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I va stood, put her hands on her lower back, and sighed. “I guess that’s it,” she said to me. “You have everything you need.”

I nodded confidently so that she wouldn’t worry. Suddenly, her plans for maternity leave had advanced due to her doctor’s orders, and she was out of the office as of today. That meant I was now in charge. “We’ll be fine. What bad stuff ever happens here?” I asked rhetorically.

That didn’t work to calm her, and in fact, she remembered even more things to tell me. She showed me the secret log she’d been keeping of problems with the maintenance guy—I hadn’t wanted to make her upset, so I hadn’t ever mentioned the incident between Oren and the clothes dryer, so that didn’t appear on it. Iva’s spreadsheet was a list of things that he hadn’t done, hadn’t responded to, and had generally ignored in the past eighteen months that he’d been working here, even though they were part of his job description. Since he was the nephew (or maybe cousin, or maybe grandson) of someone in the office superior to ours, Iva had been told that he was untouchable. But she was trying to keep track anyway, she explained, so maybe someone would finally discipline him. Better yet, they could replace him.

Oh, and just a few other issues…she was expecting to hear back from the siding contractor about a problem in Building C, and also, she thought that the landscaping company that was supposed to maintain the hedges was actually killing them, so she’d been playing phone and email tag about that. If the man in Building A complained again about his neighbor, I was to tell him that there was nothing more we could do about sound mitigation between the units and that his next step was contacting the police. She’d ordered a new lock for the toolshed, since it was broken again. We couldn’t lose any additional equipment, because didn’t I remember the trouble when the snowblower had gone missing?

There were at least thirty more last-second reminders, and then she voiced one final concern in relation to me and my past. “What are you going to do about Cody?” she asked.

“Ignore him, like I always do,” I said briskly. “I really don’t care about him. Iva, you can text me, or call, or email. I can come over to your house to discuss things, too. You live three minutes from here.”

She smiled. “I know you’ll do a great job,” she said reassuringly, which was kind and most likely untrue. She knew that I got distracted by other priorities, like secondary jobs and my dad’s issues, and she didn’t blame me for them…but they made her concerned, so she was actually trying to reassure herself. Iva had vouched that I could handle things, so if I messed up, it would make her look bad and maybe weaken her position in our company. And that did make me a little nervous, because her boyfriend was stupid, and she and stupid Dominic depended entirely on her employment here.

On the other hand, our condo complex was a loser, despite the famous tenants who’d chosen it in the past. It was mostly vacant because the rent that our company charged was way too high. They had also tried to sell the units, but had also overpriced them. There were currently more renters than owners, which made prospective buyers feel like it wasn’t a good deal and they needed to look elsewhere. But there also weren’t enough renters to make this complex a profitable venture, not by my rough calculations. I’d been at my job long enough to realize that no one with any power was doing anything to make significant changes, either.

Anyway, the point was that no one cared too much about what we were doing here—at least, I didn’t think so. I hoped not.

“Ok,” Iva said, and she looked around the small office. Her desk was mostly empty, now. “You can text, call, email, or come over to my house whenever you have a problem.”

“Yes. I just said that,” I reminded her, and she stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry.

“I’m not really that worried about you,” she told me. “I’m thinking about the baby, too. And Dominic told me that the college is going to reject his proposal for a position there. The meeting didn’t go well.” She shook her head. “They’re so shortsighted.”

That was the same thing she said about every employment opportunity that her boyfriend had: it never went well, but it wasn’t his fault. I had to disagree, because most of what stupid Dominic was doing to find a job seemed useless to me. He certainly didn’t go about it in the normal ways, like looking for openings, applying online, or hitting up friends and relatives for help. His latest idea was to become a consultant for Emelia Schaub College, our local institution of higher learning. But from what Iva had explained to me, his idea of a consultant apparently meant someone who provided opinions at meetings but then did nothing else, nothing at all, while getting paid a lot. Since he’d never had a job that lasted for more than a few weeks, I wasn’t sure why they would have cared what that guy thought—but somehow, he’d managed to talk himself into a meeting with someone on the college’s board. Stupid Dominic was smooth, which was how he’d also managed to talk Iva into being with him even though she was clearly deserving of better.

