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He was aware that her father had died when a tree branch had fallen on him in a storm. He could imagine the bluster and bravado that had sent the man on his stupid, ignorant errand to stand under and look up into a groaning, decayed tree while the wind and rain whipped around him. He had heard of the brother’s death in a car accident almost a year before the father’s. He imagined the mother and daughter must be fumbling in grief. There was a washed-out, worn-thin, translucent quality to the young woman’s skin.

After Dix led Miranda into the office, he started to leave. Miranda looked up at him in alarm, so he sat down next to her instead. Warren waited for them to explain their business. Miranda remained quiet. Dix looked at the empty, expectant face beside him and then took up a thread of brief, simple introductions. Miranda’s father had left a lot of what appeared to be unfinished business behind, Dix explained. There were no other relatives. Miranda’s mother was . . . he paused before settling on the phrase “not well.” Miranda could use some help sorting through things.

“Dix says my father respected you,” Miranda told Warren in an unsteady voice. “I am a bit overwhelmed. I don’t know what exactly I’m supposed to do.”

If her father had respected him, this was news to Warren. Not that it mattered. Miranda was just being polite. She had those highly honed, formally polished, and deeply ingrained manners that kept other people at a slightly uncomfortable distance. Warren knew she was not aware of this; it was just something natural to her sort of people. He also had had enough dealings with her father to suspect the man had left quite a mess behind, and that Miranda might need much more help than she could possibly imagine. He was glad she had a friend in Dix. There was also no way this inexperienced, indulged young woman could suspect what an asset Dix could be to her. Warren knew that he was one of a very few people—or perhaps the only person—who knew just how many subtle, sophisticated, and largely hidden skills and assets Dix possessed.

Miranda placed a box of envelopes on Warren’s desk. He skimmed the return addresses. All New York City. All a lot of trouble.

“I will be happy to help you,” Warren told Miranda in a voice he had long practice at keeping neutral. “I appreciate your trust.”

Miranda nodded.

“This may take a bit of time,” he said.

It was a warning to her, but a subtle one. He didn’t want to scare her. Just prepare her. He met Dix’s eyes briefly. In that moment, he knew that Dix suspected just what a large and twisted mess they had to untangle.

Marshall Dixon Macomb was, by nature and experience, a solitary man. He was an only child of parents who were comfortable enough with each other’s company that they rarely sought any other. They transferred this serene self-containment to him, and he grew up with trees and hillsides, dogs and horses as his companions. Having nature and animals as his ever-present, endlessly interesting, and yet soothingly neutral best friends left him regularly unsure how best to relate to humans. He found people were forever explaining in excruciating and, to him, irrelevant detail what they had done or said or what someone else had done or said. He could never quite understand what all this retelling of things already done and over was all about. Sometimes people would try and plaster some sort of larger meaning onto their stories, but it all seemed like so much regurgitation and a waste of time to him.

This urge to tell, or “share,” as it was commonly called, often layered with griping about things beyond one’s control, was an impulse he lacked. The sun always came up, but sometimes it was obscured by clouds; a grand tree fell down in a storm and became a nurse log for other trees; a deer died in a hard winter, giving lots of other small animals an important source of protein; cute baby birds also sometimes pushed their siblings out of the nest; foxes hunted both vermin and new chicks; mothers took care of their young simply because hormones compelled them to. He had little philosophy in him other than a dogged desire to do quality work, to be kind and helpful when called upon, to leave things better than he found them, even if that meant simply picking up a discarded can or candy wrapper on a trail. He never considered how rare and decent these qualities made him.

But others did. Some, anyway. Dix was a man who was either relied upon by people who valued what he offered or underestimated by those who did not. There were a few people, like Miranda’s father, who did both. Dix didn’t mind. He liked caring for things, even if those things belonged to other people. Even if those other people didn’t properly appreciate the things he was caring for.

Dix had always seen Miranda as someone who belonged to other people. She was from away. She was a little sister in a wealthy family. Dix was dimly aware that her parents, like most summer people, assumed a man like Dix made his way through the world with his hands and had little in his head and less in his pockets. They assumed he was uneducated, unambitious, quaint, like an old farmhouse they admired as they drove by but would never want to live in. Ambition was a quality they defined in a very specific way, having to do with the quantity of financial resources available, square footage of houses owned, brand names of automobiles driven, stature of job titles held. These people never considered that ambition could be directed toward a quieter life, a life that took far less of a toll on a person and a place.

Dix first met Miranda when she was in high school and he was back home after college and a couple of years working for a land stewardship organization in Albany. He had started mowing lawns and doing odd jobs while he looked for work in the field. Little conservation work was forthcoming, but the handyman, carpentry, and caretaking work was plentiful—the summer people responded favorably to Dix’s reliability, rugged looks that seemed to fit the mountain environment, and ability to speak in accurate grammar and to produce professional paperwork such as estimates and invoices. They never considered where he might have gotten these skills, just saw them as a welcome fluke, like an errant balmy and sun-filled day in the middle of March.

To Dix, Miranda was a distant thing. It was not so much that he found her unattainable as that he had no desire for her. She was quite simply something not useful in his world. Like her father’s Mercedes-Benz, she was from and for a different sort of place. He noticed how she grew into her looks, how her various features caught up with one another and created a pleasant tableau. Like so many of these summer people, she was attractive but indistinct, well bred but lacking a certain crossbred vigor. Which could also be said of her demeanor.

