Clicks.
She scatters a thousand fragments across a pale slab. The pieces are small and stiff, all sharp tabs and shallow sockets.
Her fingertips massage them flat, flip them, shiny side up.
She encourages them into loose groups of similar shades. Blues to one side. Browns to another. Grays in the center. A narrow band of white gathers near the edge.
Her hands move without hurry. Not careful. Certain.
All week she’s been listening.
A girl who won’t go home after school.
A boy who punches lockers.
A mother who whispers so her kids won’t hear the fear in her voice.
She sits across from them. Hands folded. Head tilted. Letting them spill their pieces into her lap.
She rubs a piece between her fingers, studies it, sets it down. Picks another. She isn’t solving yet. Simply absorbing the field.
I sit back from the table. Cross one leg over the other. Scan the book in my hand and realize I’ve lost the story. Flip back a page, two pages.
The first hour after she logs off belongs to no one.
Not to me.
Not to whatever she’s carrying home.
She moves through the kitchen like a ghost. Opens a drawer. Closes it. Stands at the sink without turning on the water.
I don’t ask.
I watch the way her body leans in and out, the way she pauses, then resumes. The pieces make a dry sound when they touch. Cardboard on laminate.
Here at the table, the pieces don’t cry.
They don’t lie.
They don’t withhold.
She starts with the border. Corners first. Straight edges lined like a fence. She fits two together. Then a third. The shape begins to assert itself. A frame takes hold.
Puzzles offer a clean contract. Everything you need is present. Nothing hides outside the box. The picture exists in advance. The work is only to reveal it.
She hums. Low. Almost under breath. The radio is off. The house holds still. Afternoon light stretches across the table, stops short of her hands.
“Want to try one?” she says.
I smile, shake my head. “I’m good.”
She waits half a second too long before turning back to the table.
She leans closer now. Elbows on the table. Her hair slips forward. She tucks it behind her ear without looking up.
She presses another piece into place.
The click is soft.
I don’t know what was said today.
She reaches into the blue pile and pulls a piece without looking. Turns it once. Slides it into place. It fits. She presses lightly, then moves on.
I’ve learned not to fill the silence.
Not to ask, “How was your day?”
The answer is never simple. And never mine to have.
She builds inward now. Colors begin to cohere. A suggestion of sky. A slope that might become land. She tries a piece. It resists. She sets it aside without irritation.
I notice how easily she lets it go.
The table fills. Small clusters connect. The image sharpens. I can see what it will be before it arrives. A shoreline. Water meeting ground. A place that does not move.
From here, it looks fixed. A clean division.
Up close, it would be motion—tumbling grains, shifting sands, water rewriting the edge again and again. Taking and returning without asking.
She pauses to stretch her fingers. Rolls her shoulders. Smiles at nothing in particular. She is inside the work, but not lost in it. The room still exists for her.
She reaches toward a strip of sky near my elbow.
“Can you hand me that one?”
I slide it across.
Our fingers touch.
“Thanks,” she smiles.
She fits it without looking at the picture on the box. Just looking at the shape in her hand.
The puzzle will not be finished tonight. It will live here for days, maybe weeks. She will return to it after dinner, with our coffee tomorrow morning, between sessions.
A little more sky. A little more shoreline. Slow, deliberate convergence toward one singular image printed on the box lid.
I don’t know what she’s untangling.
I don’t know which stories stay with her when the screen goes dark.
I’m not supposed to know.
I only know the way she sorts these tiny pieces until her breathing evens out.
Outside, a Cardinal drops into the birdbath. Water flashes. A squirrel runs the fence line and vanishes.
She presses another piece into place.
Click.
She keeps building a border strong enough to hold whatever comes next.