We carry boxes together. Sometimes we stop halfway through a room because I’ve gone still, memory catching at my throat.
“This is where I wrote my first poem,” I say once, gesturing to the window seat.
He smiles. “Was it good?”
“It was terrible,” I laugh. “But I felt invincible.”
He kisses my temple. “You still are.”
We sit on the deck at sunset, the old loveseat creaking beneath us. Music drifts from my phone. Something slow. Something familiar. I lean into him and tell him stories about my grandparents. About how they danced barefoot on this deck. About how they loved quietly but fiercely.
“I think they’d like you,” I say.
“I hope so,” he replies. “I’d take good care of their girl.”
That night, we stand at the back of the house where Gracie is buried. Dane doesn’t speak. He never fills sacred space with noise. He just takes my hand.
“This is right,” he says finally.
“I know,” I whisper.
A few days later, I move into Dane’s tower.
The lift opens to glass and sky. The city spreads below us like a held breath. At night, the lights feel like constellations. During the day, the water flashes silver and blue. I stand at the window in the mornings, coffee warm in my hands, and feel something settle inside me.
I am where I need to be.
I go into the publishing house every day. The hum of it grounds me. Phones ringing. Editors arguing about commas and courage. Coffee always brewing somewhere. Manuscripts stacked high, voices waiting to be heard.
This work matters. All of it matters.
At night, Dane wraps around me on the couch. Gentle kisses. Quiet hands. Reminders whispered into my hair.
“You don’t have to carry everything alone,” he tells me.
And for the first time, I believe it without flinching.
The house waits.
And I let it become something holy.
The morning Gracie’s Sanctuary opens, the house feels awake before I am.
Not restless.
Not anxious.
Just alert.
Like it knows what it’s about to become.
Light spills through the curtains in thin gold ribbons, cutting across the walls with quiet purpose. I lie there a moment longer than I need to, listening. The house isn’t silent anymore. Downstairs something moves. A cupboard closes softly. Footsteps. The low hum of an oven warming.
The air smells different now.
Fresh paint layered with lemon oil and clean timber. Warm bread already baking somewhere below. It smells like intention. Like care.
Dane is awake beside me, propped on one elbow, watching me the way he does when he’s letting me arrive at my own pace.
