Page 59 of What Remains of Grace

Her phone buzzed halfway through their walk. A single message from Emmie: How’s Mr. Bennett? Misbehaving I hope

Jenna’s answering groan made Cole glance over. “Everything okay?”

“Teenagers,” she said, waving her phone like a white flag. “She’s . . . observant.”

He only smiled, and it made something warm loosen in her chest.

On the hottest day of the year so far, he showed up outside her office door at noon and said, “We’re taking a break. Non-negotiable. Orange Cycle Creamery?”

She’d lifted an eyebrow. “You’re kidnapping your client?”

“Court-ordered,” he said. “Judge ruled you’re a danger to yourself if you keep answering emails in this heat.”

She’d gone, of course, she’d gone.

They sat on the curb with their cups of ice cream dripping down the sides—hers pistachio, his salted caramel—talking about nothing in particular while the asphalt shimmered and the cicadas buzzed in the trees. At one point, he nudged her knee with his.

“You’re allowed to enjoy this, you know,” he said.

“I am enjoying it.”

“I mean,” he clarified, spoon hovering, “this, being home. Being here. It doesn’t have to feel heavy all the time.”

Guilt flickered in her chest. She still hadn’t told him everything she should’ve. Not about the distance. Not about the decade between them, where she’d built a life five hundred miles away and let Grace carry too much. Since Caladesi, since his quiet confession about his mom, she’d thought about it differently.

She wasn’t the only one walking around with loss folded into everyday life. “Working on it,” she’d said finally, softer than she meant to.

He didn’t push. Just bumped her knee again, gentler this time, and changed the subject to the precise merits of sprinkles versus no sprinkles. He was pro, whereas she was loudly against.

The days blurred in a way that didn’t feel like survival anymore.

In the mornings, she woke to voices drifting through the house and the muted thunk of work starting up, the place no longer suffocatingly still. Her days were a blur of finalizing her former life, making renovation decisions for both the house and the bakery, getting Emmie ready to go back to school, and balancing a checkbook that was hanging on by a thread.

Afternoons brought small rituals like sharing a sandwich on the porch steps, while the crew took lunch, trading sarcastic commentary with Travis about football versus baseball, and listening to Cole gently correct one of the newer guys instead of tearing into him for a mistake. He managed his crew the way she wished more people managed teams in her world: direct, calm, no theatrics.

Evenings belonged to whatever he invited her into.

Sometimes it was nothing more than a walk down to the bayou from Athens Street with plastic cups of sweet tea. Other nights, they stood in the driveway while he pointed out little things he’d quietly fixed outside of his scope. A loose rail. A sagging section of fence. The side gate hinges he’d oiled so they wouldn’t squeak every time Emmie slipped in after curfew.

Once, they sat on the back steps and watched a thunderstorm roll in from the Gulf, the air thick and buzzing.

“No roof heroics tonight,” she warned.

“Already checked your tarp twice,” he said. “You’re good.”

She’d looked at him then, really looked, at the set of his mouth and the constant way he held himself. She felt that familiar swell of gratitude and something warmer tangle together.

Guilt pressed in quickly on its heels.

She’d been so focused on how much she was losing . . .

Most people carried grief . . .

But they moved anyway. Like her. Like him.

The funny thing was, it was getting easy to be around him now. Easier than it had been with anyone in a long time. The more they did “non-date” things, rides and ice cream and First Friday crowds, the more her body forgot to panic. Her chest didn’t seize up every time he laughed.

Even Emmie noticed the shift.