Chapter Text
September
The sold sign had been down about a week when a yellow cab pulled up to the house next door.
Rey’s elderly neighbour, a dear old gent always ready with a war story and a cold beer, had slipped the mortal coil sometime in July. His family had put the house up ‘as is’ in August, and it had lingered on the market a whole three days before an offer had been accepted.
Here’s hoping her new neighbour was quiet. Tidy. Incurious.
With a lifetime of turmoil behind her, Rey wasn’t prepared to give up the quiet, if sometimes lonely, low drama world she’d become accustomed to.
The course of her August-long anxiety-train was derailed by the man exiting the taxi on the first of September. He didn’t need a house, he was a house. Picking up two large beat up suitcases from the trunk, a box with a leafy green plant sticking out, and a backpack, he turned to face his new home.
A closed expression was on his handsome face, emotion inscrutable under a tangle of shoulder-length black hair. He brought his worldly possessions in one trip to the covered front porch, twin to Rey’s post-war vinyl shoebox, and disappeared inside.
For a moment, sitting in the shadows of her own front porch on the hot but cloudy day, picking at the peeling forest green paint on the rail, she considered a welcoming gift. Her sweaty hair stuffed into however many elastics it took to contain it today, her long old woman shorts with the big pockets, and her worn Cows Dairy novelty tee from Goodwill were probably not first meeting attire. She thought about what she had to offer.
Perhaps the attractive man could use a nearly-complete yellow box of discount cookies.
Perhaps not. Rey had retired any thoughts of romance around the same time she’d abandoned hope about her parents returning, she reminded herself, stuffing the thought back into its mental box.
It wasn’t a life of plenty, but it was a life of enough, and that was more than she’d hoped to find.
Going back to her leather work gloves and sandpaper, she smoothed away the sharp edges of a hundred round glass holly berries. Each red dime-sized dot was such simple work she could let her mind wander.
Rey was deep in speculation about her new neighbour when he cleared his throat, unnoticed at the bottom of the porch steps. He eyed her cautiously, keeping a good distance between them.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said in a polite, military-crisp tone. “Sorry to bother you. Could I trouble you for directions to the nearest grocery store and library?”
“They’re separate,” she answered without thinking. The gentleman’s blank face didn’t change, but the breeze took a few tendrils of his hair for a wander. It was mesmerizing. “I mean yeah no, for sure, I can certainly. Grocery store is that way and then right,” she pointed, “library is that way, take a right, then follow the curve around the cemetery until you see it,” she finished, pointing in the other direction. He nodded, thanked her, and took the route to the library.
“Books over food, eh,” she mused to herself, picking up another glass berry. She glanced over to the new neighbour’s house, realizing too late she hadn’t done introductions. An ancient lawn chair had been put out next door. There’d be other opportunities.
XXX
They didn’t speak again for nearly two weeks. On nice days Rey did her glasswork on the breezy cool porch instead of her little workshop in the old shed, and from dawn until dusk he was there next door, book in hand. Like her, he seemed to find any amount of time inside intolerable.
When she cared to keep track from her spot on her porch swing, she could see him burn through three or four paperbacks in a single day. Sometimes he finished them under the yellowed porch light, his black hair falling back to reveal his ears as he tried to catch the light, and was back at the crack of dawn with the same coffee mug as always curling steam. A few times she recognized cover art as books she’d seen or read, but he didn’t seem to have a particular pattern or taste.
His meals were fast to prepare, and usually eaten outside once ready. Rey saw a ritualistic amount of cereal boxes, milk bags, soup cans, peanut butter jars, and jam jars in his recycling bin to get an idea why. He rarely left, though, and from her vantage point working from home, never appeared to do any money-earning task either. Clothing was a uniform of dark jeans, plain black tshirts, and plaid button downs of various weights she thought might have been left behind by old Mr Rook’s family.
Her curiosity aside, he was an ideal neighbour. Silent, attentive to his lawn without being obsessed with his lawn, and everything she’d wanted. She couldn’t fault him for being unfriendly when she’d made no effort to go speak to him either. As far as she knew, he hadn’t spoken to anyone on their street.