“You ready to go?” she asked, and I nodded. I was very ready. She needed to head home and put her feet up, but I was going to Woodsmen Stadium. It was Fan Day! A lot of local businesses shut down so that their employees could attend, and we were definitely turning out the lights in the leasing office. I would hang a sign on the door: “Closed due to Fan Day. Go Woodsmen!” I probably wouldn’t even get many voicemails, since the tenants would be at the stadium, too.

“This is the first one I’ve missed since I moved up here,” she said wistfully. “I just can’t take the crowd. I can’t stand the heat, the standing around, and the walking for miles.”

When she put it that way, it didn’t sound very fun—but it was. It really, really was. “I always take a lot of pictures and I’ll send them to you, too,” I promised. “Next year, you’ll escort the baby for his first time,” I added, pointing to her stomach. She nodded and reluctantly turned off the lights as I taped up the “closed” sign, but she looked around the office again before she shut the door.

“It’s going to be fine,” she assured me and herself.

I was so ready to go that I would have said and done just about anything to get her moving, but I forced myself to stay calm. “If you want, we can talk through stuff again,” I suggested, but in my mind I willed her to say no to that. No, no, no…

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sure that you want to get over there.”

I did. As I’d told Tyler Hennessy on his tour, one of the biggest draws for the Woodsmen players about our complex was its proximity to the stadium. But on a day like today, when everyone and their brother was going there too, it took me forever to arrive. The sun was high in the sky when I got out of my car and hurried with the big crowd toward the huge building. I didn’t want to miss seeing the Wonderwomen cheerleaders perform, and I needed to get in line to meet the players. They sat at tables in a cavernous room inside the stadium, and it was always a madhouse. After that, I’d take another tour of the building, which I also did every year, and I had to document everything.

The starters were always at the front of the big room, so I saw them first when it was finally my turn to enter. Noah Boone, Seyram Adiang, Jake Koval, and Jory Morin were there, four big bodies on the offensive line. I also saw my favorite running back, Karim Cisco, and the cornerback who always got the start, Edwin Hill. He was awesome. Kellen Karma, the wide receiver, was speaking seriously to a fan and her son.

And there was the new tight end, the guy who’d replaced César Hidalgo after he’d delayed his retirement for a few seasons, unable to totally give up the game. Tyler Hennessy sat at a table decorated with Woodsmen orange accessories and today he was dressed more suitably for the hot weather (although it was nicely air conditioned in here). A huge crowd surrounded him and the Woodsmen employees were doing their best to keep things orderly and respectful as people jostled ever closer.

Hennessy wasn’t really talking to the fans while he signed jerseys, balls, pictures, and other memorabilia. His summery outfit included sunglasses over his eyes, although we were now inside. They made it difficult to read his expression but the slight turndown of his full lips (and the way he kept turning his head to yawn) made me think that he was both unhappy and bored, even with all the excitement around him. Who could have felt that way on Fan Day? It meant that the season was starting soon, all that emotion, all that love for the team! Didn’t he feel it?

He yawned again. Maybe not.

I waited to get to the front to ask him to sign my autograph book, the one I’d been bringing to Fan Day since I’d first come as a little girl with my dad. That was when my memories began, anyway. I had attended before with both my parents, and in fact, there was a picture of me as an infant being held by Warren Wilde—yes, the real Warren Wilde.

“What’s your name?” Tyler Hennessy asked. I couldn’t tell if he’d glanced up from the book to see the person he was addressing.

