Winter at the Door by Sarah Graves Page A

trim at the carpet’s edges.
    “Because I know you said try to use locals,” he added.
    She had said that. But she’d had no idea he would get this far, this fast. She went on looking around wonderingly as Rascal paced the room’s perimeters and lay down yawning on the new rug.
    “But I think you want stuff nobody can hack, right? I mean, for your phones, computers, all your—”
    “Yeah.” She looked at him. “You sprayed it?” That was what the drop cloths were all about, everything covered if it was not supposed to get painted. Then … 
pssssst!
the spray painter came out, and presto, pretty soon it was done.
    Again, maybe not quite the way a professional would have approached it. But it was nice, and the smell was already fading.
    Seeing her reaction, he looked smug, as if he’d known that she hadn’t expected much from him. “Anyway, about the computers? I arranged for the big items, but you can get the peripherals and accessories here in town, okay?”
    At the little office supply store on the corner, he meant, just as she’d planned. Meanwhile he’d picked up the annoying verbal tic of ending all his sentences on an up note, as if they were, like, you know, questions?
    “But for, you know, security’s sake?” he went on. “The comms office in Houlton is bringing in your hardware tomorrow. They’ll hook it all up for you, too.”
    She kept looking at him. Telling him he could clean up the office, make it habitable, had been more in the way of throwing the kid a bone. She’d still meant to find adult help.
    He, however, had taken it extremely seriously and he hadn’t done badly at all, even thinking about the security angle and doing something about it.
    “So now I’m going to be your office manager and maintenance guy?” he went on.
    She peeked into the washroom: spotless. Paper towels in the dispenser, check; toilet paper, ditto.
    A small bottle of mouthwash, a new wrapped toothbrush, and a comb were on the sink; also, the linoleum floor tiles shone.
    “I mean, you’ll need someone for that, right?” he added hopefully. “Part-time, at least? In the beginning, anyway?”
    He was practically rubbing his hands together in appeal. She looked around once more: the front windows sparkled, dust bunnies had been chased from between the radiator vanes, and was that—
    It was. A single carnation stood in a small florist’s vase on her desk. She didn’t like carnations, but …
    He waited expectantly. “Yeah,” she said, turning slowly. She’d planned to spend a week or more on this place, hiring out some of the work, doing the rest herself.
    She had not, to put it mildly, been looking forward to it. “Yeah, part-time to start is fine.”
    There were things at the house that needed doing, too, once the office got squared away. Then something else occurred to her.
    “Don’t you go to school?” There’d been kids in the grocery store as well, she realized, during the hours when they should’ve been in classrooms. “Doesn’t anyone around here go to—”
    He was already nodding. “Oh. Yeah, you wouldn’t know, would you? I’m eighteen, I graduated already. But it’s potato time?”
    Not waiting for a reply, he hoisted a black plastic trash bag crammed full of spray cans, used paintbrushes, crumpled newspapers, and wadded-up plastic drop cloths, and dragged it to the doorway.
    “Here in the County, they let kids out of school to work the potato fields,” he went on. “See, a machine comes along and digs potatoes, the kids grab ’em up, throw ’em in baskets? Takes about two weeks to get ’em all, the kids make money and the taters get picked. They’ve been doing it here for, like, a couple centuries?”
    He stopped. “But you probably don’t want to hear about that boring stuff.” Then, looking down at Rascal, “Want me to walk him for you?”
    “Oh, no thanks,” she began. But it was a thought; also, the animal would need food, and maybe a bed, and … what else did