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asking, “What color will the cabinets be?”
    “Your choice. Paint or stain?”
    She had to think about it, but then she shook her head. “Whichever is cheapest.”
    He shrugged.
    “Which is simplest, then?”
    “Paint.”
    She grinned. “I like yellow.”
    He chuckled. “Exact color later.”
    “When can you start?” was her only other question.
    He checked his watch. If he could get to the building supply outlet in Lawton today, he could start work in the morning. “Tomorrow.”
    She clasped her hands together in front of her chest, and tears filled her eyes. Alarm shot through him.
    “It’ll take a while,” he warned, but she shook her head happily.
    “I don’t care. It’ll be started. You know what they say. Once begun, sooner finished.”
    She turned to the cash register and opened the drawer. Extracting an envelope, she turned back to him, then carefully placed it in his hands. He knew what it was even before he thumbed back the flap. She’d just handed him her life’s savings in cash. Humbled, he quickly decided against trying to return it. Instead, he’d earn the trust she had just placed in him.
    He left her a copy of the plan and drove straight to Lawton, some seventy-five miles distant. Surprisingly, he found a number of good sales, so the two thousand dollars bought him just about everything he’d need to get her kitchen into decent shape. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one with a plan. He decided to let God worry about everything else.
     
    It took him three days to get the kitchen wiring done, the new door and window framed in, the glass installed, the walls stuffed with pink fiberglass insulation and the longed-for plasterboard on the walls. Since the electricity had to be off, Becca and the kids stayed in town with her in-laws for a couple of nights, but by the time he got the door hung on the third evening she was there with both little ones and a bag of groceries in tow. She sent the girl back into the living room and gave the kitchen a careful look.
    “I can’t believe how much you’ve gotten done,” she said, placing the bag on the table that he’d pulled across the floor and out of his way. “It’s ready for the tape and plaster.”
    He nodded, feeling a spurt of pride. “Tomorrow.”
    She adjusted the baby on her hip and smiled, looking around the room. “I could help,” she said, facing him.
    He shook his head. “My job.”
    She sighed, but he saw the smile in her eyes. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”
    “Yes.”
    “Hungry?” she asked, pulling a paper napkin from the bag and preparing to dust the tabletop. “I brought plenty. The least I can do is make sure you eat.”
    He’d brought a sandwich for lunch, but the aroma of roast beef was making his stomach rumble now. Deciding that it would be impolite to refuse her offer, he looked at his dusty hands and checked his wrist for the time. Sixteen minutes after seven! No wonder he was hungry.
    “Better wash up,” he said.
    She nodded, and he moved toward the newly installed back door, picking his way around tools and scraps of building material. He felt something very light bounce off his back and stopped, turning. She pulled another napkin from the top of the bag. He looked at the wadded one on the floor, then back to her.
    “Where you going?” she asked before starting to wipe off the tabletop.
    “Spigot out back.”
    She lifted her eyebrows. “Why not use the bathroom?”
    The bath was the most feminine room in the house, pink and flowery and as clean as a surgical suite. Cody had obviously added the room and the kids’ bedroom onto the house himself and managed a fair job of it. No doubt he’d have had the whole place whipped into shape by now, had he lived. Instead, Dan was doing the work. It didn’t seemright, and Dan was never more keenly aware of that than when he was standing in her little bathroom looking at her pink fixtures. He couldn’t help wondering if Cody had installed them to