Ava liked him right away. Which was strange, because Ava doesn’t like anybody right away. She studies people. She decides about them slowly.
She decided about Edward in about four minutes.
“He talks to me like I’m a person,” she told me after the carnival. “Not like a little kid.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Dovetail joints,” Ava said, like it was obvious. “He said he’d show me how to make one sometime.”
He did, too. The next month. On a Saturday. He came over with a little box of tools and a couple of pine boards and sat at our kitchen table with Ava for three hours. When they were done, she’d made a tiny wooden box with a lid that fit perfectly.
She keeps her best rocks in it. She won’t let June touch it.
