Chapter 32
Chapter 32 — New Arrivals
Alex wakes early Friday and lies in bed thinking about the departures — Maya in three days, Eleanor in ten. He goes to help with breakfast and discovers Ruth has returned to the commune, which lifts his spirits given how many people are leaving. He checks his phone for a call from Linda Carr about the shed job but finds nothing, and wrestles with Gene's advice about not chasing work. He drives to Holloway's Hardware and works the morning with Gene, who notices Alex's distraction and gives him a quiet talking-to about patience and craft. Alex returns to the commune in the afternoon and applies the second coat of polyurethane to Maya's bookshelf. While he's in the workshop, a car pulls into the commune parking area and a new arrival steps out — Jodie, a wounded veteran who lost her right forearm, hand, and part of the muscle in her right leg from an IED explosion overseas. Aunt JJ greets her warmly. Alex observes the arrival from a distance and feels the commune shifting again — people leaving, people arriving, the place continuing.
Three days. Ten days. The numbers sat like stones, heavy and cold in his gut. Alex stared at the pine knot eye of the ceiling, tracing its whorls with his gaze. The math had shifted, warped. Maya had ten days. Now three. Eleanor, an abstraction he’d barely registered, an idea of a person. Now ten. A number you could hold, a tangible countdown. Three days until Maya loaded her battered truck, the one with the perpetually squeaky wheel. Ten days until Eleanor, who spoke to the trees, would leave them behind.
He turned the numbers over and over in his mind, like worn coins. They just got more real, more solid, pressing against his chest.
Gray, thin light filtered through the window. Friday. The communal kitchen, a hive of early activity, hummed with the low thrum of refrigerators and the clatter of pots. He dressed in the quiet of his small cabin, the rough cotton of his shirt familiar against his skin. He walked outside, the cool, wet grass a shock against his bare feet. Dewdrops clung to the blades, catching the meager light.
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