I set the frame on the flat stone at the edge of the bed and went back to planting.

“How is the expansion going?” she asked.

“The clinic.”

“Two more rooms, if the numbers hold.”

“They will hold.

You have the patience for it.”

She said patience the way another woman might say stubborn.

At one o’clock David drove us through the drive-through lane on Main Street with the window down and the draft folded in his shirt pocket.