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eye, but he smiled slightly before he turned down the alley.
    “See you tomorrow,” I called.
    “Yessir,” he called back.
    I shook my head. No one had ever called me sir before, especially not someone my own age, and it just didn’t sit right.
    I shot a quick glance down Thirty-fifth Street, and when I didn’t see Ella Rose, I let my thoughts turn back to work, back to those frozen moments in my head, back to that . . . that thing that had passed from Zach right into me.
    I’d felt it wake something inside me, and I think Josiah did, too. A quiet something that’d always been waiting in my hands and suspended in my every wordto Papa. Today, it shot right through me, lighting me up like the electrical current that lit the city, bridging each of us to our work and to one another, twilight-soft one minute, then strong enough to light the whole world the next. I didn’t understand it, not a bit of it, but thanks to Zach, I recognized it. I’d glimpsed it before—this undercurrent that had been sleeping in me ever since I could remember.
    Now if I could only bring it to life, make it shine in me the way it did in Zach. Then Papa would know. He’d see I was a true carpenter, and that I could never be anything else.

Chapter
7
    I came home Wednesday evening to find kids all over the yard. Kate sat on the steps with two neighbor girls, Katherine Vedder and Francesca Mason, jars of lightning bugs in their laps. The black bugs snapped and clicked against the glass, and Kate, grinning, held hers up for me to see.
    I heard counting coming from behind an umbrella chinaberry tree next door and saw a handful of Peek children scramble for good hiding places before the count reached ten. And out in the street, the boys hadn’t given up on their game, even though the day’s light was almost gone.
    Jacob Vedder tossed a ball into the air and swung his bat. A loud crack sent Matt and Jacob’s cousin Allen sliding across the dirt after a fly ball. Clouds of dust billowed into open windows, and when Matt came up victorious, he reared back to throw the ball to Jacob.
    But something stopped him.
    He stood there, arm flung back, staring at a young colored boy not much bigger than Kate. I’d seen the boy watching at the edge of the road, eyes wide and eager, bare toes digging into the dirt.
    “Come on, Matt,” Lucas complained. “Throw it.”
    Matt just stood there, his face a puzzle. He slowly lowered his arm. “What’s your name?” he asked the boy.
    “Toby.”
    Matt nodded. “Well, here you go, Toby,” he said, tossing the ball to him. “Jacob’s waiting.”
    Toby pitched the ball back and sat down in the dirt again, a grin of pure pleasure on his face. For such a little fella, he had a dang good arm on him, but it was Matt who’d surprised me most. He rarely showed this generous side of himself, not to me anyway. I glanced at Lucas, and saw amazement skitter across his face, too.
    I remembered Mama’s words about there being a good reason for everything that happens, and shrugged. Maybe a bit of Galveston was what Matt had needed all along.
    I squeezed around the girls and took the steps up to the gallery two at a time. Mama and Papa sat outside on the east end, catching the breeze and watching the kids play. They waved at me, and Mama hollered, “Supper’s in the oven.”
    I waved back, already headed for the kitchen.

    Thursday morning, I skipped my usual route down Broadway and took Avenue N instead, the same way Ben and I had walked to the beach last Friday. Sunrise colors faded to a cloudless blue sky as I approached the Garten Verein. Unlike my first night here, I heard no band music, no crash of bowling pins, no laughter, but it did make me long for the beach again. As much as I liked my job, I found myself looking forward to Saturday evening after work. Ben and I planned to meet at the Pagoda bathhouse again, and on Sunday, we were going fishing.
    I turned south by Ursuline Academy, and my heart nearly