Page 8 of Redeem

She gave the faintest smile and then shrugged. “I was bored,” she said.

I didn’t believe her. She probably just didn’t appreciate the fact that I had placed it so conveniently, resented having anything not be as hard as it could possibly be. I kept that observation to myself, though.

“What’s your name?” she asked a moment later.

I had been staring at the wood but looked at her when she spoke. She was squinting against the sun, but my chest still clenched when I saw curiosity in her gaze and not heartbreak, another byproduct of the fact that she knew nothing of who I was or what I’d done, and so far, I’d made no effort to change that. Her question only underscored the strangeness of this situation, our imbalance. It occurred to me that although I knew her and she, in her way, knew me, we had never been introduced.

“Ciprian,” I finally answered.

She squinted deeper. “Ciprian?” she said, the slowness of her speech and the twist of her lips telling me that she was testing the sound out on her tongue.

I nodded, unable to speak around my reaction of having her say my name.

Her lips turned up into a small smile and her eyes crinkled with something almost like delight. “That’s lovely. I’m Dana,” she said quickly, extending her hand.

I gave her hand a quick shake, let it go almost as soon as I touched it, but only because the desire to hold it more tightly was so overwhelming. She dropped it to her side quickly, then jammed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, looking somewhat awkward.

“Well…” she said, moving away from me and toward the wood.

It would be easy to play it off, assume that she was focused on work, but I got the sense she wanted to put some space between us.

I understood.

One accidental touch yesterday, a handshake today, and her reaction to me was intensifying, as was mine. An unacceptable development.

“What do you want to start with?” I said, trying to put myself back on the matter at hand if only to stop myself from thinking those thoughts that I fought to keep from taking root, thoughts that threatened to take my focus from where it needed to be.

“I’m going to use that wood to make shutters, so I need to cut it into rectangles,” she said.

I followed her gaze to where the sheets rested against the house. The front facade was almost all windows. Shutters would be a big job.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to buy them?” I said, looking at her.

She shrugged. “Of course it would, but I’m going to make them myself.”

She seemed to tense, as though waiting for me to argue, to tell her the folly of her plan.

I found it admirable, though I didn’t tell her that either. I had been right about that stubborn streak I sensed in her, but I had also been right about that sadness. When she looked at the house, I saw something different in her, something that wasn’t normally there. But when she looked away, it was gone.

“Okay.”

She glanced back at me, clearly surprised but then nodded and went on. “I want to cut each sheet into four even pieces. Can you do that?” she asked.

I looked at the wood, then the table saw that was still set up next to it. “Yeah,” I said.

She nodded, clearly pleased by my answer.

“Good. While you do that, I can use the handsaw to work on the lattice for the porch steps,” she said.

I looked at the steps and then nodded.

A moment later, she moved forward and headed toward the smaller stack of wood at the edge of the steps.

I made a concerted effort not to stare at her and instead went to the sheets of plywood and carried one to the table saw.

Then I looked from the wood to the saw, back again, trying to figure out the best way to proceed. There was a blade in the middle of the table, and I could use that to cut, assuming I could get the wood to line up. I looked down, saw a pedal at one corner of the table. I could use that to activate the blade and then maybe push—

“Ciprian?”