She found Collins within approximately four minutes, which I could have predicted, and the two of them were soon engaged in what appeared to be a deeply serious debate about something I couldn't quite follow from across the room. Collins was using his hands. Chloe was using her whole body. Frank stood nearby with his coffee, watching them with the expression of a man mentally composing his resignation letter.
"Your friend," Frank said, appearing at my elbow.
"Chloe. Ryan's sister."
He considered this. "She's a lot."
"She's from LA."
"That explains it." He took a sip of coffee. "Kid's going to pull something trying to keep up with her."
Walt materialized on my other side, unhurried as always. He watched Collins gesture enthusiastically at the cathedral ceiling, apparently making some kind of architectural argument that had Chloe nodding with exaggerated seriousness.
"Twenty bucks says she has him reorganizing the staging furniture within the hour," Walt said.
Frank didn't smile. But he didn't disagree either.
Diane appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel she'd apparently commandeered from somewhere. She stopped beside me and looked at the room, at the crew and their wives and the noise and the midday light pouring through those enormous windows.
"You built a good thing here, Olivia," she said quietly. Just that. Then she went back to the kitchen.
I found Ruth an hour later in the living room.
She was standing at the window—the big one, the one that framed the hills—with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes somewhere far away. She was wearing the flannel shirt she always wore to the site. Her gardening gloves were sticking out of her coat pocket, the fingers stained dark from weeks of work in the beds outside.
I stood beside her and didn't say anything.
The view was doing what it always did in the early afternoon light. The hills going green and gold, the distant smudge of the reservoir catching the sun. Ryan had framed this window to capture exactly this. He'd thought about the angle, the light, the precise rectangle of world he wanted to put on display.
He'd thought about everything except how it would end.
"It's beautiful," Ruth said finally.
"Yeah."
She was quiet for another moment. Then she reached over, took my hand, and squeezed once.
I squeezed back.
That was all. That was enough.
I looked down at my clipboard on the way out of the living room. Then I folded the punch list once, walked to the recycling bag by the garage entrance, and dropped it in.
Collins watched me do it from across the room. Then he smiled, slow and satisfied, like he'd won something. He didn't say anything. He just walked to the cooler and opened it.
Carlos had disappeared back to his truck around two and returned dragging a portable grill with the expression of a man who had been waiting for the right moment to produce it.
"You brought a grill," I said.
"I always bring a grill." He set it down in the clearing as if laying a cornerstone. "You just never had a reason to use it before."
Frank appeared in the doorway, looked at the grill, looked at Carlos, and went back inside without a word. Twenty minutes later he came back out with his sleeves rolled up and took the tongs from Carlos with the efficiency of a man who considered grilling a skilled trade and wasn't about to leave it to an amateur.
Carlos let him. He caught my eye and grinned.
Some battles weren't worth fighting.
Chloe found me an hour later, around four, when the afternoon had gone soft and golden and the smell of whatever Frank was grilling had drifted through every room of the house. She touched my elbow and tilted her head toward the treeline—away from everyone—and I followed her without asking why.
