Chapter 35
Olivia
Collins showed up first, which surprised nobody.
He was already unloading a cooler from his truck when I pulled into the clearing, the late morning sun already warm on the gravel. He saw me, grinned, and shrugged with the particular innocence of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
I held up my clipboard. "Final punch list," I said. "Staging inventory, fixture check in the master bath, garage sweep, exterior perimeter walk."
He looked at the clipboard. Then at me.
"Right," he said. "Punch list."
I kept my face perfectly straight. He kept his perfectly straight. We were both lying and we both knew it — the list was four items of nothing, a pretext thin enough to see through, and I'd written it specifically because I knew this crew would show up for work when they wouldn't show up for anything that felt like goodbye.
This is for you, I thought, looking at the house over his shoulder.All of you.
"Thought we might get thirsty," Collins said, nodding at the cooler.
"It's eleven in the morning, Collins."
"Punch list work is thirsty work."
Behind him, the house sat in the full June light. The windows bright, the timber frame throwing clean shadows across the grass. I stood there for a second just looking at it.
Full. It was about to be full for the first time.
Frank's truck came in ten minutes later, Walt's right behind it. Frank's wife Diane, a small sharp-eyed woman who looked like she'd heard every construction story twice and still had opinions about them, climbed out and looked at the house with her hands on her hips.
"Well," she said. "You weren't lying about the ceiling."
Walt's truck door opened a moment later. His wife Carol took his arm as they walked toward the entrance. She moved carefully, matching his pace without drawing attention to it, and he let her without comment. They'd clearly done that particular choreography for years.
I watched them from the garage entrance, clipboard still in hand, and tried to remember the last time I'd seen this clearing with more than five people in it. Four months of early mornings and it had mostly been just us. The crew and the work, the cold, the noise, and the problem in front of us. Now Diane was already asking Frank something about the roofline and Carol was tilting her head back to look at the timber frame and the house was doing what it was always supposed to do.
It was holding people.
Dave arrived with Jimmy and Carlos just after noon. When Ben stepped out to meet them, Dave looked at him for a long moment and shook his hand once, firm and final, the way you'd close out an account that had cost you both something.
"Held together, huh?" Dave said.
"It did," Ben said. "Thanks to you."
Dave nodded, already looking past him at the house. "Let's see it then."
Ruth arrived twenty minutes later, her sedan moving slowly up the gravel drive. She climbed out carrying a Tupperware container large enough to feed twelve, looked at the house for a long moment, and then looked at me.
"I made too much again," she said.
"You always make too much."
"Old habit." She smiled, small and tired and real. "Where do you need me?"
Chloe's rental came in just after that, top down despite the midday heat, her lavender hair catching the breeze. She was wearing sunglasses and carrying a bag that clinked with what I was fairly certain was prosecco.
"It's not even one," I said.
"It's June." She kissed my cheek. "Where's the kitchen?"
