Nora went tense. Bringing up Donny was worse than picking any bone, a tender spot she and Will still stayed away from.

But when she looked at him, she could see that his unbothered expression was authentic, his posture loose. When Jonah passed the paperback his way—the pages wrinkled and yellowed, the cover halfway torn off and faded—Will didn’t flinch, didn’t tense. He set down the bucket and took it. He looked down at it, not quite with curiosity, but not with pained indifference, either. The hold Donny had on Will seemed, at least lately, to have loosened.

“Were you going to try to donate this torn-up book to charity?” Marian said to Jonah.

“Someone would’ve taken it,” said Benny. “Like this—”

“Bernard, if you say something about my Wizard of Oz pillow . . .”