The quiet company had become familiar, and Rey wondered if he’d still be out there with her when winter moved in.
It was mid-September when a ghost-marked black police pickup pulled up in front of her house. Rey plucked her headphones out, and paused her audiobook. She’d been living in the suburbs now long enough to realize most of the people here only locked their doors at night, if they remembered, and cops were rare.
A tall, severe-looking red-haired man emerged from the driver’s side. He wore a black uniform, the yellow stripe of the RCMP down his leg. Surveying the house distastefully, he ignored Rey and examined the number on her honeysuckle-wrapped porch post. Finding it lacking, he turned to the new neighbour’s
“Over here, you prick,” came a deep, even voice from the porch next door. Rey’s eyes flicked over, surprised once again at the sound of him speaking.
The man next door had stood up, his book left on the chair behind him. His bearing had changed. She wouldn’t have expected to see this man sprawled in a lawn chair, feet crossed on the rail at the end of long denimed legs. Even in a soft flannel he seemed to have transformed into a rigid soldier.
“You will show respect to your commanding officer, Solo,” the red-haired man hissed, storming up the patio stone walk with no care for the border flowers.
“I’m retired,” the neighbour retorted, simmering anger in his voice. Rey thought he caught her staring. “Let’s do this inside,” he finished.
Trying to ignore the muffled shouting next door, the smash of glass, Rey got to business doodling out a transom design for a downtown restoration project. She was halfway through a tulip tree motif when the visitor stormed out of her neighbour’s house, and spotted her. He walked across her lawn, taking the steps in one angry bound.
“Here,” he said, shoving a business card in her face. She blinked up at him, noticing the rapid swelling around his nose and left eye. He towered over her, fingers pale and shaking with rage. “If Ben Solo so much as looks like he’s up to something, if he breathes wrong, the tiniest problem, you will let me know.”
It wasn’t a request, it was a command.
Once the cloud had receded, the man she now had a name for, Ben, walked to the curb with a small cardboard box taped up and broadly labelled “GLASS”. Rey could see it from her swing, tempting her. Recycling pick up was tomorrow morning. She could scoop it after Ben went in the for night, and put it with her salvaged glass collection.
What would it be? Plate? Drinking glass? A whole window pane? She was familiar with what people broke when they were angry.
Ben returned to his porch. He hesitated a moment before opening up his novel.
“Sorry,” he said sharply, and then covered his face in the open book.
XXX
Rey remembered she’d been watching the late September storm from the comfort of a nest of blankets and a cup of tea on the swaying porch swing. A Bronte played via headphone in one ear, and thunder had rumbled in the other.
She had felt the mist of the heavy rain, but had been mostly sheltered, as had been Ben, reading in a black military-salvage looking rain coat next door.
That didn’t explain how she’d ended up soaking wet, in the shadows of her living room, being carried in the arms of her excessively strong neighbour.
“Hey, wake up. Wake up, Miss,” he was repeating firmly. His black t-shirt stuck to him, his hair plastered to his cheeks and neck. He smelled like clean rain, with no raincoat between her and warm, wet skin.
“Ben?” she murmured, shivering as her head cleared.
“I saw you asleep on your swing,” he said curtly, setting her down as soon as she was conscious. “The wind changed direction, you were getting wet. You wouldn’t wake up. Conditions are hazardous out there.”
As if to prove his point, her front window rattled with a fresh pounding of rain and hail, the swing shifting wildly without her weight.
“You were still out in this?”
Frowning, he considered his words.
“I came back out to make sure you’d gone in. You hadn’t.”
“Thank you,” she breathed, rubbing water and sleep out of her eyes. The dark living room, small and warm with the windows closed, felt full of them. Ben’s presence took up even more room than his body, surrounding her with a tingling intimacy.
“Are you alright? Do you need anything more tonight, ma’am?” he asked professionally, slicking his hair back out of his face with a broad hand. Rey’s mind ran through a dozen inappropriate responses before finding something acceptable.
“Not ma’am. Rey,” she said, sticking her hand out from her wet blanket burrito. He touched it lightly before they both pulled back.