“I’m Kasia,” I reminded him. “Kasia Decker. I gave you the tour of the condo. I helped you look for the earring,” I continued, when he didn’t speak. “It’s Kasia with a K.” I spelled it, too, because it was hard. It was especially hard if you didn’t listen.

“Sure,” he said. To C-A-S-H-A, he scrawled on the page, then signed, “Tyler Hennessy #62.” He rolled his neck and his mouth turned down more.

“I kept searching for the earring. Your girlfriend’s earring,” I said, to jolt his memory. “You said it was a six-carat, Asscher-cut diamond.” I had looked that up, and it meant a gemstone in a square shape that was very pretty. It had nothing to do with butts, which might have been interesting, too.

I had his attention now. “Did you find it?” he asked.

“No,” I was forced to admit, and he shook his head and then yawned.

“Thanks for coming,” a woman in an orange polo shirt told me. She worked here, and it was her job to move along the people who overstayed their welcomes at the players’ tables. “Are you interested in meeting our amazing center, Freddy Uchita?”

I nodded and stepped to the side, so that the next fan could have her turn with Tyler Hennessy. “Thanks,” I heard him say, but when I turned back to look, I didn’t know whether the word was directed at me or toward the woman who had pulled me away. Freddy Uchida was always nice, so I moved on to him, and then to Zachary Santiago, a wide receiver. Both of them were very friendly and took time to talk for a moment before they wrote in my book, spelling “Kasia” just right. I took pictures of everything.

The stadium had undergone more renovations a few seasons back, but it was still so much the same on the tour. It was comforting to know that my team was here and that even if parts of it might change, the Woodsmen were always a constant. We went through the locker room, peeked into some of the training rooms, and stood in the stands to look down at the field. It concluded, as it always did, in the hall of fame, the big trophy room which displayed all the awards that the team and individual Woodsmen had won. I walked around, admiring the displays of gleaming silver, brass, and gold, and I swelled with pride.

No, I wasn’t really a part of it—like, I had never played football for them, obviously, and I had never actually been to one of the games. These events, the free ones, were the only times that I visited the stadium. But I watched every game from my house, on the biggest and best TV I had been able to afford. I went to the practice facility when they worked out there in the summer, I attended every (free) event they held around the area, and I had even driven down to a few of their closest away games. Not to go into those stadiums, either, but to wait with the rest of the fans and cheer when the guys came out and walked to the team bus that would drive them to their private plane. I was a Woodsmen fan absolutely and without question.

“It was great,” I said when I got home. “So good. Did you see the pictures I sent?” I’d been steadily texting throughout the afternoon.

“No, I didn’t look at them yet,” my dad answered. He seemed tired, and I could tell that it had been one of his harder days. He wouldn’t ever say it to me, though. “What about the Wonderwomen?”

“They were spectacular! Aubin Baines is an amazing coach. There are four rookies,” I said eagerly, but then modulated my voice so that it was quieter and more soothing. “Remember how I read to you about them during their try-outs? Their bios are on the squad website as of today. We can look later.” He really did seem tired. “One of them is from England. Isn’t that cool? There are Woodsmen fans there, too, and she came all the way to Michigan and made it. I think it’s really inspiring how she took the risk.”

“Your mother also did that,” he reminded me, and I realized that I’d strayed into tricky territory. When he was tired like this, he was more likely to get sad.

So I moved on. “I saw Tyler Hennessy again. He didn’t remember me at all.”

That made my father got mad instead. “How could he have forgotten you? You’re the prettiest girl in Michigan, and the smartest.”

“Thank you,” I said, and kissed his forehead. “He may not agree with your assessment. Also, I’m not sure that he even looked at me when we were together, not in the face.”

“What was he looking at?” Dad asked suspiciously, and sounding even more annoyed.

He made me laugh. “It wasn’t like that!” I assured him. Those hazel eyes hadn’t been on my body, for sure. “He probably didn’t think I was important enough to bother with.” The first time we’d met for the condo tour, his gaze had been on his phone and on his girlfriend’s butt, and then the next time, he’d stared at the ground to look for her missing earring. I really had searched for it again, several more times, but it was as if the could-have-been-wood floor in the unit had swallowed it up.

