Page 35 of What Remains of Grace

He turned toward the back. “I’ve got one guy doing a walk of the roofline. The soffit on the west side is rough, but fixable. Shouldn’t blow your budget.”

“Good,” Jenna said. “Because I just spent a chunk of it on teenage freedom.”

He laughed, “She liked the car?”

“She hasn’t come home yet, so I’m assuming she loved it.”

Right on cue, Emmie’s black Civic slid into the driveway like it had always belonged there. Music pulsed distantly through the closed windows; the engine cut off. A second later, Emmie walked in through the front door, ponytail high, sunshine on her face in a way Jenna hadn’t thought was possible this soon after the funeral. It was the first night Emmie had spent away, not with family, since her mother died. Just a normal sleepover, something a sixteen-year-old should’ve been able to do without the weight of loss hanging over it.

Then Emmie saw the open floor, the men, and the tools, and her smile faltered. “Oh.”

Jenna moved toward her. “Hey. They started this morning. Remember?”

“Yeah,” Emmie said slowly, eyes moving over everything. “I just . . . didn’t think it would be so loud.”

Cole, picking up on the tension without being asked, wiped his hands on a rag and walked over. “Morning, Emmie.”

She nodded, “Hey.”

“We’re just opening things up,” he said gently. “Nothing’s changing without you two saying so.”

That disarmed her for a moment. How quickly he’d read what she hadn’t said out loud. Jenna smiled. “You wanted the fans gone.”

“Yeah,” Emmie said, softer this time. “I did.”

Cole gave her a small nod and went back to the workroom, his crew instinctively lowering their volume a notch.

When she was gone, Jenna looked at him. “You’re good.”

He shrugged. “It sounds like you two made decisions together. I’m not about to steamroll that.”

“Thank you.”

He tipped his head toward the back. “Come tell me what you want to do with the kitchen wall.”

They spent the next hour that way, moving through spaces, making choices. He’d point at a cabinet, and she’d imagine what Grace would have wanted. He’d quote a price for new light fixtures, and she’d mentally subtract it from the “leftover” column in her folder. It felt less like gutting a place and more like waking it up.

Her phone buzzed once. It was a follow-up from Atlanta.

HANNAH: Assets listed. Mark’s handling two projects. Accountant said they can file final returns when you’re ready.

JENNA: You’re a lifesaver. Severance will hit this week.

Then she slid the phone face down. When she looked up, Cole was watching her.

“You really did shut it all down,” he said, not unkindly. “Your life up there.”

She blinked. Word travels fast, she thought, but out loud she just said, “Small town.”

He smiled gently. “Small town,” he agreed.

Outside, a drill whirred. One of the guys called, “Hey, Cole? You want us to start clearing the wall with the menu on it?”

Cole glanced at Jenna. “Front wall?”

“Yeah.”

He squinted past her. “We can pull it and patch. Won’t take long.”