“Rey,” he repeated. Her hand felt warm from the heat of him. “I’ll go, have a good night, ma’am,”
“Ben,” she said, trying the name out loud before she repeated it later in the shower.
He paused at the door.
“Thank you,” she said warmly, smiling.
Alarm flooding his expression, Ben nodded curtly and ventured into the storm.
When Rey saw him the next morning, bringing his lawn chair back out as well as his coffee, breakfast, and a book, she felt it was time to take it to introvert first base.
Feeling awkward and with pre-emptive regret, she raised a hand in greeting. He blinked a moment at her, and then waved back. The interaction done, he turned slightly away to read, and Rey went back to drying her swing with clean rags.
There, now they were acquaintances.
XXX
Their first few interactions leaned heavily in the Rey-losing-dignity direction. After needing rescue from her own porch, it had only taken a glance out at her backyard to remember she’d left laundry on the line yesterday before the rain had started.
Knowing she needed to be in her workshop all day to cut the next round of ornaments, Rey angrily collected her scattered and muddy formerly-clean garments into a plastic basket. Taking a last glance around, her mental inventory told her she was one item short.
“Damn it, where are they,” she said aloud, basket on her hip.
“Sorry, I think this might be yours.”
A horror-movie slow turn confirmed Rey’s suspicions. Bunched in Ben’s hedge were her brightly coloured underpants. Before she could get there in time, he’d plucked them out, the yew branches leaving a small tear near the seam as they dislodged.
“Ah darn,” he said quietly, “I tore it, I’m sorry.”
“Been awhile since anyone tore my underpants,” Rey laughed awkwardly, trying immediately to change the subject and making it worse, “because dating’s not really my thing anyway. But I like underpants. Perk of living alone, working at home, they count as legitimate bottoms, especially in my workshop, it gets hot out there in the summer, like a sweaty dungeon with all the equipment. Just me and the backyard squirrels out there. They’re friendly, but I don’t name all of them, just the funny orange ones like B…”
Rey trailed off at the slightly horrified expression on Ben’s face, her underpants now dangling off one of his fingers on full display.
“...B8… Let me take those off your hands there, literally, and I’m going to go put these back in the washer.”
She backed away, waving goodbye to his silence.
XXX
The second police car that pulled up to Ben’s house was the last week of September, just as the first trees began to raise their colour.
Rey was taking a break from a complicated repair job to a large church window currently taking up her largest work bench. Stretching cramping fingers around a hot mug of tea, watching the dry leaves swirl over and around her new porch pumpkins on the painted green steps, she was surprised to find the officer approaching her.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said politely, shifting a large golden red potted mum to his hip. He wore red serge, cutting a handsome figure in the autumnesque light. “My name is Finn, I’m a friend of your neighbour’s.”
“Friend?” she questioned before she could help herself. Ben didn’t seem like the friend-having sort.
“Colleague may be more accurate,” he corrected, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “May I sit with you a moment, and ask you a few questions that you don’t have to answer?”
Rey shifted over on the swing, but he sat on the top step, out of view of the porch next door. She could hear the lawn mower going in Ben’s backyard. He’d been at it long enough that he’d be moving to the front soon.
“Have you had any trouble with, or concerns about, Ben next door?”
The tone of his question was sincere, kindly meant. Rey instinctively knew that what Finn would do with this information was night and day to what the angry officer whose card was at the back of her junk drawer would do with it.
“There’s been nothing. Ben keeps to himself. Helped me out once, otherwise we don’t really talk. I don’t know anything about him.”
Finn nodded, satisfied. He shifted to go, picking up the plant, but Rey stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry, wait. You’re the second police officer to check up on him with me. Should I be concerned about him living next door? Is he a threat in some way?”
“Not to you,” Finn said hastily before clarifying. He looked pensive, drumming his fingers on the wood beside him. “It’s not really a secret. It was in the news at the time, but Ben was retired out after a traumatic incident undercover, and I worry about him. That he doesn’t know how to live with what he saw.”
“What did he see?” Rey asked, frowning.
