Before she left she stood in the doorway again, and she said, “I’d like to bring Wren.

To meet the shop.” Not to meet you. To meet the shop.

I understood.

The shop was how you got to me now.

Franny had built the bridge out of the only material she trusted, which was her own life, and even gone, she was still holding the two shores together.

Chapter 14 — Teaching the Boy

Yusuf turned out to have hands.

Better hands than mine, quicker, and an eye for a line that can’t be taught, and by spring he was doing the simple jobs on Thursday afternoons after school, hunched at the machine with his tongue between his teeth, and taking no money for it, which was a fight we had until I understood he had learned that from watching the ledger over my shoulder, and lost the fight on purpose.