I would have given my father every last detail of the day, because I always worked on remembering the specifics of fun events so that I could tell him, but he was too tired right now. I got him dinner and then left him in peace. He always promised that it didn’t make him feel bad or left-out to hear what he was missing. No, he didn’t do most things himself, not anymore, but he didn’t begrudge that I went. And besides Iva from work, I didn’t talk to a whole lot of people, so it was fun to chat and to listen to his thoughts in return. Now, she would be gone and I’d be alone in the office, so we wouldn’t be speaking much unless there were problems. I hadn’t thought about that too much until this moment, and I found that I wasn’t looking forward to sitting there by myself.

Also, I’d have to deal with everything without Iva’s calm advice. I actually was concerned about handling the water delivery, even though I’d told her that I could deal with it. But I wasn’t going to bother her all the time, texting and emailing and whatever, no matter what she had also said about that. Like, right now, I was getting a call from another area code, not one I recognized, and it was going to be up to me to figure out what this person wanted and then to fix it. That this call was an “emergency” related to my job, I was totally certain; besides my dad and Iva, I didn’t talk to many people on the phone, either.

“This is Kasia,” I answered. “May I help you?”

“It’s Tyler Hennessy. I want to rent the condo.”

“Oh, that’s great!” I said. I checked the time and saw that it was around eleven. I’d spent a few hours cleaning the house and prepping for the next day, doing laundry and getting my father’s meals together. “I can send those documents over to you tomorrow morning.”

“I want to get it done now.”

Well, that was unfortunate. “The office was closed due to Fan Day, and I didn’t bring the laptop home,” I explained. “I can’t access anything without it.”

There was silence. “All right, I’ll go with my second-choice apartment,” he announced.

“No, hold on,” I said. This would be a perfect start, me showing our upper-level bosses that I could handle my new responsibilities. If I signed another Woodsmen to a lease in our complex, it also looked great for Iva and her trust in me.

I glanced again at the clock on the stove. “I can be at the office in forty-five minutes, and then it will take me a little bit to prepare the paperwork for you. Give me an hour total to get it done.”

“Good.Bye.”

The phone beeped, since he had hung up, but I concluded with the rest of the information. “After the lease is ready, I’ll email a link and you can electronically initial and sign. Our policy is that we must receive the full amount of the security deposit within forty-eight hours of our receipt of the completed agreement.” But I could include all that in my email.

I looked in on Dad, who seemed to be peacefully asleep, and I didn’t disturb him to share my plans. He needed to get rest when he could. I also didn’t change out of the pajamas I’d worn to work around the house, but I did grab my purse with the office keys inside it before I got in my car. I hoped that the engine’s noise in our driveway wouldn’t be too loud inside the bedroom.

It was certainly quiet on the roads around my house at night, but it got it busier as I approached the complex and it got brighter, too. It was totally dark out where I lived but there were some streetlights here. I saw that two of the tall poles that were supposed to illuminate our parking lot weren’t functioning, though. It wasn’t up to Oren to repair them or to replace the bulbs, because we’d need a cherry picker, but it was definitely his responsibility to monitor for problems and keep us informed if they needed work.

Without those lights, it was very dim as I parked my car and walked over to my office. But it wasn’t dark enough to obscure the bright yellow SUV that was also parked there, and I recognized it. I also recognized the tall figure leaning against it.

“Mr. Hennessy?” I called, and he stood straight and strode over.

“Kayla?”

“Close,” I told him. I thought of how my dad had been upset that this man hadn’t bothered to look at me during our earlier interactions, and I got snippy. “I’m Kasia Decker. You must have heard my name on the outgoing message when you called the office and got my cell number, and you wrote it out today when you signed my autograph book.”

