“Hey, do you have a place I could hang this?” he asked then. He opened the folder and took out a flyer, the kind with phone numbers perforated at the bottom. It read Handyman needed for light carpentry, painting, installation.

I took it from him and held it, my fingers damp and wrinkling the edges. “Are you hiring someone?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “Do you need the work?”

I let out a nervous laugh and looked behind me, through the window into the kitchen, where Junior was letting the oil out of the fryer.

“There are all these construction workers in town,” I said.

“That’s not what I want,” the stranger said. There was something feline about his features, the way his eyes crinkled, the sharp points of his canine teeth.

I kept looking at the flyer. His name wasn’t on it, just a number, repeated at the bottom.

“Did you just move here?” I asked.

“I did. I have things that need attention at my house.” He tilted his head, thinking, and started to smile at me. “Is that something you do?”

“Yeah,” I said, lying. I didn’t have any actual experience.

He pulled out a stiff, plain-white card with just his name on it and a number different from the one on the flyer.

“Bear,” he said, and held out his soft, fine-boned hand.

“Shannon,” I said. My voice was just my breath. I was aware of how rough my hands were from the dish soap and hot water.

He cocked his head. “We both have weird names,” he said, and then pointed at the card. “That’s my direct line.” He took the flyer from me and crumpled it.

I started laughing again. “You’re not going to interview anyone else?” I asked.

He shrugged. “No need,” he said. He arced the wadded-up flyer into the trash can behind the counter. Then he took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and left it next to his empty cup.

“Coffee’s only a dollar,” I said.

“Call me,” he said. And he took his keys out and left.

I slid his business card—BEAR MILLER—into my back pocket and picked up the cup he’d left behind. I held on to it the way he had, with the handle in my right hand, and leaned it into my lips, lining up the invisible prints. And then Terri came in the back door with a slam, her apron off, and I dropped the mug onto the rubber mat, where it didn’t break but just rolled way under the counter.

“What in the hell are you doing?” she asked, and laughed. “Clean up,” she shouted, shooing me. “Get out of here.”

I rushed the door and then walked out slow, looking. Bear Miller was gone. I wished I’d seen what he was driving or how he’d gotten there, if he’d walked, which direction he’d gone, where he had possibly come from.

I rode my bike through the woods, whizzing down the trail past the car, because I needed to get home and charge my phone. When I came out on the other side, my mother’s truck was parked in the lot next to a Volvo that looked like it cost more than my entire life. A woman had two rambunctious pit bulls in the field, one black, the other a silvery blue nose. She wore a white jacket. The dogs barked at each other and wrestled, rolling over the ball. I slowed to a coast and circled around the lot before I crossed over to the entrance where our house was.