Finn looked up at her, deciding. He delivered the truth baldly.
“Several fellow officers participating in violent sexual assaults during a raid on a drug den. Ben was there by coincidence. I’ll spare you the details, but one of the victims died.”
“Oh god,” she gasped softly.
“Ben shot the officers, the perpetrators.”
“He- what?”
“He’d infiltrated the house looking for the supplier. When he realized what the officers were doing, he shot them,” Finn repeated, warming to Rey’s story-listening face. “They all survived and are in prison now. He’s a good shot, he didn’t kill them, but Ben was retired out on full pension after he was declared unfit for duty after that, followed by a stint at a-“
“Are you done?” asked an even voice from the grass. Rey had missed when the mower had stopped.
“Just chatting with your lovely neighbour, Solo,” Finn said unabashed. He handed Rey a business card, his eyes friendly.
“If you have any worries,” he said, standing up and brushing bits of leaf off his uniform.
“Leave the plant here,” Ben instructed. Finn didn’t argue, just gave him a thorough look-over.
“So how’re you doing, man?” Finn asked easily as the two men left her lawn, her new mum next to the pumpkins. “Plant I got you still alive? You get her number yet? She have a boyfriend? Is your only relationship still with the written word?”
Rey kept her head down, sipping away at her tea as Ben’s screen door creaked open.
“Why would I need her number? She lives next door.”
Rey turned Finn’s business card in her fingers, thinking over his brief story. It was a lot for a two minute exchange, and she ran each of his sentences through several times.
What it seemed to come down to for Rey was that Ben was at the beginning of a fresh start. His isolation, his peace and quiet, his unwavering routine, were all part of a life he’d chosen as part of his rebuilding process. Where that left her, new friend or nuisance, she didn’t know.
Rey didn’t have time to ponder once her break was over, the church window was a mess. Several rocks had been thrown through the century-old glazing. Rey would have to finish cleaning out the broken bits, cut and sand new glass to the exact size, foil and weld them in, and then try to match the perfect 1918 calligraphy listing the names of that church’s war dead. She had photos of it to work from, but the process was slow.
Each broken piece removed was evaluated to see if it could be cut down to be reused in a different part of the window. Those that couldn’t went into her carefully hoarded colourful glass inventory to be made into something new. She would turn the salvage into something new, something beautiful.
XXX
“I thought you might want this,” said a low voice from beside her. Rey blinked you from her drawing pad, the button fly of an old pair of 501s level with her eyes. “So you don’t have to try to sneak it off the curb,” he finished with she could have sworn was a hint of a teasing tone.
Looking up, Rey saw a cereal box that was rattling slightly.
“It’s a broken mirror,” he explained. “I was trying to take it off the wall and it cracked.”
“How did you break the other glass?” she asked, embarrassed he’d caught her stealing his recycling.
“Hux put a fist through cupboard window.”
“Need it repaired?”
“No, I just took the whole door off. Open concept, that’s a thing, right?”
“Have a seat, I’ll see if I can use the pieces for anything.”
Settling in beside her in the space she made sitting up, Ben looked around the street from her usual perspective.
“You had a good view of the man across the street’s incident last week.”
“Craig? Yeah, he does that. Three hundred and sixty-four days a year you won’t hear him or see him, but once a year he drinks himself belligerent.”
“He always naked?”
“That day? Yeah, usually. Yells at everyone from his porch until he passes out.”
“It’s strange, everything slightly to the left of how I usually see it.”
It felt good, sitting next to someone.
“If you’re ever bored of your own porch,” she said lightly, “you can always come read on mine.”
He nodded slowly, no promises.
Tracing a finger through colourful splotches on her porch rail, he drew back his finger and examined the dust.
“It’s glass,” she explained. “I do stained glass. I like to do my hand sanding out here.”
“Hence the rubbish theft, makes sense. Is it part of another business or on your own?”
“Mostly my own,” she said. “But I have a woman who brings me commissions from her collective, and she sells my work in her chain of shops in touristy towns. I buy most of my glass like a regular person for those projects, but I have a soft spot for good salvage and one-off pieces.”