“At Fan Day.”

“Yep, that was me. K-A-S-I-A, Kasia.”

“I signed about thirty thousand things,” he said wearily. “Tyler Hennessy, number sixty-two. I don’t ever want to autograph anything again.”

“You’ll have to sign your name on the lease,” I reminded him. And if he was going to be a Woodsmen, he had many Fan Days in his future—it was a standard clause in the players’ contracts that they had to attend, barring natural disasters and personal catastrophes (I’d read that in posts online, when some of their contracts had leaked). “But you didn’t actually have to deal with the lease in person. You could have done it online.” I slid a glance over my shoulder as I unlocked the office door. “Don’t the Woodsmen usually have parties and go out together after all the events are over at the stadium?”

“Maybe they do.”

They definitely did; their activities were all over social media. Tons of them were at the home of Garrett Bowman, one of the defensive linemen, and another big crowd had also rented out a bar downtown to continue the party there. “Didn’t you want to go?” I asked curiously, and that was the moment when he frowned and got annoyed.

“Are we going to do this or what?”

Right, the lease. I got started working on that as Tyler Hennessy moved around the little office. It was actually a trailer, one that was probably meant to be temporary but then had stuck around through the years. It definitely wasn’t large and it definitely wasn’t comfortable, like there weren’t a lot of places to sit, but we did have a chair for guests. He squeezed himself into it and shifted a lot, like he was uncomfortable, and he kept up the yawning and frowning that he’d been doing at the stadium during the autograph signing. I tried to hurry but I wanted to get everything exactly right, since he was high-profile and I was trying to make a good impression for myself and for Iva, the person who would also get blamed if I messed up.

“Are you wearing pajamas?”

“Huh?” I looked up quickly. “Me?”

He didn’t bother to answer, but his eyebrows went up and he got a “yes, you idiot” type of expression.

“These are my PJs,” I agreed. “I was going to bed when you called.”

“No parties for you?”

“No, not for me, either. It’s a weeknight,” I said.

“You sound like someone’s teacher. Or grandmother.” He picked up a pencil and spun it around his fingers and then he seemed to look at my face, maybe for the first time. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one. I’m legal, but I’m not much of a partier on any type of night,” I told him. “I don’t ever go out a lot.”

“Why?”

“I have other things to do that are more important. Are you going to be the only lessee?”

He was silent for a moment before getting up and walking to the window. “Yes,” he answered, the word directed to the glass and the parking lot outside it.

It didn’t take all that long for me to finish, since these agreements were pretty standard and I only had to tweak a little bit of the language. He really did distract me with all his moving around, and he asked me more questions, too. Like, was that the usual crowd for Fan Day? That many people? And was there really nothing to do around here? He’d taken a drive to get his bearings and hadn’t noticed much.

“There won’t be as many bars and clubs as a big city, but as I said, I’m probably not your best source for social stuff,” I told him. “Ok, this is all ready for you.”

He flipped through the pages without appearing to read anything, so as a precaution in case he claimed ignorance about what he’d put his name to, I went over a few sections. One was the guest policy and another was about noise. Violations of those clauses had caused significant issues for some of the football players who had rented here in the past, as had the section about damage to the unit. There were a few more points I wanted him to hear but from the way he kept yawning, I doubted that he was paying much attention. In the end I gave up, and I just pointed to the places that needed his initials and, again, his signature.

“Great,” I said when we were done, feeling very pleased. It was too late to text Iva and let her know about this triumph, but she would be thrilled to hear in the morning. “I’ll have the cleaners come and then—”

“I’ll move in tomorrow,” he stated.

“Your rental period doesn’t start for three more days. There are rules—”

“All right. Let me know when I can show up,” he said, and walked out into the night.

