Dev looked panicked. “Can you fix it tonight? My fiancée is flying in tomorrow morning. The whole house is supposed to be perfect.”

Frank zipped up his toolbox. “That’s the price. The story you’ll tell your kids about the old plumber who saved the wedding dress? That’s the bonus.”

Frank looked at the young man’s face—so full of hope and fear—and saw himself fifty years ago, trying to impress a girl named Margaret.

The address was a quaint cottage on Ladies Mile. The homeowner, a young man named Dev, met him at the door with a saucepan in one hand and a mop in the other. Behind him, water dripped rhythmically from a crack in the plaster.

“Old copper joint. Frost got it last winter. It’s been weeping for months, just waiting for a big rain to finish the job.”

The sign on the side of the van read in faded blue letters, but to the residents of the sleepy Auckland suburb, that van meant only one thing: Frank was here, and the water would soon behave.

Frank wiped his hands on his gray rag. “Two hundred and eighty. Plus the patch job is free.”

He limped back to his van, the rain now a soft drizzle. As he drove past the Ellerslie village shops, he saw the lights still on at the bakery, the pub, the little florist. His town. His pipes.