Page 42 of What Remains of Grace

Still, the words stuck. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d said so much as how it made her feel when he said it. She wasn’t proud of how her pulse behaved around him, or how she kept finding herself looking for him in every window, every shadow, every shift of noise next door.

Okay, so maybe she was spiraling a little.

Outside, the last light faded across the yard. She brushed her teeth, straightened the comforter on Grace’s bed, then sat on the edge of it for a long moment, thumb rubbing a loose thread on the quilt.

Biscuit hopped up beside her, kneading twice before curling into a warm ball at her hip.

Cole probably hadn’t meant anything by it at all. He wasn’t being forward. He wasn’t even flirting.

He was just being kind.

Okay, she was definitely spiraling.

“You too,” she whispered into the dim room, the echo of the words strange in her own voice. Biscuit blinked at her. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I know.”

11

Sawdust and Coffee

The days started to fall into a pattern. Coffee. Noise. Sawdust.

A dozen different versions of progress all happening at once.

Every day, the crew showed up like clockwork; Cole first, Travis behind him, and then two new guys who never stopped arguing about sports. By nine, the air compressors were sighing, and the radios were arguing with them. The bakery smelled faintly of primer and rain, and every open window carried the sound of drills and laughter.

Jenna found herself timing her mornings to its rhythm. When the hammering started, it was time for coffee. When the compressor cut off for lunch, she’d realize she hadn’t eaten breakfast. She’d learned the patterns: when Cole’s voice would drift through the windows calling for measurements, when the nail gun would go quiet right before lunch, when the laughter would pick up again after.

Cole stayed firmly in his work mode. He was efficient and focused, and offered her that easy half-smile only in passing. Nothing more, nothing less. There was something infuriatingly calm about him when he worked, shoulders loose, voice measured, attention absolute. She never felt more aware of him than when he barely seemed to notice her at all, which made no sense. She was a grown woman, not some intern waiting for the senior contractor to look her way. And yet here she was.

It made her feel anchored in a way she hadn’t expected, and if she was honest, it made something inside her yearn for more.

Emmie, meanwhile, had fallen headfirst into her own rhythm: music, friends, freedom. Every morning, she’d leave in a blur of hair ties, sunglasses, and car keys, the new Civic announcing its presence with bass that rattled the windows. Jenna pretended to scold her about the volume but secretly loved the sound. It meant Emmie was living again.

By midmorning, Jenna would be alone again, the hum of progress her only company, and the occasional low rumble of Cole’s voice outside, calm and sure, cutting through all of the other noise.

* * *

She poured her first cup of coffee that morning while the kitchen filled with the smell of fresh-cut wood and curing paint drifting in from the bakery, softened by the salt and distant ocean carried in through the screens.

Emmie wandered in, barefoot, scrolling her phone. Her hair was up in a careless knot, an ill-defined pillow-crease still stamped across her arm. She looked like a kid again, though she’d never admit it.

Jenna watched her move around the kitchen with that familiar mix of teenage distraction and unspoken resilience. Emmie didn’t talk about Grace much, not out loud, but the way she moved through the house said enough. She was relearning how to exist in a home that felt both familiar and foreign, and Jenna was constantly, quietly aware of the privilege of being allowed into that fragile orbit.

“Hungry?” Jenna asked.

Emmie shrugged, grabbed a banana, and muttered something about homework.

“You’re still doing schoolwork? It’s summer,” Jenna teased.

“Yeah, they gave us prep for next year,” Emmie said around a bite of banana.

Jenna tried not to smile. “That’s cruel.”

Emmie nodded, eyes still on her screen. But when she left, she paused at the door. “They’re playing country again,” she said, gesturing toward the bakery.

Jenna listened. From across the yard, through the open windows, an old George Strait song floated in. She almost smiled. “Could be worse.”

“It could be rap,” Emmie countered, then disappeared down the hall.