“There are specific hours that we allow trucks and I’ll cordon off part of the lot because it’s a tight fit for anything over sixteen feet. You’ll need to give forty-eight hours’ notice of your move-in date to make sure that there are no conflicts. So how about you let me know when you want to show up?” I suggested to the closing door. “Does that work for you? Great, we’re all set.” I sighed. “Good grief.” Who had raised this man? I got my stuff together and closed the laptop, taking it with me this time (just in case). I also walked through the door and then nearly threw the computer up into the air.

“Sweet Jesus! You scared me,” I told Tyler Hennessy. “What are you doing, lurking out here in the dark?”

“I’m not lurking. It’s dark.”

“Yes, as I just said. And?” I prompted.

“You’re going to be in the parking lot at night, alone,” he stated, and as I moved toward my car, he went along right behind me.

Maybe somebody human had actually raised him. I appreciated the gesture, although we didn’t have much crime here besides when the snowblower had disappeared. “Thank you,” I said, when we arrived at my door. “And also, welcome to the neighborhood.”

“Yeah. What are you doing now?”

“Uh, me?” Right, me. “I’m going home. How about you?”

He looked up at the sky, which must have been hard to see since the lights were out in this parking lot and he still wore those stupid sunglasses. “I guess I’ll go to the hotel. Shay came back yesterday and we were up late last night.”

Based on my experience with the two of them, I had a good guess about what they were doing—and I didn’t understand why he seemed hesitant about going back to do it more. “Don’t you want to see her?”

“She flew out again this morning.”

Oh. Maybe he was lonely, and then something did occur to me. “I can show you something cool,” I offered.

It was difficult to read his expression, but he nodded. “Ok.”

I would have to get up early in the morning, but for right now, I also didn’t want to go to bed. Maybe I was excited by the idea that on my first day in charge, I’d gotten a Woodsmen player as a tenant. Maybe I was just excited to be with a Woodsmen player in general. It was pretty easy to get starstruck when I thought of Tyler Hennessy as the person I’d seen at Fan Day, signing his autograph and surrounded by an adoring throng. This was the guy who’d been scoring touchdowns on national television while thousands of people in the stands cheered or booed. He really was a star.

The place I had in mind was kind of far from here and I watched to make sure he was behind me. Every time I checked, I did see the yellow SUV but it was getting pretty far back, so I slowed down a lot to let him catch up. The car was bright even in the darkness of this late hour and it was hard to miss, just like his hat on the first day I’d met him. He and his girlfriend had been flamboyant in those outfits, totally over the top. It made sense for Shay Galton because her whole job depended on attracting attention, but did he need it, too? I wondered how she’d do up here and if she could become accustomed to the idea of a place so small and boring, like both of them seemed to believe.

I carefully traversed the gravel road that led down to the narrow parking lot, where I got out and waited for him to join me. The driver’s door of the yellow car opened and he got out too, looking around.

“Where the hell are we? I lost my phone signal a few miles ago.”

“That’s Lake Michigan,” I explained. “Come on.” I gestured at him to follow, and then walked off on the path through the trees. The lake was quiet tonight, just gently rolling onto the shore with quiet splashes, and the moon made a path across the expanse of water. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It’s big. I didn’t think it would be like that.”

“You’re used to the ocean,” I pointed out. “It’s not that big, but it’s no pond.”

“For a while, I lived near a different lake,” he said. “You could always see the other side.”

“In Georgia?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”

“Because I can read,” I answered. “I know about all the Woodsmen players because I love the team.”

“Yeah, you came to Fan Day,” he remembered. “Kasia.”

“K-A-S-I-A,” I reminded him. “My mom was Polish. It’s a nickname for Katarzyna.”

He repeated that with a little difficulty, and he had caught my use of the past tense. “Your mom is dead?”

Most people didn’t ask about her in that way, but yes, she was. “It happened when I was little,” I said. “I don’t remember her.” Most people also seemed to feel relieved when I explained that, as if my lack of memory must lessen the ache of not having a mother. They were probably right, and it was probably better for me that I didn’t recall her presence or her love, even though my dad assured me I’d had it.

