Page 36 of What Remains of Grace

Jenna followed his gaze. The chalkboard with Grace’s last specials still hung there. Two weeks old now, but frozen forever. She felt something tug in her chest.

Grace had always written the specials, even when they were teenagers helping out after school. Her handwriting was neat and looping, every letter perfectly spaced like a recipe measured by heart. Jenna had tried once, but the words always slanted uphill, too hurried, too uneven—too much like her.

So Grace kept that job, and Jenna never minded. It made sense then, and somehow, it still did.

“Leave it for now,” she said. “We’ll decide later.”

“Got it,” Cole called back to his guy, then looked at her again. “We’ll work around it.”

“Thanks.”

He didn’t ask why. He didn’t need to.

By noon, the bakery was officially “under renovation.” Tools everywhere. Floor opened up. One of the ceiling fans on the ground, looking pleased to be retired.

Travis found them, pulling his gloves from his hands, with a deep-set frown. “Hey, boss,” he said to Cole. “We pulled up the subfloor by the bakery entry. Looks like the damage goes all the way to the joists.”

Cole walked over and crouched beside the opening Travis had pointed out, running his hand along the edge of the plywood that remained. He didn’t rush, didn’t bark orders—just studied it, thoughtful.

“Okay,” he said finally. “We’ll open this up in sections, work it by board, four feet at a time, and check how far it runs. If it’s isolated, we’ll sister the joist and patch. If not, we reframe the corner. Don’t pull up more than you have to, and make a decision from there.”

Travis nodded, already moving. “Got it.”

Jenna watched the exchange from a few feet away. No panic. No grandstanding. Just calm logic, step-by-step—the same rhythm she used when she’d run her own teams.

It was strangely attractive to watch someone else carry that kind of certainty.

* * *

When the crew broke for lunch, Jenna found Cole at the tailgate of his truck, jotting numbers onto a clipboard. His shirt clung to his shoulders, darker at the collar where sweat had dampened it.

“Please tell me you plan to keep your shirt on for the rest of this project,” she said before her filter could catch up.

He looked up, one eyebrow lifting, a grin already forming. “Yearbook?”

Her stomach dropped. “What?”

“Page eighty-three. Construction class feature. You found it, didn’t you?”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then groaned. “Oh, my God.”

He laughed, that warm, low sound that always felt too close. “Don’t worry. I looked you up, too.”

That stopped her. “You what?”

He tapped his pen against the clipboard. “Yearbook staff, right? Picture by the bleachers. You looked like you had opinions about everyone’s captions.”

“I did,” she said, half mortified, half amused that he’d looked her up too.

“That’s not the only thing I found. Turns out you’ve done this before,” he said, gesturing toward the gutted bakery behind them. “Construction. Managing chaos.”

She forced a small smile, but something twisted in her chest. The strange collision of the life she’d built in Georgia and the one she’d come home to in Florida. The lines between them were starting to blur, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

She changed the subject fast. “When are you going to have those light fixture options for Emmie to look at?”

“I’ll have them over tonight.”

Cole turned, squinting up at the house, searching for something to fill the silence. “Thinking we match the bakery trim to this blue. Keep it consistent.”