Clara woke to the sound of hammering.
Not the easy, rhythmic kind — the kind that meant Jack was building something. This was fast, aggressive, a man swinging with his shoulders instead of his wrists. The kind of hammering that saidI am doing something with my hands so I don't have to do something with my mouth.
She rolled over. His side of the bed was cold.
The clock on the nightstand read 6:14 AM. Jack was an early riser — but this was different. This wasn't making coffee early. This was fleeing the bed before dawn to attack lumber.
Clara lay there for a minute, listening to the hammering echo off the rocks below the gallery. Steady. Relentless. The cable railing project. He'dmentioned it casually a few weeks ago —September, maybe— like it was a distant plan, a reason to still be here when the leaves turned. Now he was doing it in July, at six in the morning, with the urgency of a man trying to finish before something caught up with him.
She sat up. Pushed her hair out of her face. Her gaze caught on the bedroom doorway, and she stilled.
Jack's duffel bag — the salt-stained one he'd arrived with, the one that had lived in the back of her closet since the second week, buried behind her winter coat like it had been absorbed into the architecture of her life — was on the floor near the door. Not in the closet. On the floor. Leaning against the wall with its straps loose, like someone had set it there on the way to somewhere else and hadn't quite decided whether to keep going.
Clara looked at the bag.
The bag looked back.
She got up. Made coffee. Didn't mention the bag.
Through the kitchen window, she could see Jack on the gallery, shirtless in the early light, measuring a section of railing with the focused intensity he brought to every project. His pencil was behind his ear. His shoulders were tight. He moved with precision but without joy — none of the easy pleasure she'd grown used to watching, the way his hands usuallysoftened when they found the grain of a board, the half-smile he wore when a measurement came out right.
He was building like he was running out of time.
Clara poured two mugs. Carried one outside.
"Morning," she said, holding it out.
Jack looked up. Smiled — the half-smile, the one that used his mouth but not his eyes. He'd been doing that for three days now, and every time it landed in Clara's chest like a stone skipping across water that was getting shallower.
"Morning. Thanks." He took the mug. Their fingers brushed. He didn't linger.
"You're up early," she said. Casual. Light. The tone of a woman who was absolutely not cataloguing every micro-shift in her boyfriend's behavior like a seismologist tracking tremors.
"Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd get a jump on this." He gestured at the railing with his mug. "The existing spindles are in worse shape than I thought. If I'm going to run cable, I need to reinforce the posts first."
If I'm going to.Notwhen.Notbefore the fall storms,the way he'd said it on the boat that night, planning months ahead with the ease of someone who intended to be here for them.
If.
Clara sipped her coffee and said nothing.
She lasted until eleven.
The hammering had slowed to a methodical pace — Jack settling into the work rather than attacking it — and Clara had spent the morning at her drafting table accomplishing precisely nothing. She'd opened the file for her current panel three times. Closed it three times. Stared at the half-inked page where Marina was standing at the prow of a ship, deciding whether to sail toward the storm or turn back, and thought about how her subconscious had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Her phone sat on the table beside her like a small bomb.
Nora's latest email — sent two days ago, polite and professional and quietly insistent — glowed in her notifications:
Hi Clara — Following up on our call. The editor I mentioned is very eager to move forward with a formal proposal. I'll need your answer by end of week so I can set up the next conversation. No rush on the big decisions yet — this is just about whether you'd liketo explore the opportunity further. But I do need a yes or no on representation itself.
End of week. Four days.
Clara locked the phone. Unlocked it. Locked it again.
Then she grabbed her keys and left.
"Going to town," she called toward the gallery. "Need supplies."