Like the short supply of words they had between them had been exhausted by the brief exchange, Ben politely took his leave and left.
Rey was back to work on the church window the next couple days, tucked away in her shop, living off of granola bars and caffeinated pop. She hoped Ben didn’t think she was avoiding making good on her offer to share her porch.
Walking out into her dark backyard on day three, cracking and stretching her arms and shoulders, she hoped she was done. She’d left everything to cool, hungry and sore in her satisfaction. Just the ornate writing was left, but that was later-Rey’s problem.
Ben was out in the dawn light when she came out, bundled in her blanket, to eat her pre-sleep oatmeal. He waved cautiously, then walked over, his paperback tucked in his jacket pocket, a steaming metal camp mug of coffee in his hand.
“You look pleased,” he said in his low, quiet way.
“I’m almost done a big project,” she crowed, joy touching her dark-shadowed eyes, “a whole church window restored.” His eyebrows flew up, impressed. “Want to see?” she asked without thinking.
The invitation hung there.
She remembered Finn’s words: he shot them.
Ben didn’t... seem... dangerous.
“Sure,” he agreed. Inhaling her oatmeal, Rey led him around her house instead of through, allowing him only into her tiny wooden sanctuary.
He gave a low whistle at the enormous colourful window. Blown up photos of the writing littered her desk.
“You need to paint this on?” he asked, tracing the letters with a finger.
“I’m not very good at it, but it’s part of the project, so I’ll tape it up to replicate it and just hope for the best.”
“I could do it,” he said softly. “I-“ he hesitated, like he was revealing something he had been concealing most of his life. “I do calligraphy.”
“Can you show me some?” Rey asked, not willing to take a chance on her beautiful windows without some proof.
“Let me take these,” he said, gathering the photos. “Sleep, knock on my door when you’re ready.”
She let him leave with the pictures, wondering if this exchange made them friends.
XXX
No knocking was needed. When Rey brought out her steaming bowl of dinner/breakfast to the porch early that evening, Ben was ready. Unfurling his huge body from the aluminum lawn chair and bounding over, all coiled energy and suppressed excitement, he took the steps in one long-legged go.
“Here,” he said, flipping open a sketchbook. The original photos had been neatly clipped to the top, and even without a close inspection Rey saw they were identical.
“How on earth…” she said, putting down her dinner to receive the book. “Ben, this is amazing. Do you think you’d be able to replicate it on something as slippery as glass with a special brush?”
“Let me try on some scraps,” he said, eyes betraying the eagerness he tried to hide behind a casual tone. “After you eat, of course.”
Rey indicated he should sit down beside her, and she turned in the swing to face him.
“So, Ben,” she said between mouthfuls of hot noodles, “what do you do when you’re not reading?”
She watched internal emotions play across his eyes, and his answer was short.
“Sleep. Exercise. Clean. You?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, “that’s, yeah, that’s about it. Plus work. Research for work. Drum up more work. My bookkeeping. Are we boring people, Ben?”
He snorted, the sound shaking the swing and Rey.
“Probably, but who is there to impress?”
“Fair enough,” she smiled. He turned away from her, rubbing at the swing chain with nervous fingers. It needed more lubricant before winter.
Bolting her food in a manner that usually made spectators concerned for her safety, Rey ran her empty dishes inside and brought out the key to her workshop.
It was a familiar, comfortable space, smelling of wood and metal, greenery and chemicals, and as before Ben filled it entirely. He shifted carefully around the finished window, finding a bare spot to work.
Putting on her heaviest gloves, Rey sifted through her collection of broken glass until she found a sheet big enough for a few words, with a similar texture to the old church glass.
“Don’t cut yourself,” she warned, eyeing up the size difference in their hands. “I don’t have gloves to fit you.”
“It’s fine,” he dismissed, lining up the paint and brushes just so in front of the calligraphy samples. “Light’s perfect, table’s steady, and I have room to move my elbows. That’s all I need.”
