Two days later, she asked him to move it back.
I laughed when he told me. He didn’t.
“She said it looked wrong after all,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t mind. It took five minutes.”
That was Irvin. He was the kind of man who pulled over for stranded drivers on the highway. He carried groceries up the steps for Mrs. Patterson down the street before she even had to ask. He’d once spent an entire Saturday fixing a fence for a family he barely knew because their dog kept getting loose.
To him, Vanessa was a woman adjusting to life alone, and helping her was simply the neighborly thing to do.
I saw something different.
I saw the way she watched him while he worked.
One afternoon, I carried a casserole over to her house. I’d made a double batch and thought she might like one. When I walked into her kitchen, Irvin was kneeling on the floor, tightening a hinge on her lower cabinets with his sleeves pushed up.