However, during the last two years, he’d begun to notice a change emerge in Miranda. It wasn’t just maturation. A serious and assessing expression had entered her face. The automatic adoration that had been there when she looked at her father evaporated. The automatic annoyance that had been in there when she looked at her mother also disappeared. She occasionally came over to Dix while he worked and asked if she could watch while he cut down a dead tree, sharpened the mower blades, or prepped the beds with compost and peat moss for her mother. She took an interest in the garden and asked Dix’s advice on what varieties of tomatoes he’d suggest she get at the nursery. Sometimes she brought him a cup of coffee if he was there in the morning, a glass of lemonade if it was the afternoon. She started working at the local CSA farm and got sunburned cheeks and shoulders, bug-bit arms, chapped lips, and blonde streaks in her hair. She wore these rougher edges well.

After her brother was killed, he noticed that she became more solemn; after her father died, she seemed bruised in some deeper part of herself. Dix watched her search unsuccessfully for the source of her pain, a dog after a distant scent. When her mother started to decay, he watched Miranda become fragile, a thing in danger of being broken. Given as he was to fixing things, he had an almost continual impulse to step in to her, take her in hand, patch her up. He resisted, reminding himself that emotions were not things his toolbox could address. So he fixed things around her instead. He wanted to give her fewer things to worry about, even though he knew she would not notice, much less fret about, the things his eye leaped to: a loose gutter, a dull blade, a leaning trellis.

Then she started asking for his help. Not just with the things around the house, but with her mother, with her finances. He knew she had nowhere else to turn, but still he was touched that she reached out to him. He was surprised by the raw tenderness beneath her needs, that the things she asked for required neither his hands nor his tools but his common sense, cool head, and stalwart ways. Slowly, called upon in this way, his heart, which had been for him a mere functional thing, began to make its other uses known.

Miranda tried to find some way to talk to her mother about their “affairs.” She had almost given up on conversation with her entirely but began slowly wading back in, first with just small observations about the weather, a bird she saw, what she was harvesting at the CSA farm. Her mother began to respond with a mumble or a nod. A small phrase, “That’s nice, dear,” or “Good for you.” One sunny morning, Miranda tried to lure her mother to sit with her at the kitchen table.

“I got some of those peach preserves you love, Mum. Come,” Miranda said, patting the cushion on a chair. “Come sit and have breakfast with me.”

Her mother tottered over, wary, sensing a trap. She rubbed her forehead, raked her fingers through her hair. Miranda remembered that for most of her life, her mother wouldn’t even leave her bedroom until her hair, makeup, and clothing had been carefully arranged. Everything always subtle, tasteful, nothing to attract attention, tightly controlled. Miranda watched as the disheveled woman at the table took a sip of coffee, carefully chewed a piece of toast. Spread the rest with jam and took another bite. This was progress. Her mother swallowed with effort. Washed everything down with more coffee. Miranda poured her some juice. She drank it down. She looked somewhat restored. Her eyes were less cloudy.

“Mum,” Miranda said tentatively, “we have some things we need to discuss. We have some things we need to take care of.”

Her mother looked up at her, wide-eyed and childlike.

At least it was eye contact, Miranda thought.

“We’ve got to think about the Connecticut house,” Miranda said slowly, enunciating each word as if her mother were hard of hearing instead of broken down. “I don’t know if you want to keep it.”

She looked significantly at her mother; the other woman’s expression did not change.

“We’ve got to figure out Dad’s affairs. We’ve got to sort out our finances.”

She waited a beat, wondering if any of this was getting through. There was no way to know, but it had to be done, so she plunged ahead.

“A whole bunch of correspondence came in. Stuff from lawyers, finance people. Things I can’t figure out. I took it all to a lawyer in town. I’m trying to get us some help.”

At this, her mother nodded. Almost imperceptible, just a dip with her chin. But enough to give Miranda courage to continue.

“I can’t do this by myself, Mummy. I need you. It’s just the two of us now. We have to figure this out. We have to work together.”

Light began to emerge from her mother’s eyes. Her hand was steadier on her coffee cup. She chewed with more vigor. She nodded steadily.

“Mum? Mummy, do you understand what I’m talking about? We have . . . there’s a lot to do. Things I don’t understand. Grown-up things.”

Her voice cracked and her eyes dampened. Her mother stared at her and her expression began to come to life. Mild concern crossed her face. She reached out and touched Miranda’s cheek with her fingertips.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice hoarse and distant from disuse. “I need to snap out of it.”

Miranda was startled by this sudden expression of feeling and conviction. She watched in disbelief as her mother stood, tried to square her shoulders, took a step backward to steady herself, and left the room. Miranda listened to doors and drawers opening and closing behind her mother’s bedroom door, water running in the shower and sink. There was something deeply unsettling about the sudden flurry of overly ambitious activity. Miranda didn’t know what to hope for, what to look out for. So she waited to see what would happen. Her mother emerged an hour later, dressed, showered. Her shirt had been buttoned out of alignment, her lipstick was smeared a bit over one lip, and the gray roots of her black hair showed through from a severe part, but it was pulled back neatly into a barrette. She had a small purse on her forearm.