Mrs. Ek's porch step had been loose since September. By February Elaine could feel it shift under her boot when she came up to bring soup. She brought soup most Wednesdays. Mrs. Ek had begun calling it Soup Day, in the way of older women who name routines so they will keep coming.
"I should have someone look at that," Mrs. Ek said.
"I'll look at it," Elaine said.
She came back the following Tuesday with His and a hammer and a small bag of nails. The day was cold and bright. She knelt at the step. The board had pulled away from its joist on the left side and the nail-heads were chewed. She set His against the gap and tapped it down with the hammer to lever the board flush.
Her thumb hurt.
It had been hurting for a while. Not constantly — only when she pressed it against something at a certain angle. The angle was the angle she had held His at for the long part of her life. She had begun, without quite deciding to, holding it lower on the handle, with her palm wrapped further around. The heel of her hand had taken on the work the thumb no longer wanted.
She finished the step. Three nails into a fresh part of the joist, and the board sat clean. She tested it with her weight. It did not shift.
Mrs. Ek opened the door. "Done?"
"Done."
"Come in. I made coffee."
Elaine came in. She set His on the kitchen counter as she always did — not in any particular place, only down. She washed her hands at the sink. The thumb hurt under the warm water and then stopped hurting.
Mrs. Ek poured coffee. She was small now in a way she had not been a year ago. She poured carefully, watching the cups. "What is that thing called?" she said.
Elaine looked at the tool on the counter. "His."
"His what?"
"His. That's what I call it."
Mrs. Ek looked at her, then at the tool, then back. "Oh," she said. After a moment: "Marvin's."
"Marvin's, yes."
Mrs. Ek considered the cup in her hand. "I have a — I had a brush. Was Eric's. I painted the back fence with it the first year after. I have not been able to throw it out, even though it is stiff now and useless." She took a sip. "I do not know that I would have given it a name."
"It came up by accident."
"Things do."
They sat. The kitchen smelled of coffee and of cold from where the door had been open. Mrs. Ek did not press the matter. After a while she said, "Take a piece of the cake home with you. I will not eat it."
Elaine took the cake home. She walked back across the road carrying the foil-wrapped slice in one hand and His in the other. At her kitchen counter she put both down and stood for a moment looking at the tool.
The handle had darkened in three places now. Marvin's grip near the head, where the chiseling work had needed close control. Her thumb's place above it, of years she had not counted. And the third — lower, where the heel of her palm rested — paler yet, of less than two. It might match the others in twenty years. It would not in five.
She did not think she would have twenty.
She put His in the kitchen drawer, with the corkscrew and the pizza wheel. She closed the drawer. She unwrapped the cake. She stood at the counter and ate the cake.
The thumb did not hurt while she was eating.