The wood glue on the oak dining chair’s leg was setting quickly, but the clamp wouldn’t hold without one more shim.

I picked a thin strip of pine up off the workshop floor and shaved the edge with my pocketknife.

Vanessa stood in the open door of the workshop with her arms folded tight across her jacket.

Her shoe tapped on the concrete floor, a steady wooden click that filled the whole room.

“I walked past the leather shop downtown this afternoon,” she said.

“There’s a shoulder bag in the window for four hundred and eighty dollars.”

I shaved off a sliver of pine as thin as paper and slid it into the joint.

“That purse costs more than our refrigerator did.”

“That old thing in the kitchen can barely make ice,” she said.

Her right foot kept up its quick rhythm on the floor.

“Everything in this house is twenty years old, Daniel.

It’s humiliating.”

In the corner behind the lathe stood a damaged oak cabinet with a split door frame that a farmer from town had dropped off for repairs on Tuesday.

I scraped a dry flake of yellow varnish off my right thumb and cranked the steel clamp until the joint shut tight.

“That refrigerator keeps the milk cold just fine,” I said.

“Rob says the new dual-compressor models use half the electricity,” she said.

I laid the knife down on the bench.

“When were you discussing refrigerators with Rob?”