The first thing Ava noticed was how the light came through the small workshop window in the wrong angle for most mornings and the right one for carving. It tipped just so over the workbench, catching edges of shavings like a handful of pale gold; it made the varnish glow in a way that seemed to approve. She kept the blinds half-raised not to let in the whole world, only the necessary sliver of day that allowed her to read grasses of grain and the whisper of f-holes without being distracted by whatever drama the rest of the street might be staging.
Gideon, the shop cat, was an indifferent critic. He sprawled on the bench among planes and clamps, belly up, tail flicking. When Ava set down the rasp she had been using, he batted it, then tried to invert the block of rosin like a pirate with a prize. He had claimed, in every possible feline way, that instruments were primarily comfortable surfaces. That belief was part absurdity and part charm, and it made customers smile; it made Ava forgive him every spilled shavings puddle.
The workshop smelled of boiled linseed oil gone halfway to toast, damp wood, and lemon soap from the rag she used to wipe hands. Outside, a Tuesday market had begun on the cobbled lane: someone was frying slices of ginger flatbread with caramelized orange peel, a man from the bakery on the corner sold small jars of pickled cherries, and three teenagers argued about whether the municipal clocktower’s quirk — it chimed a beat late at the quarter — made the town’s mornings more romantic or merely unreliable. These details were not related to supply chains or contract clauses, and that was exactly the point; the world hummed its own easy things alongside the knotty problems in her ledgers.
Ava leaned into the small, steady motion of planing a new bridge. Bridges were little interventions: a few hairs of wood, measured curvature, a relief here so the string could sing. She worked with the kind of patience that looked like nothing to anyone else. Fingers taught by decades of hold-and-release pressed, guided, halved; eyes squinted to read the page of the wood as if it were a musical score.
The phone on the shelf vibrated against the jar of pencil shavings. Ava wiped her hands on her apron, glanced at the caller ID, and suppressed a grimace. Daniel Archer, name polished like a brass plaque. He left a voice message even though she had asked for emails; he always sounded as though he were drafting a speech mid-sentence.
"Ava Sinclair? Daniel Archer, Archer Instruments. I was hoping to—" the message cut like a violin bow across a note, clean but immediate. He left details: an offer, a proposal, a meeting time two weeks hence. The words were tidy and dangerous in their own way. The tape click closed and the small digital clock on the phone kept breathing, indifferent.
Gideon, affronted by the idea of business, deliberately unrolled a coil of masking tape and wound it around Ava's wrist like a cursed bracelet. She laughed, a dry sound that carried the shape of concentration and a little worry. There were things you could pay to fix and things you paid with more of yourself than you meant to. For now, the bridge in her hands wanted a shave, and a bridge, once set, refused to be negotiated with powerpoint decks.