The Lake Between Us

Lauren Hayes has a spreadsheet for her spreadsheets, two kids who've started staging interventions about her laughing at dog videos less, and an ex-husband who still can't find the dish soap after fifteen years of marriage. She does not have time for a rugged, traveling contractor with a bad habit of fixing things nobody asked him to fix. Noah Parker doesn't do roots. He's got a system: show up, do the job, leave before anyone gets attached, repeat in the next town.
It's worked for twenty-seven years. It is about to be ruined by a leaking pipe, a woman who says "accurate" instead of "efficient, " and an eleven-year-old who adopts him within one Saturday morning like it's a done deal nobody consulted him on. What follows is a lot of unnecessary plumbing repairs, one increasingly incriminating text thread, more nights at Flanagan's than either of them will admit to, and two very stubborn people insisting, loudly, to themselves, in their own heads, that this is definitely not a big deal.
It is, obviously, a very big deal.