I frowned. “What?”
“Like she’d stab a man and never smudge her lipstick,” he clarified. “You good, Donkey?”
No. “Fine. I’m just gonna…”
“Take the girl to tour her gutted truck?” Meatball supplied. “Real romantic.”
I shot him a look. “We’re trying to give her something to hold on to.”
“I know.” He held up his hands. “Remember, she’s one stiff breeze from snapping. Don’t push too hard.”
Like I didn’t know that already.
I kept my eyes on her in my rearview the whole drive.
The barn rose up ahead, big, vaguely red, and weathered, its huge double doors open to the yard because a parade of us had already been rotating through. We’d strung temporary work lights inside, their glow spilling out onto the packed dirt. Thetruck sat inside the threshold, the warped door open enough to reveal the hollowed out interior.
I pulled up off to the side, gave Jess room to park, and watched her face as she finally got a clear view.
She eased to a stop next to me. For a second, she only stared. Then she cut the engine, closed her eyes, and exhaled like she was about to walk into court.
By the time she joined me in front of the barn, her expression was back to neutral blankness.
“This is where you put it,” she said.
“Cartwright agreed to let us use the space. It’s empty this time of year. Dry. Close to town.”
She took a few more steps, boots crunching on the gravel. Her hand shook once when she reached out to touch the side of the Airstream, her fingers hovering a fraction of an inch from the metal. “It’s cold,” she murmured, like she’d expected the surface to still be hot.
“We let it cool before we moved it. Didn’t want to risk warping the frame any worse.”
Jess’s gaze slid to the open doorway. The inside was bare—no counters, no equipment, no storage bins or shelving. Just scuffed aluminum walls with scorch shadows in the corners and some fresh aluminum panels someone had sourced from I had no idea where and wasn’t asking. We’d quietly installed the replacements and hoped she wouldn’t notice.
Her breath hitched. “What did you do?”
“We gutted it.” No point softening that part. “Anything that was scorched, warped, or structurally compromised had to come out. Chief cleared us to take it apart here instead of at the yard so we could document everything for insurance. Easier for the adjuster to determine what’s what.”
She took that in, eyes moving slowly across the exposed interior. Recognition dawned as she mapped where everythinghad been—espresso machine here, grinder there, the little shelf where she kept the gingerbread syrup that made half the town feral in December.
“Who did it?” she asked. “You?”
“Me, yeah,” I said. “Moose. Meatball. Some of the other guys. Cartwright’s grandson loaned us some tools.”
Her jaw flexed. “Why.”
Not an accusation, exactly. Not gratitude either. A demand for an explanation she could live with.
The truth hovered on my tongue.
Because I couldn’t stand the idea of you seeing it black and broken.
Because taking it apart felt like the closest I could get to undoing the last forty-eight hours.
Because if I couldn’t stop the fire, I could at least give you a starting point.
Instead I shrugged, casual. “We had to open her up to check whether the frame was worth saving. It is, by the way. Structurally, she’s solid. She just needs… everything else.”
Jess let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Everything else,” she repeated. “Sure. No big deal. I’ll just pop down to the Home Depot coffee truck aisle and?—”
