Page 117 of What Remains of Grace

COLE: Come over. Porch light’s on.

By the time she pulled into his driveway, her whole body ached from holding it together. He’d opened the door, taken one look at her face, and said, “Come here,” in a voice that made everything inside her loosen at once.

And when she slipped under his sheets an hour later, the only thing that mattered was that, for a while, she didn’t have to be strong or strategic or anything, except a woman who wanted something good.

And now it was Friday.

She stood in front of the mirror in the house on Athens, smoothing her palms down the front of the plum dress Emmie had chosen, the one with the scandalously low draped neckline and those delicate beaded straps that caught the light when she moved. The fabric skimmed her hips like it had been made for her. The back dipped low, nothing but warm skin and two thin crisscrossed strands of garnet-colored beads holding the whole thing together.

She looked like a woman with a secret life—probably because she had one.

Not just the legal fight.

Not just the rally.

Him.

Cole, with his calloused hands, stupidly kind eyes, and infuriating patience. Cole, who could talk about court precedent and building codes and also make her laugh when she was halfway to a panic attack. Cole, whose bed had become, against all her better judgment, the one place she could fall apart without feeling like she was letting anyone down.

“Stop it,” she told her reflection. Her reflection did not obey.

She gathered her notes and touched the worn little pendant around her neck, the one Grace had given her on her twenty-first birthday. For the days when you forget who you are, her sister had said.

Jenna kissed it once, a habit so ingrained she didn’t even notice she was doing it, then stepped out the front door and crossed the short stretch of lawn that separated her house from the bakery.

* * *

By the time he got to The Blue Cypress, the place was already humming.

The front windows glowed in the early evening light. The parking lot was filling up faster than he’d expected. A banner stretched across the front awning—SAVE THE BLUE CYPRESS in big, loopy blue letters, with KEEP IT LOCAL / KEEP IT HERS stenciled underneath.

Emmie’s handiwork, obviously.

Inside, it was organized chaos.

Nicole and another kid from the high school softball team were dragging folding tables into place. Steph stood behind the counter like a frosting general, directing sheet trays and pastry boxes with ruthless efficiency. Mrs. Cartwright and half the women’s club were arranging silent auction baskets on a side table: spa days, golf rounds, hair appointments, free oil changes, everything under the Florida sun.

“Bennett!” someone yelled.

He turned to see Mr. Delaney from the historical society waving a tri-fold poster board in one hand and a level in the other.

“Where do you want the history display?” the older man asked. “We’ve got photos of the original storefront from 1947, and I’ll be damned if some absentee husband is going to get his hands on—”

“Right by the entrance,” Cole said. “Let everyone see it when they walk in.”

Delaney nodded, satisfied, and shuffled off to set up his shrine of zoning ordinances and black-and-white photos.

Cole rolled up his sleeves another notch and dove in, helping hoist the stage riser the Rotary club had “just happened” to have lying around, carrying coolers of ice to the back, checking the extension cords, so no one electrocuted themselves during “Save the Bakery” karaoke.

He was in the middle of wrestling a stubborn table leg into place when the whole room shifted.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. Just a subtle drawing of attention, like someone had opened a window and let a breeze in.

He didn’t have to look to know who it was, but he looked anyway.

Jenna stood just inside the front door, fingers curled around the strap of her dress, eyes a little wide at the sight of the crowd already forming.

He knew instantly the dress she wore was one of Emmie’s picks, not because Jenna didn’t know how to dress herself, but because this was definitely not a “tax audit” dress, as Emmie liked to accuse.