Trying not to make him nervous, Rey looked around her workshop from the corner. He was right. She’d installed good solid working lights herself, bright and comfortable, and every bench was exactly level. Attention turning to the man before her, she watched the flex and move of his back and shoulders as he made every deliberate stroke and dip.
“Passable?” he asked, shifting to make room for her to slip in beside him. The workshop seemed smaller. Stepping into the heat that radiated off of him, Rey examines his work.
“You’re hired,” she breathed, looking at the perfectly formed script.
XXX
“Dammit,” said Rey, checking the time on her phone. Her eyes drifted back to the page of her open book.
“Hm?” Ben asked from his own porch. His feet were up on the rail, coffee steaming in the chilly September 30th morning air. A book sat face-down on each of his denim-clad thighs, as if he were deciding what to start next.
“I made the mistake of starting a new book while I ate breakfast and now I don’t want to go work,” she laughed.
“Read me the back,” he said, coming over to the closest edge of his porch. He sipped at his coffee while she read the description.
“I’ll read it to you while you work,” he said with a shrug. “Be over in five.” He disappeared back into his house.
Rey squealed on the inside, scooping up her dishes and her books. She dashed to the shed, turning on the lights, plugging in the space heater and her soldering tools. There would be just enough room for a chair and a very large man in the workshop with a little rearranging. Belatedly, she wondered if she should have brushed her hair that morning instead of immediately stuffing it in a slouchy toque.
“Hey, festive,” he greeted casually as he approached the open door and saw the hundreds of unfinished holiday decorations. He held up the folding chair from his porch. “Where should I put this?” She pointed out the clear corner while he lifted his coffee mug. “This allowed in here?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Rey agreed, quickly scanning for hydro connections in case the china mug broke. “Your voice sounds a bit thick. You okay to read?”
He cleared his throat.
“It’s fine, living alone I don’t always use my voice a lot.”
“When did you last speak,” she asked curiously.
“When did we last speak?”
“Oh.”
“Mind if I start from the beginning?”
“Not at all.”
Rey was entranced by his voice a few moments, watching him read the first page.
“Is this going to be too distracting?” he asked seriously.
“No, no go on,” she rushed, turning to the little pieces of glass waiting to become Christmas ornaments. Today was an easy run, popping wings on cardinals. She’d paint the details onto the opalescent red glass later, once they were set. Everything had been copper foiled, she’d finished that yesterday, so today was just a long day of flux and solder, flux and solder, flux and solder.
Rey threw on her plain black apron, decorated with a few small burn holes and a mosaic-like sheen of glass powder from her electric grinder, her work glasses, and protective gloves.
Ben’s reading faltered for a moment, and Rey reflexively looked over to him. She tapped her glasses with her gloves and smiled.
“You should see me in my grinding mask. Is this going to be too distracting?”
He smiled back, a small thing he aimed at the book, and read on.
By the time he got into new material and Rey had her third cardinal tacked, she had stopped hearing his voice and was beginning to float along in the story.
“Rey? Rey?” he was saying, pulling her out of her reverie. A flock of ruby birds sat drying on her work bench. Ben’s stomach growled alarmingly. “Welcome back,” he said, watching her eyes focus behind the plastic goggles. “I was asking what your plan was for lunch.”
“Lunch?” she asked, confused. “But I’m working.”
“One does typically break for lunch while they’re working,” he teased softly. The smile faded. Her hands were already drifting back to her tools, and he’d lost her last scrap of attention.
XXX
In Ben’s dated yellow kitchen, he plated two peanut butter and jam sandwiches onto a piece of paper towel. Dividing the can’s worth of hot chicken noodle soup into his only two clean mugs, and dropping in spoons from a very limited supply, he wondered briefly what he was doing.
Cultivating a friendship with his lovely and innocent neighbour was a terrible idea, but there was a loneliness to her, to them both really, he couldn’t ignore.
There was something about her that drew in him when he wanted to be left out. She lingered in the real life thoughts he tried to keep sedated with fiction, and gave his eyes a place to stray from the pages of words that kept him sane.
“It’s fine,” he said aloud, slipping a couple bananas into his pocket for their dessert. “It’s just being friendly with the neighbour. Nothing more.”