Chapter 2: The Obligations Thereto

By Thursday, Nettie had catalogued forty-seven broken objects and discovered that her grandmother had been either a saint or a lunatic, possibly both.

The tags told stories. Not repair notes -- stories. Histories of the people who had brought their broken things to Eudora Crawe and received, in return, not a fixed object but an honest verdict on whether they deserved it back.

The vestry clock was on the top shelf. Georgian, brass-faced, Roman numerals. The tag read: Parish Council vestry clock. Chime repaired. Do not return. Patricia Gull is using the vestry to store her daughter's furniture, promised to her sister's family. The clock goes back when the room does.

"She was running a moral pawnshop," Nettie said aloud, to no one but the spider, who had relocated to the cash register and showed no signs of leaving.

The shop door opened and a boy walked in. He was perhaps ten, with the sharp, guarded look of a child who has learned that adults are unreliable narrators. He wore a school uniform two sizes too large and trainers held together with what appeared to be optimism.

"Are you the new her?" he asked.

"I'm Nettie. I'm her granddaughter."

"I'm Sam." He looked past her to the shelves. "She had my train."

Nettie felt the breath go out of her. The boy who stopped speaking.

"I know which one it is," she said carefully. "The wheel's broken. I haven't fixed it yet."

"She said she'd fix it when I was ready." He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "I'm ready."

"How do you know?"

Sam stared at her with an expression far too old for his face. "Because I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

Nettie brought down the wooden train. The wheel had come clean off its axle -- a simple repair. She could see where her grandmother had already shaped a new pin for it, cut from brass, left in a tiny envelope taped to the undercarriage. Ready. Waiting. As if Eudora had known she would not be the one to finish it.

"Can you do it now?" Sam asked. "Only my mum doesn't know I'm here, and she worries."

Nettie sat at the workbench, which was scarred with decades of use, and fitted the wheel. Her hands were steadier than she expected. The pin slid into place with a satisfying click, and the wheel spun freely, and Sam made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was closer to joy than anything Nettie had heard in months.

She handed it to him. He turned it over twice, ran it along the counter, then looked up at her with devastating seriousness.

"She said the train remembers. She said things hold on to people." He paused. "Do you think that's true?"

Nettie thought of her grandmother's hands, which she had not held in over a decade. She thought of the brass pin, shaped and waiting.

"Yes," she said. "I think it is."

Sam tucked the train under his arm and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the frame.

"My dad left it for me. Before he went. That's why I stopped talking." He said it plainly, the way children do when they have carried something long enough to understand its exact weight. "Your gran knew that. She knew everything about everybody's broken things."

The bell rang as he left. Nettie sat at the workbench for a long time, looking at the shelves full of secrets, and understood at last what obligations thereto meant.