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than a runaway, more than a drifter, more than a victim. When she was engaged with a piece she had a pure focus that pushed aside everything else, that walled out worry and anger and anxiety. Wrapping trembling fingers around the cuff, Iris willed herself to connect with the metals, to feel how the design should proceed. She would not not not let Pastor Matt take this from her, too.

six
    iris
    Two weeks later, Iris sagged on the stool in her workroom, half-drunk mug of coffee cooling at her elbow, discarded design drawings littering the floor where she’d missed the trashcan, and tools and supplies cluttering the counter. She bent her head to either side, trying to loosen the kink in her neck, and flexed her stiff hands. Scanning the counter, her gaze alit on her draw tongs, her loupe, her chasing hammer. Their shapes seemed alien today and she felt a moment of panic that she’d forgotten how to use them. Unconsciously, the fingers of one hand went to the bruise on her temple while the fingers of her other hand worried at the gem she’d removed from the safe an hour ago when she sat down to work.
    She hadn’t meant to get into a fight last night. She took a sip of lukewarm coffee. Okay, maybe she had. She’d spent two frustrating weeks unable to complete a design she liked or even finish the pieces she already had started. Every time she tried to work, something kept her from focusing, hijacked her creative process. Panic had set in after a week—she’d never experienced this kind of block before. She had commissions due to individuals and a collection promised to Jane for a new opening. Even worse than disappointing customers and hurting her reputation and income, and letting Jane down, was the feeling—the conviction —that she wasn’t herself, wasn’t Iris Dashwood, if her brain didn’t sizzle with ideas and her fingers itch to mold gold and silver and other metals into settings that brought stones and gems to life. She’d fought the empty feeling with frequent sex with the more than willing Greg, and punishing bike rides that left her too worn out to think about what might be disrupting her creativity.
    Last night, with Greg on the coast for a landscaping convention, she’d reduced the copper cuff she’d been working on to a shapeless lump with her acetylene torch and set off to a bar temptingly near the bus depot. Dismayed by her lack of interest in any man who wasn’t Greg, she’d been restless and frustrated and left after her usual two beers. It was midnight. Tossing her keys from hand to hand, she eyed her car in the bar parking lot, and then pivoted to walk toward the depot. She’d logged a lot of miles on buses before washing up in Portland, and the chug of idling engines and blasts of diesel exhaust brought a surge of old feelings: wariness, exhaustion, never-quite-extinguished hope that this town would offer something new and better.
    Thrusting the memories to the back of her mind, Iris stood across the street and scanned the sidewalk outside the depot. Things hadn’t changed much since she’d last done this almost a year ago. She knew what kind of people trolled bus stations preying on runaways: scum, exploiters, lowlife pimps. A man caught her eye almost immediately. In a black leather car coat and jeans, he leaned against the depot’s wall, his shoulders and one foot propped against the brick. In the light shining through the glass doors, he seemed youngish, early twenties, maybe. He was smoking, the cigarette tracing a red arc as he raised it to his lips and lowered it again. A couple of people emerged from the depot, roller bags trundling behind them, and the man straightened and ground out his cigarette with his foot. When a young blond teen exited, looking around nervously, he headed toward her with a loose stride.
    The burn began in Iris, starting in the pit of her stomach and moving through her limbs. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and her vision seemed sharper. She’d