“Do you like your father?”

That was also a strange way to phrase things. “I do,” I answered. “Do you?”

But Tyler didn’t respond to that. He picked up a rock and threw it far out into the water. “I thought you were taking me someplace fun. I guess you really are antisocial.”

“No, I’m not antisocial,” I corrected him. “I said that I don’t go out a lot, which is true, but I don’t actively avoid people or anything like that. I brought you here because it’s one of the nicest spots I know. Isn’t it?” I found it hard to believe that he could argue with me, not when he was standing in front of our beautiful lake.

“Is it cold? It looks cold.”

“You can go find out,” I suggested, but he stayed where he was. “We can walk up higher, away from the water.” I started to stroll across the cool sand, and he did come along with me. “What did you think about the fans today? Isn’t it inspiring?”

“Inspiring?More like…”

“Heart-warming?Welcoming?”

“Fucking insane,” he stated. “I never saw so many crazy people in one place. I remember playing here, freezing my ass off and going deaf from the crowd.”

“They get loud,” I said fondly. “It sounds like it on TV, anyway, and the announcers sometimes have a decibel meter to prove it.” I thought of the woman who had one for the fan in her bathroom; Oren had gone over to check but she was still very displeased with its overpowering volume.

“Why are you watching them on TV instead of going in person? Are the tickets too expensive?” He had removed the sunglasses, probably because he wasn’t able to drive with them in place, so I could see his hazel eyes move over my pajamas and I also recognized that they were pretty ratty. I did, in fact, have nicer clothes than these—when I’d given him and his girlfriend the tour, I’d worn my best outfit. It had been nothing next to their own stuff, though.

“The good tickets are a lot,” I admitted. So were the not-so-good ones.

He was nodding as if he’d already been aware. “The wonderful Woodsmen outprice the locals.”

“No!” I said. “Well, yes, most of the tickets are really expensive, and they also have luxury boxes in the stadium that are nicer than my house. But the team also has a program, like a lottery, where you can get cheaper tickets if you live in the area.” I had never signed up, but it was there.

He sat down abruptly.

“Did you step on something?” I asked. “Did you pull something?” Had I injured our new tight end with a walk on the beach?

“No. It is pretty here.”

Oh. I sighed in relief. “It’s my favorite spot,” I agreed, and sat next to him. “I used to come and imagine what was on the other side.”

“It’s Wisconsin.”

“Thank you, I’m aware of that.” It was more that I always wondered what else was out there, past Wisconsin, past what I could even imagine. “You could bring your girlfriend to this beach,” I mentioned. “It’s very romantic.”

“She’s gone,” he reminded me. “She’s in the Hamptons for a while.”

“Well, you could come alone, then. I come by myself,” I said, and only after I’d heard my words did I realize how they’d made me sound. Antisocial, like he’d mentioned, and also pretty sad. “I used to come with my dad.” Good grief, that was worse. “I like it a lot.”

“It’s nice,” he agreed.

We both looked at the water and listened to the light wind moving in the trees behind us. I wondered what was in Tyler Hennessy’s mind; as for me, I wasn’t worrying about the woman who had called to complain that there might have been mice somewhere in her unit since things were disturbed in her bathroom, or about the man who’d emailed (again) about the kids next door and how they laughed too loud, or about the man whose bathroom sink was (still) leaking even after Oren’s visit. I wasn’t thinking of how strange it was that I was hanging out with a Woodsmen player (I wasn’t thinking that very much).

I was only enjoying this beautiful night. I wished that I could sit here for hours, but…

“I need to get going,” I said reluctantly.

“Sticking to the grandmother hours?” he asked, and I said yes. He walked me to my car again and waited for me to lead him out, back to where his phone was working and he could find his own way. I watched the yellow SUV follow behind me through the darkness until he spilt off for whatever was next on his agenda, and I headed home.