Page 46 of What Remains of Grace

“Good,” Emmie said. “I promised Casey I’d drive her to the beach. Can’t break in the new car if the roads flood.”

Jenna smiled faintly. “Try not to hydroplane.”

“Please,” Emmie said with mock offense, “I’m basically a professional now.”

She kissed Jenna on the cheek, then disappeared down the hall, humming off-key as she went. The sound faded beneath the distant thrum of construction next door.

Jenna stared at her laptop screen, the cursor blinking over an unfinished sentence. She’d answered half her emails, skimmed three invoices, and still hadn’t read a single line that made sense. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but her mind was somewhere else entirely, on the dream, on the storm, on the towel still hanging by the door.

She reminded herself it didn’t mean anything, that he’d come to fix a tarp, not to see her, but the image of him out there in the rain wouldn’t let go. The way he hadn’t looked at her when she offered the towel. The way he said “Go back to bed, Jenna,” as if she had interrupted some moment he was having.

By late morning, Jenna had checked off most of her list: final payroll, insurance through the end of the month, and a note to the accountant about dissolving the LLC. She poured herself more coffee, glanced out the window toward the bakery, and realized she hadn’t checked on the crew since early morning.

She kept trying to lose herself in it, spreadsheets, invoices, all the small distractions that made her life feel manageable. But the night before clung to her like humidity.

Maybe she’d overstepped. Maybe Cole was just being polite before, and she’d read into all of it. It was the looks, the easy jokes, the way his tone dipped when he said her name that made her second-guess.

Work. It was just work. That was all this was.

She closed her laptop, wiped her hands on her jeans, and walked next door.

The air hit her first: drywall dust and pine from the new lumber stacked by the counter.

The bakery looked emptier, cleaner in the way that things look when they’re halfway torn apart. She was halfway across the room before she noticed what was missing.

The chalkboard. The specials. Grace’s handwriting.

Her stomach dropped.

She turned toward one of the men near the door. “Hey—where’s the menu board that was on that wall?”

He looked up from a toolbox. “Oh, that old thing? It was cracked. We pulled it out earlier. Thought it was trash, so it’s already gone.”

“Gone?” she repeated.

“Yeah, we tossed it in the dumpster this morning.”

The walls started closing in on her as soon as she heard it. “Oh.”

He hesitated, clearly realizing too late that it mattered. “Sorry. I can—”

“It’s fine,” she said quickly, even though it wasn’t. “Just . . . fine.”

She turned, moving toward the counter, trying to breathe through the sudden heat climbing up her neck. The counter was covered in paint trays, brushes, half-empty cups of coffee, and somebody’s phone playing a song she didn’t know.

For a heartbeat, she didn’t recognize the scream ripping through the room as her own. It was raw and guttural, the kind of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs.

Before she knew it, she’d shoved.

The sound startled even her. The sharp scrape of wood, the crash of something hitting the floor, the echo that followed.

Her body moved before her mind could catch up, hands sweeping across the counter, sending brushes, rags, and a can of paint clattering to the floor.

White spilled everywhere, seeping into the cracks of the tile, running down the cabinet like milk.

It was like watching someone else do it.

She saw her own arms move, felt her throat strain, but her mind floated somewhere above, detached, horrified.