"I think she already has," he said.
"What I don't know is what she's going to build next." Lily looked at the fence at the new posts straight and clean and set deep.
"You go back to where the problem actually started," she said, using Noah's words from yesterday.
"I try to," he said. She nodded slowly like something was settling.
"I'm going to go talk to her," she said.
"Good," he said. She went back inside.
2 minutes later, Daniel heard Catherine's voice through the window, and this time it was not controlled. It was quiet, the quieter thing, the real thing.
He kept working, and he felt without examining it too closely that something in that house had shifted. something that had been leaning like a post under too much pressure had been allowed to come down gently instead of collapsing. That was worth more than the fence.
But he wasn't going to say that to anyone. He just kept working.
At 9:40, a car came through the gate without calling ahead. Daniel heard the engine before he saw it.
A black Mercedes, clean and new, the kind of car that was selected specifically to communicate something. A man got out who moved the same way like he had decided something about himself a long time ago and had been proving it ever since.
Late 40s, expensive jacket. The easy practiced confidence of someone who had learned that most rooms rearrange themselves when he walked in.
He looked at the fence then at Daniel then at the fence again. Contractor, he said.
That's right, Daniel said. Where's Catherine? inside.
The man walked toward the house without another word. Daniel watched him.
He didn't know who this was, but the way the man had looked at the fence, not at the work, not at the quality, but at the length of it, the property line, the footprint told him something. He was measuring, not the fence, the land.
Daniel found out who he was at noon when Catherine came outside and her face told the whole story before her mouth opened. That was Richard Hail, she said.
Your ex-husband, Lily's father. A pause.
He heard about the board situation. How?
Because he has a friend on the board, she said. He always has a friend somewhere.
She crossed her arms. He wants to revisit the custody arrangement.
He says this is evidence of instability. Daniel stopped.
He turned fully toward her. "The fence?" he said.
"No," she said. Losing the company.
He says a mother in professional crisis is a mother who isn't present. His attorney sent an email this morning.
She stopped. Her jaw was set, but her eyes were doing the thing they had done yesterday at the property line, holding something in place by sheer decision.
Lily is 12. She's not a toddler.
She can tell anyone in a courtroom exactly how present I am. Have you told Lily about this part?
No, Catherine said too quickly. She'll find out.
I know she will. From you is better than from him.